Now, “Dimensions in Time” is a tricky one because technically it doesn’t feature two Doctors interacting but given it has multiple Doctors and companions and its an anniversary story I felt I couldn’t skip over it… plus if I don’t do it now I never will! So for those not aware “Dimensions in Time” was a 1993 Children in Need 3-D charity sketch (spread over two nights) to celebrate the series 30th anniversary, but due to it being off the air for three years all we got was this, which given it also crosses over with forever-popular soap Eastenders and had a phone-in vote to decide what some of the soap’s cast did shows how the show was viewed by the BBC at the time… Let’s take a look anyway, and not worry about if its canon or not!
The story focuses in on The Rani (Kate O’Mara) and her assistant Cyrian (Sam West), who are trying to take over all the minds in the universe by creating a menagerie of all sentient life in some sort of machine and the last one she needs is a human from Earth. In order to prevent the Doctor from interfering like he always does she traps him, capturing the first two Doctors (represented by weird early 3D floating heads…?) and sending Doctors Three (Jon Pertwee), Five (Peter Davison), Six (Colin Baker) and Seven (Sylvester McCoy) to a time loop of Albert Square in 1973, 1993 and 2013. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) avoided the trap and tried to send a warning to his other selves but it doesn’t work (or Tom Baker didn’t want to appear but they managed to get him in a booth for five minutes…) While a whole host of the Doctor’s companions have also been sent to these places the then-current Doctor (Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) find themselves juttering forward and backwards in time, sometimes other Doctors taking his place and other companions taking hers, all trying to figure out what the trap is and how to get out of it.
Tom Baker is back! … in a booth with a random CG background. Hooray?
The Rani becomes worried the Doctor will free himself so unleashes her entire collection of aliens (so again, lots of cameos!) and then tries to straight-up shoot him with some sort of large gun but Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) arrives on Bessie and shoots the gun out of her hand allowing them all to escape, though the Rani declares it doesn’t matter as he plan is nearly complete…
As a small Children in Need sketch its fine, occasionally fun even, but obviously as a 30th Anniversary celebration it falls down quite hard. To make matters worse Children in Need themselves have put an extortionate amount of money on the story if someone wanted to release it via physical media, so much so that its never got one, so a blurry and completely unrestored version on YouTube is the best you can get…
The Continuity:
“We finally meet Brigadier!” “Yes! … during this…” “Yes… well, beggars can’t be choosers…”
Not a lot actual callbacks to this story, unsurprisingly! I will mention that Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Romana II (Lalla Ward), Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Peri (Nicola Bryant), Mel (Bonnie Langford), K9 (voiced by John Leeson), Liz Shaw (Caroline John) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) all appear in this story alongside the other companions I’ve named (or go on to name in the spoiler section).
Among the menagerie are Cybermen (from so many stories…), Sea Devils (first appeared in “The Sea Devils”), Ogrons (from two Third Doctor stories starting with “Day of the Daleks”), Tractators (from Fifth Doctor story “Frontios”), a random Time Lord, a Vervoid (from Sixth Doctor Trial of a Time Lord story “Terror of the Vervoids”) and even a random mutant from Fifth Doctor story “Mawdryn Undead”.
Overall Thoughts:
Jon Pertwee’s final on-screen appearance as The Doctor… and it’s this…
“Dimensions in Time” is a fine 10-ish minute distraction so long as you don’t in any way take it seriously. If you do try and take it seriously then you’ll have a bad time to say the least! That being said though, it’s still not that fun to watch, the production value (even for Doctor Who!) and the integration of Eastenders characters brings it down quite a bit. I’ll give it a score somewhere in the middle…
*Spoiler Section*
The Doctor as his Sixth self meets the Brigadier (ticking that box that never happened on TV previously) and together they head off via helicopter to where the Rani’s TARDIS materialised and once the Doctor, now his Seventh self again, meets with an escaping Leela (Louise Jameson) he finds out that Rani is cloning all his companions including Romana and due to that with some random technobabble and mentioning of contacting other “Time Minds” he traps the Rani’s TARDIS in the loop and frees his other selves and companions. He and Ace then leave triumphantly (what, you didn’t expect anything more complex, did you?)
Didn’t really have the room for a fourth picture, but I made one so screw it.
Hogan Reviews 