Hogan Reviews

Following on from the original “Forty” boxset is the rather stupidly titled “Forty 2” which makes it sound like it’s called 42 whenever you read it out but I can assure you that it carries on the original box’s plot thread and finishes up the celebration of 40 years of the Fifth Doctor well. That being said it’s all one long story so it really could’ve just been called “The Auton Infinity” but I guess they wanted to make sure people knew it continued from the first one. ANYWAY, enough title talk, is the story good? Thankfully given its runtime, yes. Yes it is. Let’s take a good look, shall we?

The Auton Infinity kicks off with a rather standard two parts set on Earth, a muddy field in Wales no less as The Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) arrive in the middle of a UNIT mock battle complete with soldiers wearing rubber squid masks to act as aliens. This UNIT team is led by Captain Edward Mear (Oscar Pearce) and sees Sgt. Janet Wharry (Fiona Hampton) and Corporal Vikram Plamer (Homer Todiwala) get plenty of air-time as well, plus The Brigadier (once again perfectly recaptured by Jon Culshaw) is there as an observer. I mention the UNIT characters because one is used in an effective cliffhanger and the other two hang about for the whole six parts, with Wharry in particular being a fun one-off sarcastic companion. To round out the human cast we have Veronica Holmes (Lucy Fleming) who is your stereotypical politician who has no real idea of what she should be doing but thinks she does (so, a politician… ba-dum-tish!) and also ends up tagging along for the whole ride.

The waste hits the fan when the rubber masks attach themselves to the alien-playing soldiers and we find out that the Autons are about (well, the cast find that out, the title kind of gave it away for the listener) which leads to some good scenes as they’re led by the uncharacteristically chatty Auton called “Prodigal” (Juliet Aubrey) who seemingly is wandering the battlefield for no reason and only killed in self-defence. It all comes to a head at the end of Part 2 as we get a particularly excellent Master reveal (voiced by Jon Culshaw again, who sadly doesn’t nail Anthony Ainley’s Master half as well as he does The Brig, but oh well, he’s good enough to make it work) and soon everyone is whisked away to an extremely old Gallifreyan ship called a Vortex Driller that was used to force its way through the Time Stream and apparently resembles a floating castle with drills on the roof, which made me laugh as that sounds like a TV era excuse to re-use castle corridor sets! The Doctor says it’s an extremely crude form of time travel and extremely dangerous for the whole universe, naturally.

As the story roars on we get an explanation as to how The Doctor was sent backwards and forwards through his own time stream in the previous set, an interesting look at the origin of the Autons and some fun character development from the whole TARDIS team, with Tegan bonding with Prodigal and Turlough and his old teacher Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart getting some together time, something I didn’t even think about when this story was revealed. As the cover will tell you we also get a scene or two with Kamelion, though they’re not really worth talking about, beyond giving Jon Culshaw a whooping third character to portray! More in the spoiler section but suffice it to say it was a really fun three hours.

The Continuity:

Great cover, though the flat horizontal line at the top and plain green at the botton both kind of annoy me… Just focus on the middle though and *chef’s kiss*

Quite a bit! Beyond following on from Forty 1’s stories “Secrets of Telos” and “God of War” it also heavily calls back to Turlough’s debut story “Mawdryn Undead”, classic multi-Doctor story “The Five Doctors” and once again presses the “reference Adric’s death from Earthshock” button a few times. It is also pretty clearly set right before “Resurrection of the Daleks” as Tegan heavily hints about having reached her limit. There’s also a little nod to “Caves of Androzani” towards the end for good measure. That’s a lot of Fifth Doctor continuity but given it’s a celebration of forty years of the Fifth Doctor that shouldn’t be too big a shock.

Overall Thoughts:

Forty 2: The Auton Infinity gave itself a lot to cover but plenty of time to cover it, so it works really well. Plenty of great scenes for the main cast, a fun origin for the Autons and some good twists and cameos make this a story not to miss for any Fifth Doctor fan. Really its only a few confusing scenes and maybe one or two “companion / new character pairing run around a corridor” scene too many even for Doctor Who drags in down from a 5.

I’ll do my best to wrap this up as quickly as I can! Basically the Vortex Driller is heading to the Old Times to free the original Great Old Consciousness, the original Nestene creature that spawned all others as Prodigal wishes to re-connect with it as she feels lost without guidance but as she spends more time with Tegan she begins to gain a greater sense of self, even caring for the rubber mask creatures she feels are her children. Meanwhile The Master straps The Doctor into the ship to use his brain as a power source and guidance mechanism seemingly just to piss about with The Doctor rather than a genuine wish to help his old allies in the Autons, but The Doctor is rescued sending the ship spiralling out of control. The Master takes freshly minted Auton duplicate of The Doctor and puts that in place but that ends up making things worse and fracturing time even more and causing the instability in The Doctor’s timeline in the previous set.

The younger Fifth Doctor consciousness from those stories then takes control of the Auton body as his current self is out cold and its here that this Doctor manages to re-seal the Great Old Consciousness at the cost of it’s “life”, but not before having a great conversation with Tegan and a strangely poignant and emotional conversation with his actual self as this Auton Doctor laments that it will “die” and the other will get to have all the adventures. The Master escapes, everyone is popped back on Earth and we get a fun scene set just before the start of Caves of Androzani so we get a Peri cameo and finish the line up of Fifth Doctor TV companions on this special release!