The next story in the latest “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” box is our second of three new Sixth Doctor releases this month and in this case features the duo of The Doctor and Mel coming up against the Clockwork Droids, so much like the previous one not super-exciting on the surface but even more than the last one writer Jacqueline Rayner took the simple enemy concept and ran with it, creating a genuinely fun and interesting story. Let’s take a look!
The story starts with Queen Catherine (Finty Williams) who lives in a castle with countless clocks in the wall all set to exact same time as the “Master Clock” that hangs high above the settlement. She has specific staff for each hour of the day whose job comes down to essentially walking around the castle and making sure each clock is correct and then announce the end of the hour. When Miss Midnight, otherwise known as Annette (Jennifer Saayeng) takes over for her hour a few seconds late she reveals she was attacked by a Clockwork Droid but was saved by two passers-by, The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Mel (Bonnie Langford). The Queen however is not so pleased as apparently the Droids have mastered the art of repurposing dead bodies as new Clockwork Droids and she thinks that’s exactly what these strangers are, so they’re sent to jail.
A short while later however and the duo meet Harbolt the Clock Maker (Paterson Joseph) who ends up asking for The Doctor’s help to disassemble the deactivated Droid and potentially create more of the liquid he had used to freeze it in place. This leads to a few scenes with The Doctor, Mel, Harbolt and Annette getting the listener up to date on the lore as the Droids continue to pound of the castle gates. The Doctor freaks the local residents out by producing a small pocket watch and soon uses it to trick the Droids into thinking he’s one of them so he could slip out and get to the TARDIS, but when he arrives at where it should be, it’s gone. Queen Catherine admits to having it taken to the shipyard, leaving The Doctor trapped outside surrounded by killer robots…
It’s a really good, atmospheric “base under siege” story, with a fun twist that even though you can figure it out it doesn’t take away from the drama that unfolds (more on that in the Spoilers!)
The Continuity:
At least the enemy in this one is a bit more prominent on the cover, somehow it’s easy to not focus on the brain with eyes when you look at it…
The Clockwork Droids first appeared in Tenth Doctor TV story “The Girl in the Fireplace” and reappeared in the Twelfth Doctor’s debut story “Deep Breath”, which establishes the Droid’s ability to use human parts to keep going / make new Droids…
Overall Thoughts:
The Queen of Clocks continues the trend set by the Clockwork Droid’s two TV appearances of taking the pretty simple enemy and despite that simplicity giving us a great story. It’s weird how robots with clockwork parts can end up being used so well, but there you go. Definitely one to listen to again, once you know the twist.
The Doctor manages to get back in only when The Queen in convinced he could help her contact her son Phillippe (Chris Lew Kum Hoi), who had left on a ship to find them a new planet to settle on and is due back any time now. The Doctor manages to receive a message where the man claims to be arriving in a few hours’ time so The Doctor and Harbolt concoct a plan to freeze all the Droids by tricking them into thinking its time for their 12:00 shutdown permanently by using the Master Clock, but while he’s doing this Mel, the Queen and her few remaining subjects are trapped as the Droid army tries to break through. Mel shuts off all the Clocks in the room so they can hear them coming but in doing so she makes a horrible discovery.
Mel and Annette race to the Master Clock tower to stop The Doctor but is too late, he successfully shuts down all the Droids and finds out from the newly arriving Mel that the Queen, her servants, Harbolt and everyone else had all already been converted into Clockwork Droids and after they reset at midnight they all took their places and relived the final day of the survivors over again, it was only The Doctor and Mel interfering that changed that re-enactment of their last moments and gave them hope, therefore The Doctor had effectively killed all of the “people” they’d met, even if it was just shutting down their reanimated remains. A despondent Doctor and Mel wait for Phillippe but he never arrives and he finds the message had been repeating for years. The duo track down a now old man Phillippe on the planet he helped settle and eventually tell him of his mother’s fate, though probably leaving out the whole “having her body re-enact her horrifying last moments over and over for decades” bit. Good bit of crazy sci-fi drama.
Hogan Reviews 