Hogan Reviews

Even though I love six or seven part Third Doctor stories I will admit that they tend to drag, especially in the middle, so it’s always nice to get ones that manage to keep the story going at a good pace. Kaleidoscope here has almost the reverse problem: it has so much going on, so many side-plots that it can seem somewhat overwhelming. Still, I was thoroughly entertained! Let’s take a look…

Kaleidoscope is set towards the end of the Third Doctor’s run, with Tim Treloar once again doing this incarnation of The Doctor great justice alongside Jon Culshaw’s spot-on Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Sadie Miller’s sometimes-eerily-similar-to-her-mother’s Sarah Jane Smith, with the first half focusing on a visiting alien called Kaleidoscope (Gerran Howell) who warns the Earthlings of an on-coming apocalypse during an interview with Sarah’s rival journalist Jenny Nettles (Jasmin Hinds). Our lead trio initial disregard him as a fake but when it’s revealed he was found on a hill where they found a mysterious floating object from space they bring him in for questioning, which is where The Doctor agrees that he is indeed who he says he is. This also leads Jenny to find out about UNIT, much to The Brig’s displeasure.

To make matters worse some planes are shot out of the air when they find a UFO and one of the pilots gets infected with something and turns metallic. We then get a double-dose of classic Third Doctor tropes as not only does everyone have to deal with another military force that dislike’s UNIT in the air force but also a bunch of protestors outside their base. One such protestor is Daphne Green (Helen Goldwyn) who is an old friend and something of a love-interest from The Brig’s past.

It all works really well as a set up. Gerran Howell in particular shines as a kind-hearted but somewhat naïve alien and how he bounces off the rest of the cast is great, it’s just a shame his role in the plot falls to the wayside as the story moves on. On the other side I found Jenny really annoying, basically a version of Sarah Jane if she were without any filter. The direction the plot heads in for the second half is a bit… odder, and not quite as fun as this set up led me to believe, but it was still a fun listen. I will also mention, since it’s right there in the cast list if you visit Big Finish’s website, that Christopher Naylor’s Harry Sullivan appears in this story, and although for continuity’s sake he and The Doctor don’t actually meet face-to-face The Doctor does see him on video for the sole purpose of calling him an imbecile, which is one of those nudge-nudge moments that was so on-the-nose that it nearly took me out of the story like a fourth-wall break or something!

The Continuity:

Excellent cover; really grabs your attention, it features one of the new characters and has a really good composite image of The Doctor riding a snowmobile. Top marks!

Not a lot, really. There are mentions of previous Third Doctor TV stories when Jenny reads off Sarah’s list of “crazy” stories she’d reported on in the past, and this is specifically written to be Harry Sullivan’s first day on the job of UNIT, having only just left Pompey Barracks. Like I said he doesn’t actually meet The Doctor as its clearly his first time meeting him when he’s told to look after the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor in “Robot”.

Overall Thoughts:

Kaleidoscope is never boring, though sometimes the effort to avoid that meant that the story felt a bit too over-packed and as a result some fun plotlines and characters fall to the wayside to make room for new ones in new locations. It’s still a really fun listen though and highly recommended to Third Doctor fans like myself!

The previously mentioned metallic pilot turns out to be possessed by a swarm of deadly nanobots called “The Grid” who nearly take over The Doctor and have him launch a deadly missile strike if it weren’t for the intervention of “Kal”, as Kaleidoscope prefers to be nicknamed. Everyone celebrates a resounding victory but the stuffy Air Commodore Hurley (Mark Elstob) decides to have The Doctor arrested for his role in trying to activate the missiles, despite clearly being under alien control at the time. This is where things get a bit weird as when Sarah tries to free The Doctor while he’s being transported The Doctor, Hurley and herself are confronted by a bunch of Soviet soldiers led by a man named Major Solokov (Stephen Noonan) and with help of KGB agent Daphne Green The Doctor and Sarah are taken to Siberia for the final two acts. Here Solokov wants The Doctor’s help identifying alien technology the Soviets have managed to collect, and after a snowmobile escape that doesn’t quite work and a threat to Sarah’s life The Doctor agrees…

To make matters … weirder, during all this we cut back to UNIT from time to time with a “new intro” acting like the show is now called Kaleidoscope as Kal assumes the position of UNIT’s lead scientific advisor with Jenny as his Sarah, which was a funny gag until they played the intro five or six times in one episode and the joke lost ALL sense of fun and just became annoying. Oh well… the finale is the Soviets trying to control Kal with some alien tech but he shuts himself down rather than harm Jenny, then The Brig follows Daphne to Siberia via her special time tunnel device and out of panic Solokov pick up a gun and points it at Sarah. The Doctor tells him he’s holding it backwards but Solokov calls his bluff and… gets turned inside out. A bomb gets set and rather than face a lifetime in prison Daphne decides to stay behind and get exploded, much to The Brig’s horror, then Kal and Jenny head off to the former’s home planet together. Loose ends all tied up!

So it’s a fun story but the shift to evil Russians and turning Kal into a gag parody of the series we’re still technically listening to are both weird ideas that neither work completely, though as I said in the Overall paragraph as a whole the story is still a good time.