Chris Baer – Movement Point

Doctor Who Project: Battlefield

February 2, 2026 by Chris Baer

You know, I think I’m rather enjoying this.

Having already shown a deft hand at nostalgia in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” Ben Aaronovitch opens Doctor Who‘s final season with “Battlefield” (Story Production Code 7N), returning a beloved ally rather than a shopworn foe to the series: the Brigadier. Two of them, actually. In short order viewers see Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) wrestling with a potted tree in a garden center, having given up both teaching (as established in “Mawdryn Undead“) and brigadiering; and then Brigadier Winifred Bambera (Angela Bruce), rushing to the scene of an accident near (fictional) Lake Vortigern in Southern England, where a nuclear missile convoy has crashed into an archeological dig site with typical UNIT efficiency.

The Doctor detects a broadcast from the selfsame time and location in a very gloomy TARDIS and heads there forthwith. (Per Paul Kirkley’s Space Helmet for a Cow , the console prop had been discarded between seasons and not yet fully replaced, necessitating some lighting slight-of-hand). Pulling out a set of old UNIT identification cards from his hat (belonging to the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw) for himself and Ace, the Doctor attempts to convince Brigadier Bambera to let him poke around, but apparently she never got the memo about the Doctor and his ontological eccentricities. All the while, projectiles from space fall into nearby hills, eliciting very little curiosity from anyone but Ace. These meteors contain armored knights with futuristic weaponry, also summoned, apparently, by the signal from the vicinity of the dig site.

Aaronovitch and director Michael Kerrigan waste little time in “Battlefield,” with the largest group of knights engaging a solitary knight in battle—via sword, blaster, and grenade, in traditional knightly fashion—by the halfway mark of the first of four episodes. Even with a large guest cast and multiple plot strands to establish, including Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart coming out of retirement once Bambera reports the Doctor’s return to UNIT HQ, the action keeps pace with the exposition. (Though perhaps, as in the Third Doctor’s UNIT days, Kerrigan devotes a bit too much time to a helicopter flying back and forth, if only to get as much value out of the aircraft rental as they can.)

Copious references to the Arthur legend leave little doubt about the story’s direction—the local pub’s CAMRA-listed beer is called “Arthur’s Ale” after all—so that when one of the knights, Ancelyn (Marcus Gilbert), calls the Doctor “Merlin,” the experience is one of knowing appreciation rather than shock, at least until he starts talking about time travel and the relative dimensionality of the TARDIS. Pulling the Arthurian romance into the future rather than sending the Doctor back to the past feels like one of those obvious concepts that somehow never made it into Doctor Who until now, and the anachronism of plate armor together with laser guns comes across as clever and fresh.

Too, the conflation of the Doctor with Merlin fits neatly into the effort by producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel to deepen the sense of mystery behind the Doctor’s past (and his future possibilities). “Oh, he has many names, but in my reckoning, he is Merlin,” proclaims Ancelyn, even as the Doctor evinces no knowledge of the knight or of the summons from Excalibur that has led everyone to this moment—including Mordred (Christopher Bowen), leader of the other group of knights, who cowers upon realizing the old foe Merlin has returned. And where Mordred can be found, his mother cannot be far away…

Doctor Who Project: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

February 2, 2026January 5, 2026 by Chris Baer

We want more.

Doctor Who, under producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel, can scarcely be accused of false modesty. Case in point, the decision to end Season Twenty-Five with Stephen Wyatt’s “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy” (Story Production Code 7J), a less-than-subtle title that refers as much to our favorite series, following a jaunty, peripatetic time traveller, as to the intergalactic circus that the Seventh Doctor and Ace decide to visit after a junk mail robot singing its praises materializes within the otherwise inviolable confines of the TARDIS. But with the series forever balanced between continuation and cancellation, a little horn-tooting can be forgiven.

An overall lack of nuanced presentation pervades Season Twenty-Five, and Wyatt’s entry continues the trend. The Doctor spends not five minutes on the planet Segonax, home of the Psychic Circus, before declaring, “Something evil’s happened here, I can feel it.” The Doctor likewise immediately declares the presence of evil in “The Happiness Patrol” rather than letting an unsettling atmosphere develop organically, an odd decision on the part of Wyatt and director Alan Wareing given that the story otherwise takes its time establishing much of anything at all. With four episodes to spare, there’s no narrative pressure here, and ample time is spent layering images and characters and scenes, a luxury after two three-episode stories in a row.

The juxtaposition of a circus tent replete with whip-wielding ringmaster (Ricco Ross) against two circus performers scurrying across wasteland fleeing from kites being flown by eerie clowns in a hearse—all while the Doctor and Ace eat creamed corn out of melons to ingratiate themselves with a local to get directions to the circus—leaves the audience quite befuddled, though not in a disagreeable way. Even the sudden appearance of the Captain Cook (T.P. McKenna), a nineteenth-century British explorer-type straight out of central casting, and his punk-rock partner Mags (Jessica Martin) digging a giant robot out of the ground comes as no real shock at all.

Indeed, throughout much of the first episode, one gets the overwhelming sense that only Doctor Who could throw this welter of concepts onto the screen and not have it written off immediately as farce; though the appearance of Mad Max-wannabe Nord (Daniel Peacock) on a motorized trike and nebbish teen Whizzkid (Gain Sammarco) on a BMX bike, both headed to the Psychic Circus, begins to strain the otherwise ample supplies of audience goodwill. Less charming, the Doctor’s behavior towards Ace, who shows a decided unease with the entire notion of circuses in general and clowns in particular. He practically browbeats his young charge into coming along, completely disregarding her near panic once they reach the rather undistinguished big top of the Psychic Circus. The show must go on, but a more clever means of getting our heroes into trouble might have been better in keeping with the Seventh Doctor’s near-paternal attitude towards the teen from Perivale.

And Ace, as it turns out, is not wrong in the least. Clowns are creepy…

Doctor Who Project: Silver Nemesis

January 5, 2026November 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

This is no madness. ‘Tis England.

For all of producer John Nathan-Turner’s efforts to continually reinvent Doctor Who, he always understands the value of returning to what works, as evidenced by Kevin Clarke’s “Silver Nemesis” (Story Production Code 7K). To paraphrase the old saying about IBM, “No show ever got cancelled by bringing back the Cybermen,” and on the strength of this admittedly derivative three-episode story, the advice stands. Absent from the screen since 1985’s “Attack of the Cybermen,” roughly four years and sixteen stories prior, the menace from Mondas proves fresh enough to distract viewers from the undeniable similarity of “Silver Nemesis” to “Remembrance of the Daleks” just two stories earlier. Not that Clarke’s tale tries to hide the parallels, making the linkage explicit at one point: the Seventh Doctor is settling scores with his enemies, wrapping up “[u]nfinished business,” as he calls it, as though aware his time—or at least that of the series—draws to a close.

Veteran Doctor Who director Chris Clough takes the helm for the second story running, following on from his turn on “The Happiness Patrol” (though that story will be shot after this one), and where the latter (next?) story involves moody studio shooting, “Silver Nemesis” takes full advantage of being set in jolly old England, with bright, beautifully shot location footage of various locales, including a vibrant high street and a not-quite Windsor Castle (Arundel Castle in West Sussex standing in for the exteriors). The sense of lived space, with natural light and wide vistas, helps ground unlikely time travellers from the seventeenth century, wanna-be modern-day Nazis from South America with dodgy accents, and, yes, Cybermen in a contemporary setting, the story taking place mostly on November 23rd, 1988, neatly the same day as the first episode airs—also, not coincidentally, twenty-five years after the initial airing of Doctor Who‘s first episode, a “silver” anniversary present of sorts.

Much like “Remembrance of the Daleks,” the initial episode sets up the various factions at play in the story. De Flores (Anton Diffring), a Nazi holdover hiding in South America, prepares a strike force of Aryan-esque mercenaries committed to bringing about a Fourth Reich. They plan to reach Windsor on November 23rd, and bring with them a small silver bow. Some three hundred and fifty years earlier, Lady Peinforte (Fiona Walker) reinforces the archery theme, shooting an arrow that lands harmlessly next to a pair of unimpressed pigeons in either the most deadpan, or most unintentionally funny, scene ever shot on Doctor Who. She wields a silver arrow, once, along with De Flores’ bow, part of a silver statue she had commissioned of herself from a mysterious ore that fell from the sky.

Said sculpture, the Nemesis statue, flies through the heavens as Comet Nemesis, launched there, as it transpires, by the Doctor. Lady Peinforte’s astronomer (Leslie French) calculates that it will return to Earth exactly three hundred and fifty years after being sent on its long, looping journey; and using a bit of black magic, the blood of the unfortunate mathematician, and a vague bit of knowledge about time travel acquired from who (?) knows where, she and her retainer Richard (Gerard Murphy) travel to present-day Windsor, where her home has been turned into a restaurant. The Doctor and Ace, meanwhile, are also in the vicinity at the time, enjoying a jazz brunch which is rudely interrupted by two headphone-wearing assassins who are, thankfully, not very good at their jobs, allowing our heroes to escape to the TARDIS. The Doctor checks his watch and sees that an alarm he set for this very day, some three hundred and fifty years in the past, requires his attention: Earth is in danger once more.

When the comet lands with a prodigious explosion next to a delightfully telegenic warehouse, it attracts the frenetic fascists, our haphazard guests from the past, the Doctor and Ace, and, inevitably, David Banks…

Doctor Who Project: The Happiness Patrol

November 2, 2025October 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

Time to get really depressed.

Doctor Who has long been a vehicle for discussing social problems, using the lens of science fiction to create future (or past) dystopias that subtly reflect current travails with enough distance to dissect them fearlessly. The commentary, particularly strong in the era of Robert Sloman and Robert Holmes, seldom winds up as a stirring call to action, balancing entertainment against enlightenment quite neatly, leaving audiences at least a little more aware amidst the explosions and escapades. Graeme Curry, in “The Happiness Patrol” (Story Production Code 7L), follows this tradition after a fashion, tackling neither racism nor environmental decay, neither poverty nor the ills of unbridled capitalism. He rails against being phony.

From the opening shots of this three episode story, we see a bleak cityscape with piped-in muzak and a constant suggestion of fog, barren of ornamentation or individuality, a setting conducive to nothing but misery; yet being a “killjoy” here is a capital offense, punishable by instant death from the roving Happiness Patrols, staffed by women in pink wigs, mini skirts, and copious amounts of facial makeup. Veteran Doctor Who director Chris Clough amplifies the visual disconnection between giddy expectation and sombre reality well, but the basic story does not ever delve more deeply than the notion that people deserve to be allowed to be sad, darn it!

Keeping with the Seventh Doctor’s newly proactive streak, as seen with his somewhat casual eradication of his longtime foes in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” he and Ace arrive on the human colony Terra Alpha several centuries into the future (from 1988) to investigate rumors of “something evil,” not exactly a nuanced introduction to the situation. After being arrested on an immigration violation by the Happiness Patrol, they learn of the various disappearances that take place routinely on Terra Alpha at the behest of its ruler, Helen A. (Sheila Hancock), who wants people to be happy at any cost, and viewers are treated to a scene of one particularly sticky means of execution, death by hot strawberry fondant. The action goes off the rails rather quickly after this sweetly lethal treat.

For much of producer John Nathan-Turner’s run on the show, Doctor Who has dabbled in au courant philosophical and critical concepts, with media studies in particular being a particular wellspring: “Vengeance on Varos” serves as the show’s answer to McLuhan, an extended rumination on the televised versus the real, the image versus the substance, a theme repeated throughout the Sixth Doctor’s tenure; and “Dragonfire” revels in cinematic and existential references. Here, Curry seeks to expound upon “Weltschmerz,” the ineffable pain of existing in a world suffused with suffering. Heady stuff for a children’s show.

Doctor Who can certainly contain such discussions, being no stranger to either religious or ethical debate (albeit mostly filtered through aliens and their totally-not-human cultures). The mode taken with “The Happiness Patrol,” though, leans so heavily into an over-the-top dystopia, very much akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil from just a few years prior, that the entirety of the story is taken up with set pieces showing off just how absurd Terra Alpha has become, leaving no room for actual examination of sorrow, grief, and happiness, to say nothing of the loaded use of the term “disappearances,” an echo of Pinochet’s Chile and the Argentinian Junta. And that’s without addressing Curry’s signal, and somewhat regrettable, addition to the show’s rogues’ gallery…

Doctor Who Project: Remembrance of the Daleks

October 2, 2025September 2, 2025 by Chris Baer

I’ve been here before.

Wheeling out the Daleks to start Doctor Who‘s twenty-fifth season, in Ben Aaronovitch’s “Remembrance of the Daleks” (Story Production Code 7H), carries with it the faintest whiff of desperation. These iconic pepper pots helped catapult the series to popularity on their debut in late 1963, and every Doctor since has faced off against them, often to open or close a season, such is their popular potency. But how do you create something new with the Doctor’s eternal enemies? Returning them to 1963 London, to the Coal Hill School and I.M. Forman’s scrap yard on Totters Lane, feels like such a blatant attempt at fan service that the initial impulse, on seeing the Seventh Doctor and Ace return to the First Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian’s stomping grounds—particularly so soon after the Sixth Doctor made a social call—tends towards the less-than-charitable, the final flailings of a series that has run out of fresh ideas.

Opening with Ace toting a boombox into a corner caff for bacon sarnies and struggling with pre-decimal coinage while the Doctor climbs atop a van with a strange aerial outside the hallowed school doesn’t inspire much confidence, suggesting a flippant attitude from the start. And yet Aaronovitch, producer John Nathan-Turner, and script editor Andrew Cartmel manage to conjure an air of mystery and menace around the Daleks regardless, no mean feat given that they have yet to defeat the Doctor in over a dozen tries. Their last appearance, in “Revelation of the Daleks” some three and a half years prior, leans heavily into the omnipresence of the titular foes, rolling around everywhere and in numbers. Here, a single Dalek occupies proceedings for the majority of the first of four episodes, holed up in, yes, I.M. Forman’s yard, a reminder of how fearsome this foe can be.

After the Doctor pops into the van and meets Rachel (Pamela Salem), a scientist working with the British military to investigate strange frequencies at the school and the scrap yard, he accompanies her to the scene, where Group Captain Gilmore (Simon Williams), a Lethbridge-Stewart stand-in, is organizing an attack after one of his men has been killed via a “death ray” from an unknown assailant. It’s a Dalek, of course, as the Doctor knows at once, and he urges Gilmore to pull his troops back—calling him “Brigadier” at one point, in case the comparison to what will likely become UNIT weren’t obvious—before the Dalek kills them all. After furious yet futile fusillades with bullets and grenades, given loving attention by director Andrew Morgan, only Ace’s Nitro Nine saves the day, blowing the top off the combat casing to reveal trademark Dalek goo.

The story proceeds with remarkable directness, keeping the focus mainly on the Doctor, all the better to establish, and obscure, the various levels of conspiracy that begin to unwind. The Doctor, it turns out, knows the Daleks are following him, looking for the “Hand of Omega” which he left in 1963 London as the First Doctor. Creating events in the Doctor’s past that are unseen on screen is certainly nothing new, but choosing the very beginnings of the series to hide a McGuffin comes across quite boldly, turning what could have been throw-away canonical references into valid and intriguing plot points. Further shenanigans are afoot in the Coal Hill School itself, watched over by a creepy child (Jasmine Breaks) and a mind-controlled Headmaster (Michael Sheard), and within the military command structure, as a man named Ratcliffe (George Sewell, in a very George Sewell role) vouched for by Mike (Dursley McLinden), a member of Gilmore’s team, hauls away the Dalek remains to an underground lair at the orders of a shadowy figure seated in a Dalek casing…

Bagged Bocage: Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont (MMP) Released

August 9, 2025August 8, 2025 by Chris Baer

A new historical module for Advanced Squad Leader, everyone’s favorite tactical simulation of World War II combat, typically lands with a thud, representing pounds of paper and cardboard that recreate, in loving and occasionally overwrought detail, the specifics of a particular campaign. Multi-Man Publishing‘s latest, however, makes a more modest appearance on the proverbial doorstep. Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont, just released, comes not in a box but in the crinkle-wrapped plastic shrouding more commonly seen with paper-only products like Action Packs and Winter Offensive Bonus Packs. Which makes sense, as Ken Dunn’s follow on to his Drop Zone: Sainte-Mère-Église, from 2023, ships with front and end sheets (featuring cover artwork by Nicolás Eskubi), six scenarios on three sheets of cardstock, a single 22″ x 30.5″ semi-glossy paper map, a few pages of special rules for the scenarios and campaign games, and a chapter divider on glossy stock.

That’s right, no counters. And for those of us with groaning Planos that long-since lost any semblance of order or harmony, who despair at trying to fit yet another squad type or vehicle variant into the mix, it’s a welcome change, one representing an awareness that new counters are not necessary for a quality product. Sometimes, working with the colors you have proves a finer design feat than insisting on a box of crayons with a hundred subtly different shades, and Ken Dunn demonstrates his design chops here again. (There is cardboard in the package, though—MMP thoughtfully includes a piece for stiffening the bagged package, which otherwise might wobble like my defensive setups in ASL…)

Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont focuses on the fighting between elements of the American 82nd Airborne and scrounged-together German forces around the hamlet of the same name in Normandy, which hosted a crucial river crossing needed in the immediate aftermath of the D-Day air drops and invasion. The area is best known in ASL circles for hosting 10-3 Brigadier General Gavin, of “Gavin Take” fame, and Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont brings welcome context to the fighting in and around the classic scenario, even taking on the sacred cow by adapting it to the historical map.

Indeed, the scenarios, all by Ken Dunn, have a “traditional” feel to them, heavy on infantry engagements with minimal use of special rules. Bocage and slopes do feature on the map by Charlie Kibler, but they seem the only obstacles to jumping right in, regardless of one’s experience with ASL. All six scenarios can be completed in a sitting by reasonably prompt players, with moderate countermixes and restrained turn lengths. No night scenarios, and only one with OBA, of a sort—CdP6 Consolidation lets the German player use an INF gun as an indirect/OBA piece, an interesting tweaking of the basic rules. My pick of the cards is CdP5 Desperate Defense, probably the biggest card of the lot, using most of the map, with a scant nine elite American squads packing a single Bazooka defending against Germans marshaling captured French tanks.

Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont might seem slim on first glance, but with a commensurately tiny US$32 retail price and six scenarios that are easy to break out at a club meeting or tournament, it’s a value. Players just starting with ASL will find much to appreciate here, with only Beyond Valor (second edition or newer) and Yanks needed to play everything in the box, er, bag. The connection to Drop Zone: Sainte-Mère-Église is thematic rather than in the nature of a sequel, so ownership of that module is not required—but it has cow counters, so why wouldn’t you? Plus you can throw Chef-du-Pont in the Sainte-Mère-Église box with no fuss.

As a fresh type of product presentation for Multi-Man Publishing in these, shall we say, intriguing economic times, Drop Zone: Chef-du-Pont feels like a positive step forward, one that recognizes most players have all the foxhole counters and German second line squads they will ever need. Though I hesitate to speak ex cathedra for ASL players as a whole, we want new experiences—with the polish we expect from MMP, that find their way to the table rather than collect dust in the “eventually” pile—rather than new stuff. I love my chrome-laden monster scenarios as much as the next person, but sometimes you just want to pull a card from the binder, throw some counters and maps down in an interesting configuration, learn a little something about a conflict, and spend a pleasant afternoon rolling dice and pushing counters you already own rather than punching (and rounding!) new counters and absorbing pages of special rules. Ken Dunn and MMP deliver that here, with a ton of bang for the buck.