Poor Sergeant Benton. Eight years as a recurring character in Doctor Who, but always in the background, always the butt of his UNIT colleagues’ jokes. Until now that is, in this final regular series of The Companion Chronicles Benton finally gets to take centre stage in a tale of his own.

Rather appropriately for a second rate character like Benton, the perils he faces in Council of War are decidedly second rate themselves. The grandiose sounding council of the punning title is in fact nothing more than the humdrum town council of Kettering. After Mike Yates is unavailable to take the assignment, Benton is dispatched to investigate ghostly apparitions plaguing the council chambers and uncovers a bizarre alien incursion.

Full of bathos, the tone of Council of War is gently mocking, and never turns cruel or nasty. With its collision of the mundanity of local politics and absurd space opera the clear inspiration here is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, with a dash of Bedknobs and Broomsticks thrown into the conclusion.

The story is almost Doctorless, with he and the Brigadier putting in only cursory appearances, almost as if they don’t deign to be part of such a trivial adventure. This means the action is squarely focused on Benton and the guest narrator, Margery, which gives both characters a chance to shine. Benton gets to be the hero for once, showing off an intelligence that was rarely glimpsed onscreen and Margery is a great character, and a good foil for Benton. She’s a seventies feminist in the same vein as Sarah Jane Smith, but depicted without the slightly mocking tone which crept into the early scripts featuring Sarah. She’s excellently played by Sinead Keenan, who joins Hayley Attwell and Laura Doddington as two of the best young actresses working at Big Finish. Hopefully we’ll be hearing more from her in the company’s future output. Keenan has an excellent grasp of the light hearted tone of the play, handling the comedy and drama of it superbly. Unfortunately the same can’t be said of John Levene who seems to take the whole thing very seriously, which is a shame given the good comic scenes he often shared with the UNIT regulars back in Benton’s TV days.

The first episode builds a good sense of mystery around the events in Kettering and the early scenes conjure up the small town feel familiar from seventies comedies like The Good Life. The pace dips a little in the second episode, with the plot needing to be wrapped up, and the denouement, which hinges not on Benton or Margery but an outside force, is a little disappointing. Despite these niggles Council of War is a great deal of fun, and one of the better Companion Chronicles released so far this year.

Writers Simon Barnard and Paul Morris will be familiar to some from their previous work on The Scarifiers and Bernice Summerfield audios, and their first Doctor Who script marks them out as a pair to watch in future. I’m less sure about future adventures for Benton. With both the character and the actor seeming quite limited it would be wise to keep Council of War (good as it is) as a one off.

Brian Hayles’ novelisation of The Curse of Peladon was among the earliest Doctor Who adaptations published by Target, appearing on bookshelves in January 1975. Reprinted numerously in the 1970s, 80s and 90s it is one of the more memorable books in the range and it’s surprising that it’s taken AudioGo this long to adapt it.

The Curse of Peladon is one of the highlights of the Jon Pertwee era, seeing the Doctor and Jo taking a rare excursion to another world, and a world which is one of the best defined and realised that Doctor Who had given us up to that point. The story is full of incident and moves along at a fair pace, making the running time of over 5 hours less of an ordeal than some of AudioGo’s other releases. Unlike some of the other early Target novels, Hayles sticks closely to the TV version, making a few additions here and there but mainly sticking to his scripts. However Hayles clearly takes delight in fleshing out his creations, giving us a little more insight into the customs and politics of Peladon and taking the opportunity to make alien delegates Alpha Centauri and Arcturus rather more impressive than they were on screen. Here Alpha’s, octopoid nature is constantly stressed, depicted as a mass of constantly shifting, colour changing tentacles rather than the phallus with hoover attachments we saw on TV.

However, Hayles fails to transcribe much of what worked in the visuals of the TV version. The Curse of Peladon was an unusually lush production for the time and had a distinct visual style. The purple robes, unusual hair pieces and visual iconography of Aggedor which brought the original production to life are not described in the novelisation, with Peladon’s citadel and inhabitants depicted in sparse detail.

Hayles has a rather unusual take on Pertwee’s Doctor, often emphasising the arrogance and egotism of the character (perhaps suggesting a preference for his predecessor). It’s an intriguingly different take on the Doctor, and one of the highlights of novelisations written by authors other than the prolific Terrance Dicks is that they sometimes offer unusual interpretations of familiar characters.

While Hayles’ take on the Doctor is interesting he is less successful in his depiction of Jo. On TV Katy Manning had a tendency to play against lines, managing to show Jo’s intense affection for the Doctor at the same time as chastising him. Here, although her dialogue is the same as the TV version, the narration fails to capture the subtleties of Manning’s performance, meaning she comes across as a constant whinger, who doesn’t seem to like the Doctor or enjoy her adventures at all.

David Troughton, who played King Peladon in the original version, is (as usual) an excellent reader, performing all the alien delegates dialogue with gusto, closely replicating how they sounded on TV, and helped out by some skilful post-production to emphasise their alienness. The story is a sound designer’s dream, filled as it is with crashing thunder, echoing caverns and an assortment of strangely voiced creatures, and is coupled with a subtle yet effective score.

This is an excellently read and produced version of one of Target’s more iconic titles, and will appeal to fans of Pertwee and the early Target novels.

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

Marcus Sedgwick’s ebook entry in this series of short stories from Puffin Books is a fluidly written and gripping page-turner (or should that be page-advancer?). It captures the third Doctor’s era pretty well in many ways, almost finding time to fit in a spot of ‘capture, escape and capture’, as well as pitting the Doctor and Jo Grant against one of their textbook enemies. There’s even a cameo from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, though otherwise UNIT has relatively little to do. Sedgwick has fun creating story possibilities out of the Doctor’s Time Lord constitution, and The Spear of Destiny develops an interesting take on what having two hearts might mean for body temperature and its regulation.

The titular Spear (which pierced the body of Christ at his crucifixion, had links back to the Viking God Odin, and was supposedly possessed by Adolf Hitler) makes for a great MacGuffin, the story being set in motion by its appearance in 1970s London. Sedgwick cleverly integrates bits of real-world myth, rumour and mysticism into his tale, though it never feels too overloaded by research. The Doctor sets off on a mission to capture the Spear, suspecting it to be a “PTN” (or Physical Temporal Nexus), an acronymic entity that the Time Lords want contained so as to prevent its infallible power interfering with the time-lines.

Sedgwick’s plotting creates a few difficulties, however, because he has the Doctor deciding to pop back in time and fix the Spear problem before he and Jo first encounter it in London. This creates a potential paradox at the heart of proceedings: if the Doctor and Jo succeed in their mission to neutralise the dangerous Spear, then surely the spearhead they initially tangle with shouldn’t pose any problems in the first place, having already been dealt with. To be fair, Sedgwick is alert to this issue, inserting a get-out line. But one implication of this story structure is that the third Doctor seems more than a little slapdash in his approach to a supposedly lethal artefact. Another victim of the compressed word count is that we get no backstory for the PTNs, and these remain wholly without context or explanation. Perhaps another of these anniversary stories will revisit the matter, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Doctor’s fondness for Josephine Grant is testified to on a number of occasions, and their relationship is nicely represented here. There’s no doubting the special degree of care and concern that this Doctor feels for his companion, nor Jo’s pride in accompanying him on his travels.

The Spear of Destiny is eventually resolved thanks to a Doctor Who continuity detail. We don’t quite veer off into fanwank territory, but Sedgwick’s closing gambit still feels a little bit pat as a way of tying up loose ends, and the adventure arrives at a rather comfortable, predictable end point; its cast of characters pretty much left in their default positions.

For me, these Puffin short stories are getting better with every installment. The sharpest thing about The Spear of Destiny is the way that it begins with the everyday, or at least with the ordinary – the Doctor and Jo visiting a museum exhibit – before whirling away into time-travel to explore the historical roots of the museum piece they’ve been investigating. As an educational detour this may well tutor younger readers. But more than that, Sedgwick playfully gestures at the wonders and mysteries of cultural treasures surrounding us in the here and now, piquing readers’ interest in history through its present-day traces. Some might say that Doctor Who’s raison d’etre is to make the ordinary fantastical and terrifying (mannequins or dolls or maggots), but this short story makes the ordinary fascinating, deploying its spearhead from time as a way into the value of museums, history, and knowledge. Unlike today’s televised Who there are no strikingly memorable monsters on show (presumed to be “what children want”). Instead, travelling into history – from glass cases to real places – is attraction enough, and Sedgwick’s writing energetically brings that appeal to life.

This review is based on the CD release from AudioGo and may contain minor spoilers.

"This is the serious bit - listen. Trust me on this . . . "

We're three months into AudioGo's Destiny Of The Doctor, and what with the monthly (or "Doctorly") schedule that brings us to the era of Jon Pertwee with Vengeance Of The Stones. What's perhaps most compelling about this third instalment is that it takes place in between Seasons Seven (1970) and Eight (1971) of the classic era, with the Doctor yet to meet Jo Grant, and Mike Yates yet to join UNIT as a captain. The latter plot strand of Yates's enlistment is an element of the character's arc never dealt with on-screen, so naturally fans will get a kick out of discovering how the tale of this beloved UNIT character began.

What's more, Vengeance does perhaps the best job yet of channelling its respective era of Doctor Who. Richard Franklin's Third Doctor impression is smashing, replicating Pertwee's aristocratic swagger and alien authority with the same alarming realism as Frazer Hines possessed in his portrayal of Patrick Troughton's incarnation last month. Franklin is joined by Trevor Littledale, who brings to life the mysterious aliens unearthed at a site of ancient stone circles in the north of Scotland. The premise of the story echoes recent adventures such as The Pandorica Opens and The Sarah Jane Adventures' Enemy Of The Bane, although strangely enough for a range seemingly intending to bridge the 50 years and various eras of Who references to those stone-themed tales are curiously absent here.

Typically enough, the audio's narrative is pretty representative of what fans would have come to expect from Pertwee's early years in the role as the Time Lord. At this point in his timeline, the Doctor is still trapped on Earth, so his adventures have a grounded feel to them in that he's using the technology of the human planet and his own wits, rather than creating a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey solution as his eighth successor might currently do in these kinds of situations. Whether listeners will find that grounded sense of Earth-bound adventure works to the detriment of a purely science-fiction franchise in audio format will be a matter of personal preference, yet this reviewer has no doubt that Third Doctor fans will feel right at home.

Where there are perhaps more universal shortcomings with Vengeance, though, starts with the lack of ambition in its narrative. Whereas Hunters Of Earth and Shadow Of Death both did decent-to-great jobs of innovating on their respective eras of the show, Vengeance almost feels too much like a Pertwee tale, limited to much the same basic plot structure and chance-driven climax as we would see in many of the classic DVDs. Perhaps for some listeners who were there between 1970 and 1974, this will suit the bill perfectly, but even as someone who's tried to accustom themselves to the styles of each era of the show since joining the fanbase in 2005, this reviewer couldn't help but feel a lingering sense of boredom settling in during the latter half of this piece.

It doesn't help, either, that the Destiny story arc elements are at their absolute most basic and rudimentary here. Again, both of Vengeance's two predecessors at least featured references to the days that might come for the Eleventh Doctor in multiple scenes, yet here we have a third era-representative crossover with a future incarnation of the Time Lord that feels rather shoe-horned into proceedings. You'd have to hope that the various cameo appearances are going to lead to a substantial finale in November's The Time Machine, but particularly here it felt as if devoid of the extra scene at the beginning of the third act, Vengeance could have been just another rather average Big Finish classic Doctor release.

Ultimately, it's unlikely that those more significant detriments in this instalment are going to be of real hindrance to Pertwee fans here. Vengeance Of The Stones is still a fine addition to the Destiny Of The Doctor range, with Franklin's superb vocal work and the prominence of the era-representative storyline both doing wonders for the overall quality of the release. A word of caution and reassurance, then: those followers of the Destiny arc looking for concrete core developments will be left wanting, yet anyone who's been waiting for Vengeance to land and seal the 1970-1974 era of Who fully through Mike Yates's enlistment will at least find closure and excitement to be had throughout this fairly strong production.

The Mind of Evil. In colour. Yes, that which would have been unthinkable a few short years ago is now a reality – and a triumphant and vibrant one at that, with last Sunday's BFI Southbank première of the sterling, painstaking work done by those dedicated souls on the Doctor Who Restoration Team being the perfect place to celebrate their magnificent achievement.

The frisson among the audience in NFT1 was unmistakeable, the countdown to the start of this significant event almost unbearable – and we weren't let down in the slightest.

Celebrating Jon Pertwee's era as the Doctor, this was the third in the BFI's insanely popular Doctor Who At 50 season, and co-curators Dick Fiddy and Justin Johnson started it off nicely with Fiddy putting things succinctly in context, reminding us that the adventure hadn't actually been seen in colour anywhere in the world for 37 years or in the UK for 42 years. Indeed, no doubt many - if not most - of the audience who had watched it when it was first shown in the UK in 1971 would only have seen it in black-and-white, since colour TV sets were still a luxury back then, so this was a true treat.

Johnson then introduced Phil Ford, who spoke of Pertwee's background in naval intelligence, thereby putting the seal of authority on the actor's 007 persona as the Doctor.

With six episodes of this action-adventure to get through, the organisers wisely broke the screening down into two-episode chunks, and with anticipation now at fever-pitch the house lights were dimmed and that wonderfully evocative theme music boomed out, with Pertwee's reassuring, smiling face swirling into view and beaming at us in oh-so-glorious colour – just how it should be.

And what a joy it was to behold and luxuriate in – on a 50ft screen too – offering what was, for most people, a refreshingly new perspective on a much-loved adventure. The Mind of Evil. All six episodes in colour once again! Although the evidence was staring me in the face, I had to keep metaphorically pinching myself to be sure that what I was seeing was for real.

The importance of what has been achieved by the Restoration Team really can't be overstated. It has to be remembered that they had their hands tied by the fact that episode one had no hidden "chromadot" colour information to work on - hence that particular episode has been "colourised" - while all six episodes were on 16mm black-and-white film, so what they have achieved is nothing short of miraculous. Showing it on such a massive scale when the story was only made for a 26-inch screen tops did, of course, mean that any slight imperfections would be more than evident, so huge allowances have to be made for that fact. The story was made to be watched on small-screen TV and that's how it should be judged. Not that it was ever on trial, of course, but the verdict remains that it is a resounding triumph.

During his introduction, Ford had also teased the second series of Wizards vs Aliens - it seems viewers could be in for a surprise as regards who they've got writing for it - and following the first two dazzling episodes of The Mind of Evil it was time for some real wizards to be introduced and to take a well-earned bow, as Restoration Team members Peter Crocker, Stuart Humphryes, and Mark Ayres related how they had managed to achieve such a technological marvel. Truth be told, I couldn't understand much of what they said (my general technical inability undoubtedly to blame here, rather than their ability to explain) but I'm darned grateful that there are people out there with the capability, willingness, dedication, and perseverance necessary to put right what once went horribly wrong. Sirs, I salute you all!

A "comfort break" plus quiz with DVDs of Death To The Daleks and Series 7 Part One as prizes followed episodes 3 and 4, and as soon as the end credits had rolled on episode 6 (rapturous applause for all of them, needless to say), tables and chairs were swiftly placed on the stage for the panel interview session with guests director Timothy Combe, script editor Terrance Dicks, plus surviving "UNIT family" members Katy Manning, Richard Franklin, and John Levene.

All were in sparkling form, with the actors' rapport still strikingly evident more than 40 years on, and memories were fondly - and at times poignantly and touchingly - recalled as tributes were paid to Pertwee, Barry Letts, Roger Delgado, and Nicholas Courtney. The panel session should be available on the BFI's YouTube channel in due course, but highlights included Dicks recalling how Pertwee would get cast members to repeat the name "Harry Roy" (a dance band leader) as a voice exercise before recordings - until Combe came along, and "Harry Roy" was usurped by "Tim Combe" as the ideal vocal warm-up! The director, meanwhile, recalled how technical problems led to a reshoot of certain scenes, but only production personnel could be used as there was no money for actors, extras, or even walk-ons - he was killed three times and he also shot his PA!

From start to finish, this première was a real feather in the BFI's cap, so full marks to the organisation for pulling out all the stops to give the audience a truly magical experience.

And finally, if you've been one of those many, many people wanting a ticket to these BFI events but have been left maddened and frustrated by the "Sold out!" sign that you are invariably met with on the information and booking page, don't despair! Returns are not unknown - a few tickets to this event suddenly became available again the preceding Tuesday evening - and there is always the possibility of stand-bys on the day to mop up complimentary tickets that don't get claimed, so do keep persevering. As the Restoration Team have so superbly shown, determination and dedication can reap handsome rewards.

This review is based on the UK Region 2 DVD release.

Broadcast almost a year after this month's earlier release, The Ambassadors of Death, The Claws of Axos already represents how many view the Pertwee era, that of the cosy ensemble dealing with the invading "enemy of the week". But is this really a typical 'generic' story of the time or something a little more special?

There's plenty to fit what might one consider the "build a Pertwee story" template. The "UNIT Family" has come together at this point, with both Mike Yates and Jo Grant introduced this year to join the already established Brigadier and Benton; and of course their world nemesis (for this year at any rate) is also firmly recognised in the form of the The Master.

Another thing that is 'settled' by now is that the Doctor isn't about to sell his beloved humans down the river during the story. Even though it seems several times during the course of Axos that he is more interested in his own escape from Earth, ultimately of course we know this isn't the case and it isn't particularly convincing during the story, either. Perhaps the cosiness dispels any potential drama to be made from these scenes, but of course it is needed in the narrative to convince the Master and the Axons of his duplicity if not the audience.

Rather than recalling a plot that (most) readers are more than familiar with, I'll just focus on a couple of bits that stuck in my mind when watching the story again. First up there's the 'staple' pompous official who refuses to understand the seriousness of anything in the form of Chinn. I say 'staple', but I can only actually think of one other off the top of my head - Walker in The Sea Devils. In fact Chinn is really the unsung hero of the story in many respects, consistently doing the right thing for the wrong reasons - he wants to blow up the ship before it arrives on Earth, and then wants to keep Axonite for Britain when the Axons really want it spread globally. He'd see himself as the hero, at any rate! It's quite easy to imagine him as a regular liaison for the Brigadier, too - the two certainly seem familiar at the start of the story, even if the former isn't aware of the Doctor (oh, it's the return of the "Top Secret" documentation!), and as he says later, "the perpetual interference of the UNIT people", inferring other interaction. Thinking about it, it's a shame Peter Bathurst didn't reprise his role for The Sea Devils!

Roger Delgado lights up the plot whenever he appears, and I can see why the production team (and Pertwee?) got worried about his becoming a more popular character than the Doctor himself. He also gets the best line of the story with the counter-measures to nuclear explosions summarised in the form of "sticky tape on windows"!

Pigbin Josh - need I say more (grin)? For a character that could easily be dismissed as padding, Derek Ware manages to pull off a charm to the character which genuinely makes one feel sorry for his demise - it's a shame his full 'disintegration' was cut to avoid too much nastiness (but it is on the deleted scenes to watch).

The Axons are well-realised, in both their humanoid golden forms and their tentacular counterparts - though the 'crawling carpet' during the episode two cliffhanger needs to be overlooked ... the use of Axonite to entice their 'prey' to do the work of seeding the planet for them is also a good ploy, though the time limit for distribution feels too artificial, simply to push the plot along.

It's always good to see familiar effects in play, like 'melting' doors (the wonders of polystyrene) and bubbly organic fluids (foam ahoy!). I also like the physical explosive effects used for body strikes that was also a staple of this time, something the resident stunt-men performed in abundance in this story as Axon tendrils flay about.

However, there's one thing that is a crying shame, and that's a potential regular who sadly was not to be ... Corporal Bell is an unsung heroine both here and in the preceding The Mind of Evil, and it would have been nice to see her pop up many more times during the UNIT era - but at least she gets the immortal line about freak weather conditions over the south-east!

As an aside, one thing niggling me for years was the way in which the Doctor insists that the Master has left Earth; he's very adamant about it here, whereas in the proceeding Colony in Space the initial exchange between him and the Brigadier is much lighter - it almost feels as if Colony should have been broadcast first, continuity-wise (the way in which Jo reacts to the TARDIS also infers this). I asked Terrance Dicks about this, but he wasn't able to recall whether there had been any intention to do this (as became quite common in later seasons) or if it had simply been a scripting issue he had overlooked during production. In any case, they are still in the 'traditional' order on my shelf!


In conclusion, I might have said more in support of the 'generic' nature of the story rather than being something special, but in fact I think it is one of the story's/series's greatest strengths and makes it all something special. There's really nothing wrong with having a 'familiarity' that the audience can identify with and almost take for granted, thus being able to pay more attention to the 'new' plot devices of the story - and that is hardly unique to Pertwee stories but a concept running throughout the show's lifetime over forty-nine years.

The DVD

One of the selling points of this new special edition is the way in which the story has been remastered and image quality improved since the story's original release in 2005. Episode three was presented on the big screen at the Recon event in September, but I didn't think the improvements were very evident when blown up to cinematic size. Watching in a normal television environment does reveal a crisper, deeper image to before, however, and the improvement in quality is clearly evident.

With the release of a special edition the main interest is going to be in what has been added since the original release. No new commentary here, but there is a fresh set of production notes by Martin Wiggins to accompany the episodes, wherein the usual factoids encompass items such as the seemingly rife acts of theft in studios rearing its head again during episode one, how wall throbbers almost led to industrial action, the 'death' of The Vampire from Space, THE VERY WONDERFUL MICHAEL FERGUSON, and also highlighting the first use of framing CSO to being scale to a scene (perhaps best realised for the sandminer control deck in The Robots of Death!).

The second DVD presents us with the new documentary, Axon Stations!, which delves into the making of the story. As one might expect there is quite a bit of detail, including how the story might have featured giant skulls and giant carrots, and on how we narrowly missed out on Pigbin Josh - The Series! The only minor irritation I had with the feature was a 'squelching' sound as captions came up, but fortunately it wasn't that often.

The other major addition is a feature in which DVD presenter Toby Hadoke gets to spend a weekend with the larger-than-life John Levene. Though at times it looked like Toby was a trapped rabbit in need of an escape route, it is actually an entertaining romp (Levene seeming to take on some of Tom Baker's more eccentric moments in interviews), with reflections from the actor's friends and even his mother - though town-folk seemed a bit bewildered by the star in their midst! But does John make a good cooked breakfast - watch and decide for yourselves ...

Disc 1 has the previous edition's out-takes and deleted scenes, and on disc two this is expanded from the original 26m58s to a whopping 1h12m48s! Unlike the former, this doesn't have accompanying production notes so you'd have to have watched the shorter one first to understand the context of some of the re-takes, etc.

Former release material includes the Now and Then featurette (which though having been made several years ago still reflects the locations which have changed little since that or indeed the story itself was recorded!), and the Michael Feguson interview 'Directing Doctor Who' (I'd forgotten he'd pushed for the rehearse-record approach to production that is so often associated with the modern series).

Sadly, however, the feature on Reverse Standards Conversion has been dropped, which is understandable considering the technique has been superceded for the special edition, but means that you'd still need to retain the original release for that - and of course means that the mention of the aptly-named Peter Axon was also lost! (Update: it's still there, but as an Easter Egg now!)

Next Time

It's back to a time of BBC strife and the story that became a legacy as the incomplete Shada becomes the Fourth Doctor's penultimate non-SE DVD release ... The Legacy Box is due out on 7th January next year.