Hogan Reviews

The “Storm of the Sea Devils” boxset concludes with this entirely Sea Devil-less two parter that more than most stories really suffers from not having its own cover… Well, anyway, as with a lot of the under-one-hour stories there isn’t a lot of time to get know new characters which is why this story very cleverly focused almost entirely on the TARDIS team themselves. Let’s have a look…

The story starts with Naomi (Eleanor Crooks) being unimpressed with the size of the TARDIS as she has yet to leave the console room, which was actually more annoying than the funny it was going for because it just didn’t make any sense for someone who was freaking out at talking to a Sea Devil a few moments ago to be so nonplussed about a space and time ship’s interior, but I digress. The Doctor (Tom Baker) takes them to a luxury resort after Harry (Christopher Naylor) reminds him he was in the middle of his holiday when this whole thing kicked off but as soon as he lands and hears what the local Cicerone do as a break, basically scan people’s minds and then put them in an augmented reality suite based on their desires, he wants no part in it. On the way back to the TARDIS however Naomi and Harry manage to convince him to turn around and let them all give it a go, and against his instincts he agrees.

Naomi is transported to a island paradise with loads to activities to do led by a tour guide called Abby (Amaka Okafor) while Harry arrives at the crumbling ruins of an old castle and is offered to explore it by a “local archaeologist” called Donald (David Shaw-Parker) The Doctor meanwhile arrives at the edge of a swimming pool with chessboards all over the place and one guest who challenges him to a game, that man being a simulation of Alan Turing (Anthony Howell). Everything is great until The Doctor manages to make Turing understand he isn’t real and just an imitation of the man himself, which causes the Cicerone to break into the simulation and take Turing away. The Doctor follows them and soon finds out that the Cicerone society’s technology is powered by negative emotion, specifically the fear of death, and that’s what this “resort” is all about: the Cicerone having to bring tourists to them because nobody on their planet wants to go through the process to charge their power station any more. As he discovers this Naomi and Harry start to find out themselves the hard way…

For a little two-part story it works well because as they face their ordeals we find out a bit more about Naomi and Harry… well, Naomi really as Harry is pretty easy to read after his TV adventures alone. The only issue is that once again despite having to face high levels of joy and horror Eleanor Crooks makes very little vocal change in her performance, taking me out of the story. Again, she’s been doing that in the Seventh Doctor stories recorded after this, so it isn’t a shocker but it still takes a little bit away from a well-written story…

The Continuity:

I guess I may as well post the cover, not that it gets anything about this story across at all, even in the title!

Apart from picking up from where “Storm of the Sea Devils” ended there isn’t much to talk about here. I mean I know I could find other Doctor Who stories where people have been put in pleasant fake realities for something to feed off of them, but that’s more a shared sci-fi trope than continuity!

Overall Thoughts:

“Worlds Beyond” didn’t wow me but it did entertain me for an hour, with a strong script fleshing out Naomi (not knowing that she’d already have appeared in several stories before this story was released…) and giving some extra shine to Harry as well. A good mini-adventure and certainly miles more interesting than the one that came before it.

While Harry is trapped under a pile of rubble with Donald, who has an injured leg, Naomi is put through the physical and mental wringer by Abby, though manages to push her way through it with her own will. She and The Doctor then head to Harry’s world and soon free him and Donald from the rubble, not that really matters once they confirm the injured party isn’t real (not that Harry wouldn’t try to save him anyway, he’s that kind of “chap”) and then the three of them are soon saved in general by the sentient Alan Turning replica, who takes down the Cicerone’s tech. The new TARDIS trio leave the fake Alan behind as they move on to their next adventure.