Hogan Reviews

After a sudden return of the Novel Adaptation range we now get to the first of two returns to the Lost Stories range! “Operation Werewolf” was partially pencilled in for the Second Doctor era before, I believe, it was scrapped because it was considered bad taste to do a story set during WWII as it hadn’t been that long since its end (which is a weird thought really) but here in 2024 we have no such worry, in fact Doctor Who especially is if anything overran with the time period. It’s for that reason I wasn’t super excited for this release (at least not compared to the next one) but I am a fan of the new Michael Troughton Second Doctor so I was looking forward to a non-Season 6B story featuring him, and I got that at least! Let’s take a look.

As with so many stories this one kicks off with The Doctor (Michael Troughton), Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) arriving and The Doctor talking about what a great place this is only to realise the TARDIS has brought him somewhere different. In this case he was aiming for 1066 Normandy to see the Normans off but while he arrived in Normandy it was instead three days away from D-Day, as evidenced by a couple of planes and a man parachuting into the same forest they were in. In a panic at the danger The Doctor decides to head back to the TARDIS but the parachuter has alerted the local Nazis and the group gets separated, with The Doctor and Resistance member Jules (Stephane Cornicard) getting captured while Jamie and Zoe meet up with other Resistance members Francoise (Jordan Loughran), Pierre (Al Coppola) and Philippe (Raffaello Degruttola) and head to their hideout. While the Resistance ponder whether or not to kill Jamie and Zoe for knowing too much / potentially being spies The Doctor is introduced to the villains of the story. Mistaken for the British spy who parachuted down (and was using the codename “The Doctor”) he is taken to the Nazi scientist Hans Richter (Branko Tomovic) and is told to help him with his new teleportation technology, and in order to motivate him Jules is placed in one side by of the device by SS Gruppenfuhrer Ulrich Schneider (Timothy Blore) and while The Doctor does figure out the issue it’s too late for Jules. (Can I just say: Jules, Francoise, Pierre, Philippe, Hans and Schneider? This script won’t win prizes for name originality!)

While all this is going on Jamie and Francois head out for a look at the chateau where the Doctor and Jules are/was being held (Jules being Francois’ father, as it turns out) and they end up having to flee when their plan to steal Nazi uniforms and talk their way in fails. Francois is captured but Jamie manages to escape with the help of the spy called The Doctor, whose real name is Fergus McCrimmon (David O’Mahony) which makes Jamie worry that he might be his ancestor (though obviously doesn’t let on) The actual Doctor and Francois meet and his gives her the bad news about her father before she is used to force The Doctor to perfect Richter’s teleporting machine so it connects to a pod back in England, specifically the lab of Sir Aubrey Fanshaw-Smith (Michael Higgs) who is the government agent who send Fergus to the chateau instead of okaying Churchill’s original plan of bombing it to hell, and now we know why! Once it’s proven to work Hauptsturmfuher (bloody hell, these Nazi titles…) Leni Bruckner (Leonie Schliesing) heads over to England in a flash to prove it works, where she then has a conversation with Aubrey where he admits he’s committed to idea of a British Empire-like force across the world but sees himself as a better leader than Hitler, which makes Leni somewhat suspicious, understandably.

Great cover, especially the Nazi officer in a classic Werewolf position in front of the moon.

We soon find out about the titular “Operation Werewolf”, which revolves around a special type of gas that when released puts people in a highly suggestable state, ready to be converted into Nazis. They want to use the teleporter to send a bunch of Nazi soldiers over to the UK and then have then deliver a large amount of the gas to major army bases and take over the country that way. They first use the gas on the Resistance hideout, where Jamie, Fergus and one of either Pierre or Phillippe (can’t remember, sorry!) escape but Zoe and the other one are frozen in place, captured and brought back to the chateau. They’re soon brought to Schneider and Richter, who quickly turn them into Nazi loyalists for a classic cliffhanger, then they’re sent to an underground entrance where they know their friends will be arriving to rescue them and order them to kill them…

It was a fun story to listen to over three days, but I will admit it does suffer from “captured, escape, recaptured, re-escape” syndrome and therefore could’ve done with being four rather than six episodes, and a lot of the characters were pretty plain but given the era we rarely got deep backstories or nuanced villains so I can happily ignore that bit. The lead trio were great, really makes me wish they hadn’t gone down the weird sort-of-Season-6B storyline with them and done a more traditional run of stories, really.

The Continuity:

I’m obviously not going to list every Who story set during World War II, so the only other bits are The Doctor comparing the teleporting project to Mavic Chen’s similar project in First Doctor classic “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, while Jamie and Zoe are reminded of “T-Mat”, the teleporting system from Second Doctor TV story “The Seeds of Death”. Also someone in a  historical period having a hidden teleporting system reminds me of Second Doctor TV classic “The Evil of the Daleks”, which has a similar idea but in the Victorian era (and the teleporting is far further spread!)

Overall Thoughts:

“Operation Werewolf” is a fun, if not simple, WWII tale with basic resistance fighters and spies taking on stock Nazi stereotypes. The main trio of The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe work great with the new Troughton-in-charge which definitely elevates it to feeling like an actual Lost Story more than some, but in this case I have a feeling if this were actually made then I’d still have the same issue that I felt it went on too long, with the plot extended mainly by people being captured and escaping over and over. Good, but I can’t see myself listening to it again.

Zoe and the other one manage to break their conditioning instead of hurting their friends and then return to the lab with Jamie and co. in disguise to try and take it, but Leni with Francois, plus Richter, all manage to escape to England, so The Doctor heads there as well to save his new friend. The Doctor and Francois are locked up in a church but our Time Lord protagonist manages to repel down the steeple and phone the home office (thanks to forms belonging to a government man who Aubrey had killed in an earlier episode) where he warns them of the Nazis carrying the gas before heading back to the church and pretending he never left. Operation Werewolf fails and more than that Churchill immediately okays the bombing of the Chateau, which takes care of the Nazi characters that were left behind but puts Jamie and co. in danger.

The Doctor and Francois manage to outsmart Leni and Aubrey but using the hypno gas supplies and The Doctor placing doubt in Leni’s mind about Aubrey being behind stopping the Operation, leading to her killing him, which really she should’ve done as soon as he revealed his “taking over the Nazi empire” thing. As the English soldiers raid the village The Doctor and Francois take one last teleport trip back to the chateau only to find it half bombed out. The Doctor, Jamie, Zoe and the Resistance member manage to escape the building just before it’s destroyed and head to the forest. Just before they enter the TARDIS the first salvo of the D-Day landings begin, which The Doctor says to the Resistance that it’s the start of the end but also they should probably find somewhere to lay low while their country turns into a battlefield, before heading into the TARDIS and dematerialising in front of the amazed Frenchmen/woman.