Deathworld

I am the end of all life and you are now entering my domain.

Death

Synopsis

The Doctor was dead, to begin with. Killed alongside his beloved Jo Grant in an explosion in the UNIT labs. But Time Lords are notoriously hard to kill.

Because with UNIT under siege, the Brigadier is rescued by two familiar faces… the Doctor he first encountered, fighting the Yeti, and Jamie McCrimmon. With yet one more waiting in the wings.

They are all pawns in a deadly game of chess played by a being more powerful than any they’ve ever encountered before. And when you battle Death himself… can anyone even win?

Review

Deathworld serves as an interesting counterpoint to the tenth anniversary story, The Three Doctors, as the original pitch made by that story’s writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin. For various reasons, including William Hartnell’s failing health, the story had to be reworked.

Time is a cruel mistress, Jo, and effect must follow cause.

The Third Doctor

This is clearly an ambitious story, which could also give further reasons as to why Deathworld ultimately didn’t make it to the screen. Of course, with an adaptation to audio, that becomes less of an issue, and John Dorney is a strong writer to adapt this story for audio. It is a story that starts with Death and the President of the Time Lords playing chess on the beach, ultimately travelling to Death’s realm, meeting the Four Horsemen and the Seven Deadly Sins. The story as adapted throws in references to the show as well, and the moments where the Third Doctor and Jo encounter War in the battlefield are remniscient of The War Games. There are also a number of creatures that the Doctors encounter, including a Gorgon and a Cyclops. The story is definitely entertaining, although it does lose something when we meet the Seven Deadly Sins, which feels as though it really throws the spanners into what is a well paced story. It does struggle to recapture the initial pace, from the lab blowing up to the Doctors and their companions being brought into Death’s domain. I do appreciate that John Dorney does make this story work alongside The Three Doctors, with the events of this story directly leading into the televised story that replaced it.

The story does have a rather small guest cast. The main villain of the piece, Death, is played by Joe Shire. I found his performance to be quite inconsistent; at times it was perfectly menacing, and at others it felt rather halfhearted. I liked the idea of Death wanting to teach the Time Lords a lesson to try and keep them from overstepping their bounds by interfering, but Death didn’t really feel that vindictive. Diane Pilkington is good as the Time Lord President, even if she does not have an awful lot to do in this story.

He is my past, and he is my future. Things very clearly go downhill.

The Second Doctor

One dynamic of this story that works really rather well is the spiky relationships between the three Doctors. This is all the more impressive considering that none of the three actors playing them are the originals. As the most established of the three, Tim Treloar’s Third Doctor continues to be great, bristling and blustering as his predecessors mock him. In The Three Doctors, Pertwee’s Third Doctor and Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor have a very spiky relationship, which mirrors Jon Pertwee’s off screen frustrations with Patrick Troughton. Tim Treloar and Michael Troughton capture this perfectly. Troughton’s portrayal is also note perfect and helps this story to fly. Stephen Noonan’s First Doctor presides over affairs with the air of the Edwardian schoolmaster, trying to rise above the bickering of his two successors but getting dragged into it nonetheless. His pairing with the Brigadier is good fun and wasn’t something that I was necessarily expecting on first listening.

Given that I had the courtesy to answer your summons, perhaps you’d do me the honour of telling me who the devil you are, sir?

The First Doctor

In Deathworld, we have three companions; Jo, Jamie and the Brigadier, played by Katy Manning, Frazer Hines and Jon Culshaw. Of that trio, the only actor to appear in both The Three Doctors and Deathworld is Katy Manning. I have read some reviews where some reviewers have struggled with Manning and Hines’ performance and felt that they are both showing their ages when playing the younger versions of their companions. This wasn’t an issue for me, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m used to listening to both reprising their roles for Big Finish. Jamie gets some really rather touching scenes with the Third Doctor, which are rather nicely written. I think that all three companions do really good work, especially when facing the prospect of being stuck in Death’s domain with no Doctors after they start being killed off and entropy starts catching up with the Third Doctor. They all get something to do, and their dynamics with their respective Doctors are really good fun.

Verdict: Deathworld is an interesting companion piece to The Three Doctors, with good performances from the recast Doctors and their companions. 8/10

Cast: Stephen Noonan (The Doctor), Michael Troughton (The Doctor), Tim Treloar (The Doctor), Jon Culshaw (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Joe Shire (Death), Dianne Pilkington (The President) and David O’Mahony (Deadly Sins).

Writers: Bob Baker and Dave Martin, adapted by John Dorney

Director: David O’Mahony

Sound Design and Music: Tim Steemson

Release Date: 16th August 2024

Parts: 4

Behind the Scenes

• This story was the original pitch by Bob Baker and Dave Martin in respect of the tenth anniversary story for Doctor Who, however, due to multiple rewrites, changes to characters, locations and actors, the story was ultimately changed into what became The Three Doctors.

Cast Notes

• Joe Shire has also played Septus in Tartarus.
• David O’Mahony has also appeared in The Conservitors and Operation Werewolf.

Best Quote

So you’re my replacements, are you? A vagrant and a fop!

A fop?!? I wouldn’t put it quite like that, sir!

The First Doctor and the Third Doctor

The Three Doctors

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