Antillia The Lost is a strange one to review as it’s more formulaic than the previous story but Margaret was far more… bearable as a companion, even if it was only due to her personality being reset to “generic companion” throughout the story. Still, if you like your pulpy sci-fi clichés, um, pulpy then you’ll have a fun time, so let’s take a look!
The start of the story focuses on a group of classic sci-fi character tropes in a spaceship called “The Blade” who are searching for Antillia, a lost world that periodically reappears in space at random locations. You have good guy scientist Dr. Vance (Richard Lumsden), grumpy money-obsessed businessman Sanderson Craske (Andrew Wincott) and his overly serious company-appointed bodyguard Freya Brett (Keziah Joseph) and Theodora Markway (Anjli Mohindra) who is a reporter who has been in love with the mystery of Antillia since she was young. They all play their roles well, especially Wincott’s Craske, he really has that deep “bad ass businessman” vibe to his voice, but no one breaks out of their classic mould. They all arrive on Antillia and soon find The Doctor (Tom Baker), Leela (Louise Jameson) and Margaret (Nerys Hughes) boat-riding in a lake, having bene knocked off course and landed there in the TARDIS during one of the large land-mass’s movements through space-time.
I’m not quite sure why Margaret is mildly amused at the horror everyone else seems to be reacting to, but whatever… Beats “always shocked Helen” anyway!
For that extra slice of sci-fi cliché we find out that Antillia isn’t a planet or a moon but instead a purpose build research facility that was full of scientists, but one scientist named Gilman Hari (Adrian Rawlins) was doing teleportation experiments that not only transformed the population of Antillia into a singular blob and then separated them again (making them a deformed group gestalt entity…) but he keeps popping the whole place in and out of a pocket dimension, unaware that each time does it he’s several years further down the timeline of the actual universe. If you want a classic trope mixed in with your classic cliché he’s also become possessed by an entity that lives in the pocket dimension, leaving him quite mad and seemingly talking to himself. Again Rawlins does a great job but if you’re looking for a new or original take on the mad scientist role you won’t find it here.
The four episodes do fly by though, with some fun set pieces including killer maintenance robots, daring skyscraper escapes and the underground-living simple-minded locals (well, sort of…) getting over their fear of the surface in order to help our protagonists. It’s a fun story, so long as you know you’re in for a classic pulpy adventure serial.
The Continuity:
Oh, there’s the same shot of Margaret again! I guess it didn’t stand out to me last time…
This is one of those stories with no real continuity connections to speak of, unless you want me to list stories with profit-obsessed businessmen or mad scientists, but I’d be here all day!
Overall Thoughts:
I really enjoyed Antillia the Lost, it’s full of clichés and character tropes but all of them are done and played well respectively. Sadly the companions aren’t up to much beyond one or two fun escape scenes but the one-off supporting cast pull a lot of weight in the moving scenes along stakes. A second 4 Star story in a row, making this a very good box set overall!
Brett is killed by the robots, Dr. Vance is injured so has to stay behind and fix the ship, Margaret and Leela befriend the mutated gestalt people and The Doctor and Craske visit Hari and while The Doctor realises the danger of letting the thing possessing him loose on the universe Craske only thinks about the company mission of bringing Hari back so they can continue using his brilliant mind for their profits. The Doctor escapes the exploding lab but Hari and Craske aren’t so lucky (though the latter was given the option to escape by The Doctor but ran out of the lift at the last second to give convincing Hari another go, like a complete idiot…)
Vance and Teodora escape on the Blade while our trio leave via the TARDIS. For the record Teodora was a perfectly pleasant character and acted like a third companion at times, but much like the two actual companions she didn’t really do anything beyond being in danger when needed…
Hogan Reviews 