The Dreams of Avarice is a fun story that puts The Nine in the spotlight as the central villain, rather than the usual Eleven. As a campy kleptomaniac he certainly brings a different energy to the proceedings, and The Doctor teaming up with a bumbling Detective for the adventure gave it a different vibe as well. Let’s take a closer look!
The story starts off right into the comedy as The Doctor (Tom Baker) is arrested for trying to steal something and when questioned by Detective Inspector Alan Probert (Richard Dixon) he says it was a “compound mass reducer” and he tried to steal it to stop someone else from stealing it, which the DI laughs off until he is given a report that someone else had just broken into the same place and robbed something called a “compound mass reducer”. This person is of course The Nine (John Heffernan) and we soon hear he has something of a companion called Thana (Ronni Ancona), who is a member of a species that can only die by natural aging so she sticks around to see what Nine gets up to and he puts up with her both because he can’t kill her and also because she’s the last of her race and therefore a “rare item for his collection”. A fun idea.
A pretty simple looking cover… nothing to draw you in or get excited about. Especially as The Nine looks like any ordinary bloke due to a lack of costume or familiarity from the show!
Anyway, The Doctor and Probert are attacked by a giant robot as a distraction while The Nine steals components from The Doctor’s TARDIS, eventually putting it together with his mass reducer to create a device that allows him to shrink an entre museum gallery and place it into his pocket. The Doctor and Probert then follow him to a planet called Luxuriana where a massive crystal called the “God Crystal” arrives every 100 years, with The Nine planning on stealing the crystal but becomes so enamoured by the sparkling planet Luxuriana itself that he shrinks the entire planet and puts it in his collection, complete with The Doctor on it!
Given that’s only the first half-ish of the story you can tell it’s a pretty crazy one, but I can’t deny it’s a fun one. The combination of The Doctor and Probert is great, they really bounce off each other well, as do The Nine and Thana. It’s a full four-part story and it doesn’t slow down, in a good way.
The Continuity:
Another retroactive boxset, even more obviously due to being called “The Nine” even though he only appears in one story…
Not much, The Eleven and his other selves had appeared so often now that I’m not going to list all of his appearances!
I will say that shrinking an entire planet and keeping it is an interesting idea that Doctor Who has come close to doing before, like in “Day of the Doctor” where Gallifrey is contained in a small microverse, or “The Pirate Planet” which sees a big planet surround a smaller one, though in that case its to absorb it! The Nine and The One (in his mind) also mention that displacing planets is strictly forbidden by Gallifrey, something that plays a key role in the Sixth Doctor “Trial of a Time Lord” series…
Overall Thoughts:
The Dreams of Avarice is a really fun story, with a great guest cast and Tom Baker having a whale of a time. Plus at four parts it doesn’t slow down, constantly changing up location and stakes to make sure it holds your attention throughout. Highly recommended!
The rest of the story is basically The Doctor and Probert running around, first on the shrunken planet of Luxuriana and then thanks to the influence of the God Crystal, on a weird mindscape based on The Nine’s mind, complete with versions of his past self and loads and loads of things he wants to steal / has stolen. Eventually The Doctor manages to snap The Nine out of it and return everyone to actual space, where Thana shrinks The Nine’s collection in order to save The Doctor and Probert. There’s a nice tease at the end where The Nine breaks free of his restraints and Probert and forces The Doctor to take him to “wherever the God Crystal comes from” but The Doctor leaves Nine heading there and escapes with Probert and Thana in the TARDIS instead, leaving Nine to whatever mental hell he was about to find himself…
Hogan Reviews 