Hogan Reviews

If I were to give a one sentence review for “Resistor” it would be that it’s a simple two-part story that’s just… fine. The main issue is coming right after “Pursuit of the Nightjar” which is an extremely tough job for any story, let alone one with such a comparatively short run time. Still, putting that aside and looking at it by itself, what’s it like? Let’s take a deeper look…

Like literally countless stories before it “Resistor” starts with The Doctor (Peter Davison) arriving at the wrong location, in this case Warsaw, Poland instead of somewhere in Yugoslavia where Tegan (Janet Fielding) wished to go, though at least he got the year of 1982 right. The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) decide to have a look round anyway, after all it does tend to lead to something interesting, and sure enough they run into a woman called Iza (Niky Wardley) who had just seen her band’s drummer Hao (Chris Lew Kum Hoi) get pulled into a mysterious car and get driven off. Given Poland at the time was a harsh police state this couldn’t mean anything good but ignoring all that The Doctor offers to take his place in their band, which third band member Roman (Daniel Easton) goes along with just so they can finally do the set they’ve been promoting for ages.

Sadly it doesn’t take long for the secret police to bash down the doors and start arresting people, The Doctor and co. only escaping due to Tegan claiming The Doctor was the Australian ambassador and her and Iza were his secretaries and that somehow working. Eventually Tegan and Iza go searching for Roman, thinking that Hao had sold them out and he might be in danger, while The Doctor and Nyssa go in search of a mysterious car that Iza claims goes around abducting people with other-worldly lightning soon following, and sure enough The Doctor has a closer encounter with this phenomenon than he’d have liked…

Like I said it’s not a bad story, though a twist is handled rather oddly in the final moments, but nothing about it will blow you away. As an added “extra” to Pursuit of the Nightjar though it’s not so bad, that story was worth the price of the set alone…

The Continuity:

Another look at the great cover, somehow I’ve only just noticed The Doctor holding the big steering wheel from the previous story. How did I miss that?!

Not really anything to speak off, this time round! I have a vague memory of The Doctor filling in as a band member in another story but it’s not coming to mind, and it’s a hard thing to search for, so… yeah.

Overall Thoughts:

“Resistor” is a mixed bag, it has some good moments but also has one really badly defined character that really annoyed me by the end. I can’t say it’s poor though, so I’ll settle for “not listening to it again” instead.

As it turns out Roman was the one who sold his friends out, apparently he’s gay and in order to avoid his family finding out he agreed to sell his close friends and band mates out to the secret police; I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for him but, um, no not really. What would’ve happened to his close friends had they not managed to escape / already been captured by something else would’ve been far worse than whatever he was going to go through, or at least equally as bad which isn’t a very good excuse to take your friends down with you! Well, anyway, Iza and Tegan escape thanks to their earlier ploy about being attached to the Australian ambassador and Roman is waiting outside to give them a life, which they reluctantly take and head to the nearby power station, where The Doctor and Nyssa have found out that the spooky car is being driven by a member of the alien race known as the Zastri (Ben Porter), normally an innocent race who wouldn’t harm a fly.

After The Doctor and Nyssa dodge laser gun fire for a while and Tegan and company turn off the power they find out the Zastri crashed and he needed the people he’d kidnapped to power his ship as his children were hooked up to its medical machines and would die if it got switched off. This misunderstanding is resolved simply by The Doctor repairing his ship while Nyssa helps the kidnapped humans recover. The ship takes off and the band (called “Resistor”, hence the name of the story) get dropped off in London after Tegan remembers hearing their band there at the time, thus is wouldn’t effect the web of time and all that. The major problem here though is that Iza and Hao forgive Roman pretty quickly and they head off happy together in London. First off if my close friend ratted me out to the police state our band was protesting against I don’t think I’d welcome him back ever let alone so easily, and secondly Roman is apparently happy to leave the family he didn’t want to upset behind without so much as a single word, you know the reason he betrayed his friends in the first place… What an odd and frustrating character he was…