Chris Baer

Doctor Who Project: Paradise Towers

June 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

Build high for happiness.

As befits a science fiction show, Doctor Who adorns its plots with scientific trappings, drawing on physics and chemistry and applied mathematics, both fanciful and real, to propel and occasionally deepen the stories on offer. Seldom, though, does the series invoke social science, making Stephen Wyatt’s “Paradise Towers” (Story Production Code 7E) something of a rarity, presenting not some technological conundrum in its exploration of a decrepit mega-structure but an anthropological mystery. The question of how a gleaming residential resort turns into a dystopian shambles in the space of ten or so years drives the entire story forwards, and Wyatt devotes extensive screen time to the various sub-cultures that have developed amidst the detritus, much as another writer might lard expository scenes with technobabble about quantum flux reversals or temporal continuity generators.

Dystopian settings feature frequently enough on Doctor Who, the most recent examples being “Vengeance on Varos,” “Timelash,” and “The Mysterious Planet,” but typically such stories emphasize stopping a clearly defined antagonist, the warped culture inevitably a side effect of this malign influence. While “Paradise Towers” ultimately presents a Big Bad for the Doctor to defeat, the real plot complications stem from the behavior patterns of the inhabitants of this structure, the true villain only being revealed towards the end. When the Seventh Doctor and Mel arrive at the eponymous holiday destination, its amenities described in an infomercial on the TARDIS screens, they find not sun-dappled lounge chairs or luxurious mud baths but a decayed ruin. The Doctor’s curiosity peaks, and he begins to dig about the rubble and rubbish, only to have his archaeological meanderings interrupted by the Red Kangs, a group of crimson-clad young women armed with crossbows who, they quickly inform him, are “the best.”

In Doctor Who‘s early years, the Doctor quite often finds himself confronted with alien species which, although possessing that universal ability to speak English (later handwaved away as a function of being a Time Lord or the intervention of the TARDIS), behave in distinctly non-human ways, as in “The Sensorites” or “The Web Planet” especially. Here, on an unnamed planet, ostensibly populated by Earth-descended humans, the Seventh Doctor must channel those long-past experiences, and he shows a handy facility with understanding and mirroring the ritualistic behavior of the Red Kangs, winning their good graces—until they tire of the games and tie up him and Mel. Empathy only goes so far, it seems, and the plot is ticking.

Wyatt and director Nicholas Mallett intercut the Doctor’s encounter with the Kangs via scenes of a Yellow Kang (Astra Sheridan) killed offscreen by a mysterious assailant and then a cravenly Caretaker (Joseph Young) hesitantly making his way through the dark, graffiti-festooned corridors. He discovers the bloody remains of the Yellow Kang, then encounters her killer, a Robot Cleaner, with a similar outcome. The Chief Caretaker (Richard Briers) comments, after his young charge’s death, that he will make a “nice little snack” for yet another offscreen figure, represented by flashing lights in the basement. The fairly rapid accumulation of questions in this story could easily become tedious, and typically does on Doctor Who when a writer becomes enamored of his or her own cleverness, but Wyatt manages to keep things moving, with the Doctor’s probing interrogation of the Kangs—who are all named after common objects, like Fire Escape (Julie Brennon) and Bin Liner (Annabel Yuresha)—slowly doling out answers.

The Kangs—divided into Red, Yellow, and Blue groups—rule the corridors but are frequently chased by the Caretakers, an all-male force of pseudo-police under the Chief Caretaker’s command. Both groups fear the Cleaners, which take their remit somewhat literally, treating humans as refuse to gather up. And if that weren’t enough, after Mel and the Doctor are separated when the Caretakers raid the Red Kangs, our plucky companion meets yet another group inhabiting Paradise Towers: the Rezzies, or residents, in the form of two older women, Tilda (Brenda Bruce) and Tabby (Elizabeth Spriggs), who offer her tea and cakes. The better to fatten you up, my dear…

Doctor Who Project: Time and the Rani

June 2, 2025May 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

Where am I? Who am I? And who are you?

As Season Twenty-Four of Doctor Who kicks off, we might as well be watching a different show entirely. Only nine months separate the end of the season-long story “The Trial of a Time Lord” in late 1986 and Pip and Jane Baker’s “Time and the Rani” (Story Production Code 7D) in September of 1987, but from the vastly revised, computer generated opening sequence, replete with new, synth-heavy arrangement of the classic Grainer theme and flashy fresh logo for the show, through to the brand new title actor, Sylvester McCoy, revealed in the fastest regeneration sequence on record, producer John Nathan-Turner finally seems to bring about his long-desired goal for the series: change.

At its heart, of course, the basics stay the same. “Time and the Rani” functions as a “normal” story, with the Rani (Kate O’Mara) making a welcome return as the amoral Time Lord neuro-scientist devoted to her experiments above all else, in this case an attempt to control all of time and space by creating a planet-sized brain, as one does. The Doctor finds himself, as ever, in the heart of the dastardly scheme, one that he must put to rights. But everything in the story feels snappier, from the editing to the musical cues to McCoy’s frenetic pace about the stage. The Bakers’ dialogue likewise zings; they are, by this point, already notorious in the fandom for their unwieldy verbosity, but the sheer speed of the back-and-forths, particularly between McCoy and O’Mara, adds to the velocity, even as the words themselves feel slightly beside the point.

Indeed, the plot, such as it is, proves mostly superfluous to the spectacle. Not ten minutes pass before director Andrew Morgan delivers several fast-cut, elaborate effects sequences, shot in a quarry as befits Doctor Who, involving explosions and floating bubbles that trap unwary prey before detonating. The daring combination of practical and computer-generated effects works surprisingly well given the relatively crude technology—to modern eyes—being used. The overall experience feels new to the viewer, even as companion Mel (Bonnie Langford) and the familiar trappings of the TARDIS help ground this new incarnation in Doctor Who‘s long apostolic succession.

The Rani draws the TARDIS off course to the planet of Lakertya; the resulting crash causes the Doctor’s regeneration, shot quickly without the assistance of Sixth Doctor Colin Baker. The Seventh Doctor’s introduction leans heavily into the notion of the regeneration crisis, but rather than the unpleasant descent into madness suffered by the Sixth Doctor or the inexplicable sidelining of Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor caused by his mental collapse (both stories overseen by Nathan-Turner), McCoy’s Doctor finds his uncertainty, his disorientation, leveraged as part of the Rani’s plan, a seamless and effective transition into this new take on the character. In order to trick the Doctor into helping her experiments, she dresses as Mel, down to the frizzy red hair and shoulder pads that would put a gridiron linebacker to shame. The Doctor’s post-regeneration fuzziness, amplified by the Rani’s amnesia drugs, sees him figuring out his new identity against an antagonistic foil, so that when he snaps at her, it feels appropriate. She is a villain, after all.

The script even makes time for a light-hearted costume selection sequence, with the Seventh Doctor cycling through Napoleon’s uniform and a professor’s cap-and-gown before donning the Fifth, Fourth, Third, and Second Doctors’ ensembles, finally landing on a quite fetching beige jacket, suspenders, and hat combination. All the while, the Rani tries to manipulate the Doctor via her disguise, but the overall tone of proceedings remains light, almost breezy, in pace as well as effect—despite one side character (Karen Clegg’s Sarn) already being incinerated, her pseudo-reptilian Lakertyan skeleton lovingly lingered over by Morgan’s camerawork. As yet, there’s none of the pathos that so pervades both the Fifth and Sixth Doctor’s runs. Shades of the Sixth Doctor strangling Peri, though, the Seventh Doctor does engage in a physical altercation with his (real) companion…

Doctor Who Project: Colin Baker Retrospective

April 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

There’s a tendency to dismiss Colin Baker as the “other” Baker to have been the Doctor, the one without the scarf, the one in a clown’s outfit. Such simplistic assessments shortchange the real talents that Colin Baker brings to Doctor Who with his portrayal of the Sixth Doctor, while also reflecting the ways in which his character suffers from decisions made by producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward, the production team responsible for all but two of Baker’s episodes.

From the very beginning of his run, when the Sixth Doctor pops up in the Fifth Doctor’s clothes at the end of “The Caves of Androzani,” Nathan-Turner and Saward indicate their intentions for this new regeneration:

Sixth Doctor: Change, my dear. And it seems not a moment too soon.

Spoken directly to the camera, and by extension to the audience, the Sixth Doctor’s assertion takes the tone of a challenge, signaling a shake-up of the series as a whole. Viewers do not wait long to see the first fruits of this new direction, with Colin Baker’s debut story, “The Twin Dilemma,” airing six days after Peter Davison’s departure as the final installment of Season Twenty-One. It is not, to be charitable, a promising start.

Between a garish new costume that, as the lore goes, was designed as an in-jest, over-the-top response to Nathan-Turner’s desire for an ensemble utterly devoid of taste or style, and a “regeneration crisis” sending the Sixth Doctor through a gamut of emotions, from utter cowardice and extreme self-pity to overweening vanity and repugnant violence, Anthony Steven’s “The Twin Dilemma” predisposes the audience to reject this change in Doctors, a response that has the unfortunate side effect of spilling over onto Baker himself. Even had viewers been willing to forgive, or at least countenance, the Doctor trying to strangle Peri, as the result of a very difficult regeneration, Nathan-Turner and Saward double down at the end, undoing any goodwill the Doctor might have mustered during the story:

Sixth Doctor: Whatever else happens, I am the Doctor. Whether you like it or not.

Whence this confrontational attitude? Whence, indeed, this insistence on forcing change, as though trying to wrest control? Nathan-Turner has been at the helm of Doctor Who since 1980, some three and a half years before the Sixth Doctor’s pointed retort to the audience. He directly shapes not just the entirety of the Fifth Doctor’s character arc but also the conclusion of the Fourth Doctor’s time on the series. Whatever Doctor Who has become by 1984 and Colin Baker’s arrival, it’s Nathan-Turner’s handiwork, no one else’s.

By the time the Sixth Doctor returns for his first full season, Season Twenty-Two, almost a year later, there’s reason to be worried that the response to the Doctor’s defiance might be that the audience does not “like it,” reflected in part by the decision to headline the season with the ever-reliable bio-mechanical menaces in Paula Moore’s “Attack of the Cybermen,” the Mondasians being overdue for an encore, having been last seen in Season Nineteen’s “Earthshock.” To counterbalance the unfamiliar new Doctor, then, particularly this prickly version of Gallifrey’s favorite son, the production team leans heavily on more comfortable call-backs to the series’ history. Nathan-Turner and Saward pull out all the stops for this season, with the Daleks and Davros, the Master, and the Sontarans alongside the Second Doctor and Jamie, all making appearances. Far from seeking radical change, it’s old home week on the TARDIS in 1985.

Tensions between the series and the BBC—to whom, at least in part, the Sixth Doctor’s aggressive statement of intentions seems directed—cannot be overstated. Frequently under fire for the increase in violence in the series, to say nothing of its budgets, however slim relative to what they attempted to put on screen, Doctor Who in 1985 is no longer the darling source of Dalek-mania at the BBC. Undercutting any attempt at developing audience interest in the new Doctor and all the old friends and foes returning with him, Michael Grade and the BBC put the series on “hiatus,” a decision announced while Patrick Troughton makes a bravura return in “The Two Doctors.” Hello, goodbye…

Fabulous Fighting Finns: Mannerheim Cross (BFP) Released

April 6, 2025March 13, 2025 by Chris Baer

Finland charted a tumultuous path from 1939 through 1945, fighting against the Soviet Union and then Germany as they found themselves wedged between those geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. Mannerheim Cross, the latest Advanced Squad Leader-compatible module from Bounding Fire Productions, traces that journey through forty-four scenarios, complemented by new counters, rules, and maps for everyone’s favorite tactical combat game system.

Weighing in at nearly four pounds, this hefty unboxed product stands out for both the quality of production and the eye-watering price tag, nearly US$200 retail. It’s not pocket change, and while the pre-order price dropped that to a more manageable $150, it’s still a significant outlay. BFP is, by any measure, a boutique publisher, with commensurately smaller print runs, so their per-unit cost is understandably high, but when compared with some recent official ASL products from Multi-Man Publishing, the cost-per-pound, if you will, compares favorably. This isn’t a cheap hobby, and Mannerheim Cross doesn’t need to find a home on every ASL’ers shelf, given its advanced and esoteric nature. But just on the basis of what you get in the package—four countersheets, six map sections on Starter Kit-style thick cardstock, forty-four scenarios (BFP-150 to BFP-193), several rules pages and player aids detailing lots of lovely chrome and new vehicle/gun notes, and an accompanying booklet—you’re getting your money’s worth if you’re in that target demographic that loves ASL, obscure rules, and lesser-simulated conflicts.

It’s the quality of the poundage, though, that sets BFP products apart—you’re not paying for just paper, after all, but for the mental effort behind the scenarios and rules as well, and on first glance, the included actions in Mannerheim Cross feature something for all interests—well, except Pacific and Desert Theater enthusiasts—covering as it does the full span of Finland’s involvement in World War II. Printed in color on a somewhat floppy, glossy stock across twenty-three cards (several scenarios take up more than one page), these actions stretch from the Winter War in 1939 against the Soviets; into the Continuation War, fighting alongside the Germans while confronting the Soviets as a sideshow to World War II; and finishing with a single scenario set during the Lapland War as Finland tries to evict the Germans from their territory. The scenarios tend, as one might expect from BFP, towards the weighty; most stretch seven to eight turns, and even the shorter actions feature significant counter mixes on both sides. There are a few cards here that might be considered tournament or club-day choices, but don’t buy this expecting a lot of quick scenarios.

The Winter War scenarios look the pick of the bunch, featuring lots of tin-can Soviet tanks trundling through ground snow in built-up forested areas. BFP-161 Red Ice draws the eye, with Soviet flame tanks crossing a frozen river into the teeth of a Finnish defense amidst dense trees and with ski troop reinforcements. Indeed, the Chapter E winter rules get a solid workout here. BFP-174 The Castle of Onega lets the Finns roll out their own flame tanks, attacking a substantial Soviet defense in a sprawling urban setting.

I’d have liked to see more scenarios set during the Lapland War and the halting effort to push the Germans out as part of an armistice with the Soviets at the end of the war. There are very few conflict simulations of any stripe dealing with that facet of the war, but the scenario we do have, BFP-193 Lapland Armor, promises to be an intriguing encounter, with the Germans driving captured French Somouas against Finnish defenders manning Soviet T-26s, a BYO-AFV affair if ever there were one…

Doctor Who Project: The Ultimate Foe

May 2, 2025March 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

Oh, no! Now I really am finished.

It all comes down to this. After twelve episodes, spanning nearly three full months, “The Trial of a Time Lord” finally concludes with “The Ultimate Foe” (Story Production Code 7C Part 2), written by Robert Holmes (episode thirteen) and Pip and Jane Baker (episode fourteen). The prior three sub-stories establishing why the Sixth Doctor is on trial—Holmes’ “The Mysterious Planet,” Philip Martin’s “Mindwarp,” and the Bakers’ “Terror of the Vervoids“—tax the audience’s patience, teasing at a conspiracy regarding the Matrix, that impregnable repository of all Time Lord knowledge, while hiding any real evidence to support the claim, like some poorly scripted mystery novel written by many hands. Taken on their own, the prior installments of “The Trial of a Time Lord” work well enough as Doctor Who stories, but viewers inevitably feel shortchanged by their incomplete nature. They are missing something vital, a feeling of helplessness mirrored by the Doctor’s own predicament as “The Ultimate Foe” begins, with the Inquisitor (Lynda Bellingham) about to pass judgement on our hero, much to the delight of the prosecuting Valeyard (Michael Jayston).

With the Keeper of the Matrix (James Bree) testifying that the Matrix can only be accessed with the Key of Rassilon, which he wears on his person at all times, eye witnesses are the only proof the Inquisitor will entertain regarding evidence tampering. At a trial being held “out of time,” on a space station in the middle of nowhere, how could the Doctor possibly muster such assistance? No minor shock, then, when Sabalom Glitz (Tony Selby), last seen in “The Mysterious Planet,” and new companion Mel (Bonnie Langford) suddenly appear in the courtroom, an answer to the Doctor’s greatest need. Whence this miraculous gift? Further shock still, with the Doctor’s benefactor revealed as his long-time adversary: The Master (Anthony Ainley).

Scarcely four minutes pass in the first episode of “The Ultimate Foe” before the Master’s intervention, a scene with greater impact than any in the three hundred fifty odd minutes of the dozen prior episodes. For those viewers who slog through the story to this point, the Master’s unforeshadowed appearance, commandeering the screen in the trial room, proves ample payoff, a moment of glee at the unexpected twist, to say nothing of the welcome return of a familiar fiend. Yet one wonders why producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward withhold this revelation for so long, when even a brief aside or two inserted into the sub-stories, hinting at his involvement, might amplify the anticipation. And on reflection, the Master appearing from on high—from inside the Matrix, as it transpires, much to the Keeper’s chagrin—feels like an unearned deus ex machina, dropped in to solve an insuperable plot conundrum caused by multiple writers contributing to the same story.

Aided by Glitz’s testimony, which fills in the “censored” gaps about the Matrix being surreptitiously accessed from “The Mysterious Planet,” the Doctor discovers that the Time Lords moved Earth “billions of miles across space,” resulting in its devastation, to hide the knowledge that had been purloined from the Matrix by the Andromedans. This implication of the High Council in a conspiracy and cover-up, resulting in mass death and the destruction of Earth’s “ancient culture,” finally reveals what the entirety of “The Trial of a Time Lord” has been about, with the Doctor set up as a scapegoat to hide the Gallifreyan leadership’s complicity in genocide. Well, almost what it’s all about.

The real revelation, the whole point of this fourteen episode-long, season-spanning story, comes as an adjunct to the High Council’s perfidy. Almost in passing, the Master reveals the Valeyard’s role in the trial:

The Master: They made a deal with the Valeyard, or as I’ve always known him, the Doctor, to adjust the evidence, in return for which he was promised the remainder of the Doctor’s regenerations.

The Doctor’s ultimate foe, then, is the Doctor himself…

Doctor Who Project: Terror of the Vervoids

March 2, 2025February 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

Is it going to be the Doctor’s defence that he improves?

Doctor Who seldom actually toys with temporality itself, treating time, broadly, as a setting rather than a concept or plot device to be explored. But by taking the Sixth Doctor “out of time” in order to conduct “The Trial of a Time Lord”—the fourteen episode story that makes up the entirety of Season Twenty-three—producer John Nathan-Turner creates an interesting, if ultimately risky, pivot for the series. Having been confronted with his supposed misdeeds in “The Mysterious Planet” and “Mindwarp,” the first two four-episode sub-stories in “The Trial of a Time Lord,” the Doctor draws, for his defense, on an event from his future instead of his past, in the form of Pip and Jane Baker’s “Terror of the Vervoids” (Story Production Code 7C Part 1), episodes nine through twelve of the season-long story.

This decision to present a story that happens in the Doctor’s own future serves two functions. Primarily, given the trial framing device that drives “The Trial of a Time Lord,” there’s no easy way, during a secret Gallifreyan trial conducted outside of time, to introduce a brand new companion to take Nicola Bryant’s place, with Peri having (seemingly) perished at the end of “Mindwarp“—the idea of a companion-less Doctor apparently beyond countenance for even a single episode. Thus, our first encounter with the future Sixth Doctor is of a winded Time Lord huffing and puffing on an exercise bike as Mel (Bonnie Langford) encourages him, part of an ongoing exercise regime. The easy banter and non-verbal interplay between Langford and Colin Baker suggests to viewers that Mel and the Doctor have had an extended series of adventures already.

More importantly for the overall story of “The Trial of a Time Lord,” this future-looking helps shatter the long-standing conceit of “Gallifreyan Standard Time,” that sense that although Time Lords can flit between past and future at will, there’s a consistent “present” time in which Time Lord history takes place, a continuum off limits to meddling via time travel. Up to now, the Doctor’s past has been linear and inviolable—the several meetings of the Doctor’s various regenerations notwithstanding. Otherwise, why not just pop back, for instance, and stop the death of the Lord President in “The Deadly Assassin,” once the Doctor uncovers the true murderer? Or whisk Adric off the doomed cargo ship before it plunges into Earth? Narratively speaking, the ability to simply undo anything that happens drains all the meaning from the stories on offer, which is why prior producers and writers have taken pains to prevent time travellers from revisiting their own timelines (qv. the Blinovich Limitation Effect). It’s a dangerous genie to let out of the bottle, prone to cheapening the Doctor’s efforts and sacrifices. But by this point, Doctor Who already having been placed on hiatus by the BBC once, Nathan-Turner seems willing to try just about anything.

So, suddenly, the Sixth Doctor finds himself plucked out of the time stream, but he somehow also continues on as though the trial has not yet taken place—otherwise, the events of “Terror of the Vervoids” could never have occurred, had he sequentially gone directly from the end of “Mindwarp” to the trial itself. Because they are recorded in the Matrix, the repository of all Gallifreyan knowledge and experience, pulled straight from the minds of Time Lords themselves, those events, and all the other unseen exploits of the Sixth Doctor and Mel, did/do/will happen; otherwise, they would not be there for the Doctor and the Valeyard (Michael Jayston) to call upon as evidence. He’s there and not there, Schrödinger’s Sixth Doctor.

When, exactly, does “The Trial of a Time Lord” take place? Simply put, out of time; that’s Nathan-Turner’s story, and he’s sticking to it. (Of note, long-serving Eric Saward departs as script editor after episode eight, resuming the duties for episode thirteen only—which was produced before “Terror of the Vervoids”—due to issues with the scripting of the final two episodes of the season, per Paul Kirkley’s irreverent history of Doctor Who, Space Helmet for a Cow. It’s all very confusing, much like “The Trial of a Time Lord” itself.)

By removing the Doctor from his own timeline, heretofore unthinkable temporal shenanigans become possible, and while they do not play much of a role in “Terror of the Vervoids”—which, more than the prior two sub-stories, finally begins to add substance to the trial framing device—the mere fact of the Doctor’s future being already written enables the main pay-off of “The Trial of a Time Lord” in the final two episodes. We still have Pip and Jane Baker’s four episodes to get through first, though.

What does happen in “Terror of the Vervoids,” then? Oh, just Murder on the Orient Express, in space, with violent plant creatures…