Hogan Reviews

The Third Doctor Adventures press on with a rather odd story that tries to blend classic pulpy sci-fi with World War II drama and ends up weakening both tried-and-true Who staples. That’s not to say “Operation: Vengeance” isn’t without merit, it has some great scenes with the Brigadier and The Doctor, but at six parts there is more dull than interesting… Let’s take a look!

We kick off with The Doctor (Tim Treloar) and Sarah Jane Smith (Sadie Miller) arriving on the planet Konzomia, a planet The Doctor and Jo had visited in the past. We hear through flashbacks (complete with Katy Manning reprising her role as Jo) that together they faced a man called Raelchun (Gareth Armstrong) who is part of the perfect race of Konzomia, so perfect that they can’t actually harm other living beings thanks to their creator, and despite Raelchun creating robots to get around this issue Jo stalls him by stepping out in front of his creations assuming he couldn’t program them to hurt living beings any more than he could harm them himself, and she’s proven right, much to his chagrin. The Doctor then soon defeats Raelchun for good, as far as he knew at the time, and chastises Jo for taking the risk. You won’t be surprised to hear though that The Doctor and Sarah soon meet with Empress Arahea (Hannah Blaikie) and her sister Zarrum (Bronte Alice-Tadman) and find out that thanks to a traitor in their ranks Raelchun is back, and on a nearby planet The Doctor encounters him and finds out that the villain is heading for Earth circa World War II to kill Terry Grant (Max Bowden), Jo’s father, and therefore erase Jo Grant from history.

The Doctor and Sarah head back to present day Earth and our titular Time Lord prepares to head to WWII to save Jo…’s dad, and of course Sarah insists on going as well. They ask The Brigadier (Jon Culshaw) if he’d like to help but he’s initially hesitant, not just because his own father is out fighting during that time but he has his own war-based PTSD he’d rather not revisit. That being said, hearing The Doctor’s more casual idea of what to do when he arrives leads The Brig to relent and head into the TARDIS with our duo and head to the all-too-familiar time period of World War II, complete with Terry Grant and other soldiers going full-on with stereotypical “good old soldiers” banter and a few quick of-the-time phrases to make sure we know what time period it is. The rest of the story is a bit of a muddle of Raelchun teaming up with OTT Nazis, revealing his plan isn’t to kill Jo’s ancestor but instead get a hold of an all-powerful McGuffin that will finally allow him to kill people and Terry seeing some of his friends get killed and wanting to continue the fight and therefore resisting The Doctor’s attempts to get him off the front lines.

If nothing else it’s an eye-catching cover, especially The Doctor in WWII gear… Funny to think Pertwee actually served in the military during WWII so if he were alive to do this story he’d be reliving a war he was apart of!

That being said there are some great scenes with the Brigadier during all of this. He sees some unarmed soldiers get brutally gunned down by the SS and wants to help even if it could screw up history, he sticks up for the Airforce because his father is one of the people in the skies above and most importantly he faces his PTSD head-on, revealing that during his time in service during Korean War he was captured and tortured by a man called Peng and how he killed him in cold blood to escape and survive. It brought out a lot in the character and it made him and The Doctor feel closer than ever, despite this being near the end of the Third Doctor’s run.

So overall there are some definite highlights, its just all the stuff on Konozmia is a bit dull and Raelchun isn’t much of a layered villain and is instead just a moustache-twirling one with little depth (which I normally don’t mind, but he was kind of a more boring version of one of those, rather than an over-the-top scenery chewing ones that I like!)

The Continuity:

Not much, despite the flashbacks and all that this isn’t a sequel to an existing story or anything, and I’m sure as hell not going to list out all the times The Doctor has visited World War II, I’d be here all week. It’s got to be the most over-used period setting in the show, only just followed by Victorian London!

Overall Thoughts:

“Operation: Vengeance” had some good points, especially examining The Brig and his relationship with The Doctor, but it also was a combination of dull and predictable alien court politics and dull and predictable World War II setting with a rather dull and predictable villain at the centre of everything. At no point would I call the story bad, but it very rarely got above average…

The Doctor, Sarah, The Brigadier and Terry (plus a French resistance woman I can’t remember the name of) manage to approach Raelchun’s special TARDIS-like bigger-on-the-inside Tank and through some clever use of supplies and makeshift equipment destroy it, and kill off Raelchun while they’re at it. Back on Konzomia they seemingly find out who the traitor is and Zarrum convinces her sister the Empress to lift the ban on the machine that has one of the only ways to kill their kind in it and destroy the traitor, but to the surprise of NOBODY the woman who has been goading Arahea this whole time, Zarrum herself, turns out to be the traitor and is punished instead.

We then get a nice little scene where an older Jo approaches The Doctor on a bench and says that looking back on all the details of her father’s miraculous escape from Dunkirk and the people her father described helping him she knows The Doctor helped him and so thanks her best friend from the bottom of her heart.