#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who The Five Doctors

Last week I did a Sunday special on the 10th Anniversary show "The Three Doctors." This week I am covering the 20th Anniversary special, "The Five Doctors."

The Five Doctors got it's Global premier on November 23, 1983, exactly 20 years after the first episode appeared.

Like the previous anniversary special this one involved the Doctor getting caught up in the machinations of an evil and powerful Time Lord. This time though, the Doctor was pulled in, and in doing so he felt pieces of himself "breaking away like an iceberg."

Of course, there was a problem. Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor and still the actor with the longest tenure as the Doctor, did not want to return so soon after leaving the role. A choice he much later came to meet with some regret. So his incarnation was stuck in a "time eddy" which honestly worked out ok. They had some footage they had from a canceled show (Shada) and used that to fill in the blanks.

Sadly William Hartnell the original First Doctor had died in 1975 so Richard Hurndall was brought in to play the character. He sadly would die the year after this. I am not sure of the details, but I am wondering if the First Doctor would have been stuck. But the script, as these thing do, went through a lot of rewrites so who knows what could have been.  Tom Baker did get a chance to come back later. William Hartnell is at least featured in a clip before the show begins.  There is a nice story about how Bill Hartnell's wife Heather was invited to the set and she told the then current Doctor, Peter Davidson, how much he reminded her of Bill and how he would have loved to have seen him in this role. 

So we get a lot of favorite companions back, a lot of favorite enemies, and more workings into the happenings on Gallifrey.

A couple of standouts. Susan, the Doctor's Grandaughter is back and she recognizes right away they are on Gallifrey. So meaning she is also a Time Lord and allows her early character to retroactively say the planet's name first.   Fan favorite Sarah Jane is back, including her K-9 from "K-9 and Co." She interacts with the Third Doctor again.  She tries to explain to him that she saw him regenerate into the Fourth Doctor and says "you became..." but he interrupts with "all teeth and curls?" Meaning Tom Baker.  The lines were supposed to be Elizabeth Sladden's (Sarah Jane) but Jon Pertwee thought it was funnier coming from him. It was. 

There are a lot of DVD versions of this out. I have the Special Edition which swaps out some of the 1983 special effects for "updated" ones that are nearly universally hated. I have not seen the 25th anniversary version (the 45th for Doctor Who) but I wonder if they are restored?  I watched it recently on PlutoTV and it was the original 1983 broadcast version, so that was nice.

The story is a bit contrived, but no more so than any other Doctor Who story and it was a lot of fun really.  Still one of my favorites.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 9

Returning to Room 7 and taking the passage ahead takes the characters to another cave. 

Inside the cave is a large Troll. 

The troll is near the far side of the cave. He attacks as soon as the characters enter.

The troll has no visible treasure, it is all behind the secret door in the wall opposite of the tunnel the characters came in from.  

Additionally there are passages to the left and to the right.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Gallifrey

"Ah, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver. When they caught the light every morning, they lit the forest on fire." 

- The Tenth Doctor, Gridlock

Next to the Earth, the planet that gets the most mention in Doctor Who lore, is his home world of Gallifrey.

It has been called many things during the run of Doctor Who, most just "The Home World" in the earliest episodes. Among other names, it is known as "Jewel" and "the Shining World of the Seven Systems." It wasn't even named Gallifrey until the time of the Third Doctor in the episode "The Time Warrior" (December 1973) so a full decade went by before we ever learned its proper name.

What do we know about the Doctor's home planet? Well, it s mostly orange in color. Has two suns. It is much larger than the Earth, but humans seem to be fine on it. Likely this is due to Time Lord science. We learn it is in the constellation of Kasterborous at galactic coordinates 10-0-11-0-0/0-2 from Galactic Zero Centre.  It also seems to be part of our galaxy as opposed to a "galaxy far, far away."

Gallifreyians look human, and not all of them are Time Lords. The Time Lords appear to be an elite ruling class and the rest are just regular folk. I am fairly sure though all of them have the same two hearts and ability to regenerate. 

Gallifrey is also special because it is the home of the Untempered Schism, a rip in the fabric of Time and Space that all Time Students of the Academy are taken too. Some Time Lords are driven mad by it, like the Doctor's arch rival The Master. Others, like the Doctor, see it and want to run.  

In addition to this (and likely related to it in some way) is the Eye of Harmony, a stable black hole that is near Gallifrey and in the heart of every TARDIS. This is what gives the Time Lords mastery over time and space. 

We see very little of Gallifrey in the series, even after 60 years. There is the Citadel, the primary city of the Time Lords, and Arcadia, Gallifrey's "Second City."  So like a Time Lord Chicago, I am thinking.

And we know that in the Time War The Doctor (thought) he had burned all of Gallifrey to stop the war. Turns out he (and all his other selves) figured out how to tuck it away in a pocket Universe. Though the Master may have destroyed yet again. Hard to say about an ancient planet where the rules of time and space no longer apply.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 8

 Taking the left tunnel, the air is cooler and more damp. Entering the cave the characters will see the same stream from Room 4 emptying into this room.  It forms a large dark pool which then continues on to drain at the far wall.

Inside the pool is a Giant Octopus. It pulls it's massive bulk out of the pool to attack the characters.  Due to the size of the room it can only bring out six of it's eight tentacles to attack.

It seems likely that this octopus swam into here ages ago and has grown too large, or too complacent, to swim back out.

While the Octopus has no treasure it keeps there are the remains of several past victims at the bottom of it's 20's deep pool. There are 1d6+3 former adventures at the bottom of this pool. They had Treasure Types of U and V each.

This room is a dead end.

Kickstart Your Weekend: The Celts

This is very much a Peanut Butter and Chocolate moment for me.  I have always been a fan of Brian Young's work on the Castles & Crusades Codex series and in particular his Codex Celtarum. I have also been really enjoying my re-introduction to Chivalry & Sorcery.  So when I see there is a C&S book about Celts, written by Brian Young?  Yeah, I have to have that!

The Celts

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cns5/the-celts?ref=theotherside

I have been dying to do more with this RPG, and this might just be the perfect book for me. I really can't think of single reason why I would not want to back this. One fo my favorite topics, by an author who is an academic and RPG expert on this this topic, for a game system I really want to learn.

Win. Win. Win.

While the faux leatherette looks really nice, I also like the one pictured above since it will go with all my other books.

So yes. Let's get this thing funded!

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Fendahl

Today's is a bit different. I am going to talk about a single serial, the four-part "Image of the Fendahl."  This one struck a chord with me for a lot of reasons.

The story deals with the discovery of a human skull dated 12 million years old. Modern humans did not appear on the scene until about 300,000 years ago. So this has the various scientists in a stir.  At the same time the Fourth Doctor and his companions Leela and K-9 (both get their own days!) discover a "hole in time" and follow it to it's source which is of course on Earth.

 The skull has some odd psychic powers and it attracts the attention of one of scientists, Thea Ransome, and begins to take her over.

I won't go into the details of everything here. There are plenty of places to read about that. I do want to talk about what this one means to me.

So as I will mention on P day, in the 1980s, Doctor Who was shown on my local (St. Louis) PBS station. It was also on late on Sunday night, so to watch it I had to sneak it. So I never saw the Image of Fendahl in order. I would catch it here and there, and I of course people at school would talk about it. So the story of the episode was in my mind very different than what was on the screen.  I have also talked about how I would spend my paper route money on D&D books and Doctor Who books. So when I could I bought the Terrance Dicks novelization long before I ever saw it. But by then the ideas I had of it became deeply routed.

Also, this episode played into my keen interest into astronomy with the destruction (by the Time Lords no less) of a 5th planet between Mars and Jupiter, where the asteroid belt is now.

Occult Overtones

In the episode, there are various occult overtones. It was made in the later half of the 1970s so this is no surprise really.  The Fendahl skull had a pentagram in it. There was a pentagram involved in the ritual to recreate the gestalt creature.  Also there were in my young mind overtones of Jungian psychology here. Now I was already reading all this sort of stuff in the 80s so it blended in a heady brew of half-remembered, half-concocted ideas.  

Personally, I would not be surprised if there are ideas I generated then due to this that appear in my various witch books today.  Not a lot I am sure, but if I chased the right thread I bet it would lead me here. 

I have really been meaning to re-watch this one for some time. I know have seen it in the last 10 years or so. I recall watching it one winter while taking down our Geek-themed Christmas tree. But I really need to see it again.

That Wholock Crossover

Spend any time at all in Doctor Who fandom and you will run into people that want a Sherlock/Doctor Who crossover. Makes sense, both shows have similar sensibilities, a super-smart main character, and their companion, and both shows were (at the time) headed by Steven Moffat.  I even got on board with it after my own fashion. 

The Image of Fendahl has the best link to a Wholock crossover (besides the multiple appearances of Mark Gatiss).  Wanda Ventham who plays Thea Ransome is none other than Benedict "Sherlock" Cumberbatch's mother. He was just about 1 year old when this was filmed.

I'll need to see if I can find this anywhere to re-watch, I just checked my DVD collection and oddly enough I don't have it. 

ETA: Ok, I just grabbed on DVD (not BluRay) to go with my others here.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 7

The passageway beyond the cave leads to another cave. There is more diffused light here and more of the strange plants.  But that is not all.

Inside this cave are three (3) Carcass Crawlers. They are currently scuttling around and will attack when the party enters.

They have stashed here and there standard treasure type B and an additional 2d6 rubies of 1d6x10 gp value each.

There are two exits on the far side of the cave, one to the right and one to the left.

--

Note about the plants.  These plants were made by the necromancers to feed on the magical energies of these caves and to provide oxygen and food to the various creature here they needed for experiments. Casting a "sunlight" spell or other bright light (Continual Light, but not Light) will cause them to wither and die.