Hogan Reviews

The latest Third Doctor audio story sees The Doctor and Sarah stuck in an awkward political situation between Earth and a distant colony, though not quite as distant and thankfully a story a bit more involved than Colony in Space that was clearly at least a partial inspiration (even if that story still holds a place in my heart I’m not going to deny it has pacing issues!) It also involves psychic powers and an object from a long-lost highly-advanced civilization, so plenty of fun tropes to play about with! Let’s take a look.

The Doctor (Tim Treloar) and Sarah (Sadie Miller) arrive in a intake corridor on a converted asteroid/space station called Hygieia in the asteroid belt and soon find themselves taken to the leader of the colony when they make themselves known (by nearly being killed by in-coming asteroid debris) The leader of the colony is Governor Rogan (Richard James), who is your classic Earth loyalist who scoffs at the ideas presented by popular local figure Tribune Foyle (David Dobson) who seeks independence. Both are very much basic archetypes but at least both actors do them well! The Doctor soon decides to go with local scientist Dr. Annis Gottfried (Charlie Norfolk) to see the local “BDO” or “Big Dumb Object”, while Sarah feels herself mentally compelled to head down to where the old prison cells are where there is still one prisoner behind bars, and is taken there by Officer Miro (Anna Critchlow) As The Doctor discovers the large crystalline object is giving off large amounts of “psychic radiation” Sarah meets Mullins (Tom Alexander), a young boy clearly off his rocker, and the previously mentioned prisoner Zyla Kalstein (Juliet Aubrey) whom he is solely dedicated to. Zyla shows Sarah her mental ability and freaks her out, and Mullins shows similar power before being tranquilized by Miro.

Their use of psychic powers matches The Doctor reading an increase in the BDO’s power so he tries to mentally communicate with it but is knocked unconscious by the overwhelming psychic power. As all this madness is going on a man named Operator Goole (Robert Whitelock) informs Governor Rogan about Foyle’s rebellion and the leader soon hatches a plan and calls for an Earth military team to arrive as soon as possible and then to get the best result he allows himself and his men to be overthrown so the Earth forces think Hygieia is “under occupation from a hostile force” and deals out maximum punishment. The plan backfires however as soon Foyle experiences his own mutiny as revolutionary supporter Operator Rellack (Barry Aird) thinks Foyle doesn’t have the guts to start to kill hostages or even fire at incoming Earth ships in order to secure their freedom so overthrows the new leader and chucks him in the same cell as Rogan, Miro, who was captured along with other soldiers loyal to Earth, and soon Sarah, who is still being compelled to do things by Zyla. The Doctor recovers from his psychic shock and rigs up a dampener before heading off to rescue Sarah, but as he does this Dr. Gottfried is mentally taken over by Zyla and she is compelled to destroy the dampener, but you know… it served its purpose to temporarily move the plot forward so it’s not all bad.

A frankly fantastic cover. Very eye-catching with some great photoshop work!

As the Earth soldiers are on the verge of arriving The Doctor convinces Rellack to free Rogan and have him declare everything fine but instead he kills Rogan, the head soldier when he arrives, then gets his men to fire the gravity tractor beam on the ship full of other soldiers to knock them out and then sends the ship off into space, with The Doctor, Sarah, Miro and Foyle on board as well, as Rellack assumed they were either Earth investigators or just going to get in the way of his plans. Just when things couldn’t get much worse Zyla escapes from her captivity and begins to mentally influence the situation to get worse, having Dr. Gottfried mentally force Goole to use the gravity gun to crush the ship and kill all those on board…

For six parts it manages to change everything around keep everyone moving at a good pace, and although none of the characters really make it out of “generic template” status they’re all well performed at least.

The Continuity:

Beyond the already mentioned similarities to Third Doctor TV story “Colony in Space” the only other thing was a funny observation Sarah makes that a lot of the planets The Doctor takes her to seem to have mining going on, mentioning the TV stories “Death to the Daleks” and “The Monster of Peladon” specifically…

Overall Thoughts:

I really enjoyed “Revolution in Space”. It felt very of-the-era but also didn’t fall into the pitfalls the actual TV era often fell into in regards to length but keeping the story constantly flowing and twisting to keep your focus. It didn’t do anything revolutionary (pun intended) but it did deliver a great Third Doctor story regardless.

The Doctor, Sarah, Foyle and Miro manage to put on space suits and exit the ship before it got crushed but are left floating aimlessly in space. Luckily Sarah has been exposed to enough psychic radiation that she has gained telekinetic powers and manages to mentally push herself and her allies back onto the space station. Well, I say luckily as after The Doctor and co. find the remnants of Rellack’s loyalists after he tried to fight back against Zyla and they find Mullins also dead, leading The Doctor to discover that the psychic radiation is lethal, with no cure. Not something Sarah wanted to hear after having just used it! A large Earth war fleet arrives on the outskirts of the colony and demands everyone surrender otherwise they’ll bomb the asteroid into oblivion, and Zyla is looking to mentally push the missiles back against the fleet and destroy them all, properly starting a war.

With no other choice The Doctor, Sarah, Miro and Foyle try to mentally push back against Zyla but aren’t able to win until Rellack appears and adds his own new-found mental powers to the mix, and soon Zyla, alongside Dr. Gottfried and Rellack himself, all lay dead. Despite it hastening her death Sarah mentally pushes the missiles away and then telepathically contacts the general of the Earth fleet and says that those who killed the other soldiers have been dealt with and that everyone on Hygieia has these mental powers and will defend themselves if needed. Sarah then collapses near-death so The Doctor heads down to the BDO and mentally contacts it again, this time managing to plead with it to stop hurting the people of Hygieia. The object reacts, absorbs all the psychic radiation back into itself and then breaks apart, saving everyone but also removing all their powers. Foyle is back in charge of a now free Hygieia and looks forward to seeing other colonies following suit as The Doctor meanwhile laments that he’ll never know what the BDO was or what its purpose was, but accepts that some mysteries are best left mysteries before heading back with Sarah in tow.