2 episodes. Approx. 66 minutes. Written by: Paul Finch. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Caroline John.
THE PLOT
About a year has past since Dr. Elizabeth Shaw left UNIT. She has been trying to settle back into her life of academia at Cambridge. When a friend's time travel experiments seem to be a little too successful, she calls the Doctor to see if there might be genuine danger in her colleague's "time window." Unable to resist tinkering, the Doctor insists on powering it on. But when a similar device in the future focuses on them, he and Liz find themselves transported to 2014!
Their new hosts are members of an organization calling itself "The New Dawn," a group of political, military, and scientific elite with a dream of a new ruling system, one modelled on medieval feudalism. Their ambitions seem preposterous. But with the time window, the Doctor realizes that they have the ability to expand their influence and shape events to suit their purposes. If the Doctor and Liz cannot return to their own time and stop the time experiments before they begin, then "The New Dawn's" dreams of empire may become all too real...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: The extent to which he is obviously pleased to see Liz leaves her feeling slightly guilty, as she has no intention of returning to UNIT. Still, it doesn't take long for him to get sucked into tinkering with her friend's "time window." He pretends to be intrigued by New Dawn's philosophy, and in this way fishes for a lot of information about them. He calls Richard Beauregard, the organization's leader, "incorrigible." The way the word is delivered it is clear that this is a moral denunciation - and, as it turns out, a judgment.
Liz: It's been some time since she left UNIT, and she has wondered whether she made the right decision. She enjoys seeing the Doctor again and sharing one final adventure with him. But, as she expresses when recalling these events, the Doctor's fast-paced, endlessly dangerous existence becomes too much for any human after a while. A return to that existence after a break in peaceful academia brings that home to her and leaves her more contented with her departure than had been the case.
THOUGHTS
The Sentinels of the New Dawn is a good, solid Doctor Who story. It's not exceptional, but it's fast-paced and entertaining. Paul Finch's script does a good job of evoking the characters of the 3rd Doctor and Elizabeth Shaw and melding them and the general "feel" of their era with the modern world. I enjoyed a scene in which Liz is confronted with a camera phone, for instance - a common piece of technology, but one which would have seemed like pure science fiction in 1970.
Despite being set in the modern world, the storytelling is pure Pertwee. It feels appropriate for this most action-oriented of Doctors to spend half the story lurking the corridors of what feels for all the world like a James Bond villain's lair. There's a bit of Venusian Akido involved and a chase scene which largely brings the Doctor and Liz back where they already were, keeping the 3rd Doctor era feel very much intact.
The story does act as a prequel to the 6th Doctor "Lost Story," Leviathan. That shouldn't deter those who haven't heard Leviathan, as this story is very much its own piece. Those who have heard the other story will catch some added significance to certain plot elements, but the main action is nicely self-contained.
Largely what I'd term bread-and-butter Who, with a formulaic story structure. But formula isn't a problem when it's well-executed. I'll never rank this among the best of the Companion Chronicles, but it is well-paced, well-scripted, and well-produced. For all those reasons, I'd say it's well worth a listen.
Rating: 7/10.
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The 3rd Doctor vs an organisation that recruits environmentalists but is secretly planing to destroy civilisation as we know it by the use of monsters, secret time travel experiments, and a traitor within UNIT. Didn't Malcolm Hulke write this already...?
ReplyDeleteHeh. Well, the story doesn't include any plastic dinosaurs. But yes, it is definitely "bread-and-butter" Pertwee Who, probably best viewed as a nostalgia fix for Pertwee fans. A "7" may well be generous on my part, but... Well, I genuinely *did* enjoy it, even if there are certainly better Companion Chronicles than this.
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