In terms of “Lost Stories” that are left to adapt Deathworld was a big one as it was the original planned 10th Anniversary story featuring all three Doctors at that point in the show, but William Hartnell’s failing health meant it was scrapped early on and The Three Doctors was created instead. It always sounded really odd based on what we knew and getting to hear it adapted hasn’t changed my mind there, I have no idea how this would’ve worked at the time, but whatever. How does it work now, as an audio drama with four of the six regulars being recasts? Let’s find out!
Deathworld’s first episode starts with a framing story where the President of Gallifrey (played by Dianne Pilkington) is playing chess on a beach with the literal incarnation of Death (Joe Shire) and immediately the story runs into an issue: Joe Shire sounds too plain. He’s supposed to be Death itself, why does he sound like a regular, even slightly smooth-talking guy? At least give him a lower voice and maybe some modulation or something… Very odd, and continues to be through out the four parter. Anyway, as they play we hear the President has three Kings and it soon became apparent that they’re the three Doctors, and sure enough as The Third Doctor (Tim Treloar) and Jo (Katy Manning) are in the UNIT lab a random explosion seemingly kills them and takes down a good chunk of the building as well, just as Death takes one of the Kings. As the Brigadier (Jon Culshaw) begins to run around in a frenzy as he seemingly loses all his men to a horde of zombies he runs into The Second Doctor (Michael Troughton) and Jamie (Frazer Hines), who are trying to make their way back to Victoria after the events of the Two Doctors. Due to this placement (in Big Finish continuity anyway) that means they haven’t met the Brig yet so are rather baffled when he starts asking them questions like he knows them.
The reunion is short-lived however as the zombies surround The Doctor and Jamie and the Brig narrowly manages to escape when the First Doctor (Steven Noonan) materialises his TARDIS around him accidentally thanks to The Doctor having given the Brig the Time-Space Telegraph and I guess he turned it on at some point. This is my first time hearing Noonan in the role, and he’s got that classic issue of sounding like Hartnell in certain moods but not in others, making him instead sound grumpy 100% of the time which isn’t quite right. Not as good as Treloar or Michael Troughton anyway, who act as their own spins on their incarnations of the Doctor that fit right in even if they aren’t exact voice-a-likes. Anyway, the Second Doctor was taken off the board leaving just the First, but as the President tries to contact him he switches an emergency switch and only ends up blowing the ship up, thus Death has taken all three Kings. This isn’t the end though, instead the three pairs arrive in a dimension separate from the regular one governed entirely by Death himself, who addresses the Doctors directly. The Third Doctor and Jo, Second and Jamie, and First and The Brig are all deposited in different parts of his “Deathworld” and each face one of Death’s friends in War, Famine and Pestilence respectively and each out smart their opponent by getting their respective underlings to attack them (an idea they came up with thanks to mentally contacting each other).
Great cover, though Death is explicitly not skeletal for 95% of the story as mentioned by characters throughout the story. Oh well, this looks much better anyway…
All six are then reunited in the same place, and after some trademark bickering between them all they make their way towards a castle with a mental barrier too strong for the humans to get through, so the Three Doctors go in alone. There they meet incarnations of the seven deadly sins that… don’t do anything, as soon Death arrives and invites them to a meal full of really unpleasant eating and drinking sounds in my ear, which I always hate whenever Big Finish do that. Anyway, as this is happening The Brig and Jamie decide to follow anyway, with Jo soon following and they of course end up in danger, leading to the Doctors coming to the rescue as they head into some deep tunnels. While exploring they come across a room full of large spiders and the First Doctor ends up sacrificing himself so the rest can escape, leaving the other two Doctors to acknowledge to their friends that it means they’ll soon vanish from existence as well…
The story has some fun ideas but I will admit that they weren’t all that interesting. I like the other Horsemen and how they were defeated but Part Three with the deadly sins and meal with Death served no purpose at all and just ground everything to a halt. The finale was… fine, and I did like how to connected to The Three Doctors, but overall I’m glad we ended up with the Three Doctors after all, even if it would’ve been nice to see the three Doctors interact more, like we hear in this story. Hats off to Treloar, M. Troughton and Culshaw for bringing Doctors three, two and the Brig to life again, but sadly Noonan didn’t really land his role for me and Death was wildly miscast as he sounded about as intimidating as a guy you meet in the pub who’s trying to sell you pirated goods. A mixed bag then!
The Continuity:
A few things, most notably that this happens in between the Sixth Doctor crossover story “The Two Doctors” and the second half of the Second Doctor audio “The Black Hole” for the Second Doctor, and the First Doctor is on his way back to pick up Steven but no direct reference is made to which story he’s in the middle of. Third Doctor era-wise this is placed directly before “The Three Doctors” and leads directly into it, as you’ll see in the Spoiler section. Death itself has made a few other appearances as well, like in the novel “Timewyrm: Revelation” (that’s a lot of call-backs to stories I covered in the Multi-Doctor marathon last year!) and Seventh Doctor audio classic “The Master”.
There are also a few quick links, like The First Doctor mentioning that the Brig looks like Brey Vyon, a character played by Nicholas Courtney in First Doctor classic “The Daleks’ Master Plan” before he became the Brig, and there are a couple of references to the Second Doctor TV story “The Mind Robber” including a foe that sort-of returns in the final episode.
Overall Thoughts:
“Deathworld” has a lot of highlights, especially from two of its three leads (Noonan didn’t make a great impression on me, I must admit) but it also struggled to tell much of a story, with Part Three in particular being a whole lot of wheel-spinning. Throw in Death sounding extremely un-Death-like and it wasn’t the big deal I hoped it would be, and I’m now more glad then ever we got the weird Omega blobs attacking UNIT HQ instead of zombies… which is a weird sentence to end these thoughts on, but there you go!
The final part sees the Second and Third Doctors, along with Jo, Jamie and the Brig, run down more cave tunnels and caverns, running into the Indian Goddess of Death Kali, who lets them past when Jo manages to convince her as a fellow female, and then a Gorgon, who won’t let them past at all so the Second Doctor sacrifices himself to let the rest escape. The Third Doctor and pals then arrive at a large open cavern filled with demons and ogres and the like and the Brig declares there’s no escape, which makes the Doctor realise what’s going on and tells everyone to not fear death but instead bravely stare it in the face. When they do this the three Doctors sudden arrive in Death’s void again and he congratulates them for having figured it out, that the whole thing was a lesson for the Time Lords to not get arrogant and think they’re above Death itself, the realm he governs just as they govern time.
The Doctor and Jo find themselves back at UNIT HQ, which is now standing undamaged, and soon The Second Doctor and Jamie and the First and The Brig arrive as well, with the latter delighted that all his men are alive again. Death appears one more time and says that to them the events they went through will never have happened but due to the effects of his dimension a similar event will now play out that he will have no control over and vanishes. The First and Second Doctors, plus Jamie, then leave followed by The Doctor, Jo and the Brig recreating the opening moments of the Three Doctors, showing that Death was indeed right and a similar incident was about to go down…
Hogan Reviews 