The Fourth Doctor Adventures Series Nine Volume Two

 

The Planet of Witches by Alan Barnes

"There's A World Without, and A World Within! Which World are We Living In?"  These melodramatic and ultimately completely irrelevant words open up The Planet of Witches, which I'm say is really a damp squib in an ultimately excellent range at the moment. The Planet of Witches has very few appealing elements - it is the third story in a row to have a death fake-out, and barely puts any effort into doing so, it wants desperately to tie up the whole E-Space thing and is incredibly annoyed with the fact that it can't because Warrior's Gate already did that, so it kind of sulks a bit, it's characters are stiffer than the literal wood some of them are made of, and it is ultimately disinterested in it's own central concept. The Planet of Witches should be a spooky tale - you assume so by the title, and that the Doctor will be going up against something rather mysterious and strange, and yet the Planet of Witches is exceedingly urbane for a Doctor Who story. The "Witches' Familiar's" are robots, "Wands" are guns, and "Witches" are scientists or other smart people. Very early on, it makes quite clear that it thinks it's own ideas are rather shit, and it also contains a Mad Old Woman literally named Crone who jumps up and down, speaks in riddles and is the one vestige of anything remotely resembling anything gothic - except she has nothing to do with that, and is just annoying. And then later becomes a Space Dictator called Madame Smite. You cannot do both, Alan Barnes. Insane lady who lives in a hut or Space Dictator. Pick one. Both functions cannot be inexplicably served by the same character without satisfying explanation. For a story that lets you think it's going to be atmospheric and gothic, it's just really run of the mill sci-fi. For the most part, the first half is tediously dull, and it doesn't actually really start getting good until the last (which at that point, the story is so completely done with the concept of Witches, that it just moves on to Madame Smite's spaceship and her plan to blow shit up) and at that point, it has a scale of grandiose-ness that almost makes up for it's prior failure, and it earns itself a few points. But that's mostly because it held my attention... 7/10

The Quest of The Engineer by Andrew Smith

The Quest of The Engineer I actually completely zoned out on. It's got some really actual stellar ideas, as befitting being written by someone who wrote for the E-Space trilogy to begin with back in season 18. It has dignified performances and good ideas, an excellent foundation - but as it goes on, it does start to feel like certain Classic Who-isms are being inserted to pad out the run-time. The initial concept of a "Jig-saw Planet" actually fills Part One rather well, and it's really nice. And rather than having the offscreen threat of having a planet being blown up being just part of the wallpaper of stakes, we open getting to know this planet's inhabitants. Which is smart, because we get to see them in a way that matters. Then we get to know the Engineer, who is very smug and mysterious, and he does definitely make you think there will be a twist about him being a Time Lord or something later on, but spoilers, there is nothing of the sort. We sort of awkwardly explore the Jigsaw planet - and then the plot gets completely away from itself, getting really bogged down in running about and running away from the evil robots, and reprogramming the evil robots, and then the Engineer making the reprogrammed robots evil again (oh no how will the Doctor get out of this) and it's all, for a story with so much promise, so very, very, ordinary. The story continues to throw charming little beads at you from time to time (I especially like some of the morbid ways the Engineer runs a Planet Ship - making robots out of the corpses, using people as fuel, it's all very macabre and understated.) Especially brilliant is the emotional Mother coming to grips with her son having been brainwashed by the Engineer. I couldn't help but with this was truly HER story, as the short material she's given borders on the engrossing. But these are short blips in an ordinary radar, and all in all, The Quest of The Engineer is an innovative story that really does not innovate. I think I was actually paying attention to maybe fifteen minutes of the second hour. I don't know how to grade something like this: 7/10