| PRIME TIME by Mike Tucker |
| Story ? Synopsis: The Doctor picks up a strange signal from the broadcasts of Channel 400 on Blinni-Gaar, so he and Ace go to visit. He leaves her in a cafe, whilst he goes to check out Channel 400, but he fails to pass security. He picks Ace up again, and they lodge with a local family of Blinnati. They find that television has dominated lives on the planet since Channel 400 arrived 10 years before. The Doctor suspects something is up, and takes the TARDIS to the planet's moon, where a transmitter stands. He and Ace go to Channel 400, but split up in a studio jungle when they hear Zzinbriizi jackals. Ace leaves the building and teams up with a cab driver called Trasker, not realising she is a C400 employee. The Doctor falls down a cliff, having realised the studio is a modified TARDIS. He is surprised to meet the Master, who claims to be just as much a victim as he is. He is dying, and went to the Fleshsmiths to build a new body, but they tricked him. They reach the control room of the TARDIS, which then dematerialises on a pre-set course to Scrantek, home of the Fleshsmiths. The Master is merely a facsimile - the real thing is kept in torment. The Fleshsmiths plan to use the Doctor's regenerative powers to end their suffering. The final act is to pit the Doctor and the Master in a chase in a cavern, pursued by the Zzinbriizis. Ace finds she has been conned, and is put through the wringer on TV, confronted by her old mother, and the sight of her own grave. She manages to escape, and confronts the head of Channel 400, Vogol Lukos. He has helped the Fleshsmiths, who plan to use the broadcast to suck in 150 billion viewers, who will go into the Fleshsmith machines. But Lukos plans to double-cross them, claiming the credit for saving all the viewers. The Doctor releases people from the Fleshsmith flesh banks, creating a diversion. He arrives at their main computer, to find the Master and the Fleshsmiths together. He is put into the machine. But he is just a short-lived genetic copy, which erodes the Fleshsmith machines, defeating their aims. The real Doctor has nobbled the transmitter on the moon, and prevents Ace from killing Lukos. Channel 400 are taken off air. The Master and the Zzinbriizis deal with Lukos themselves. The Doctor decides to check on the supposed grave of Ace, and finds it really is her. So, how, why, and can he stop it happening? |
| Review:- The Tucker & Perry PDAs were seen by some as a sort of phantom 'Season 27'. Their 4th tale is written by Tucker alone, and is a heavy-handed satire on TV. Okay, satire is probably too generous a word for it. The idea that someone would try to put the Doctor and his companion into a TV series is a pretty lame idea, and insulting to an audience over the age of 4. Nevertheless, here it is... perhaps it's a small mercy that it's meant to be a 3-parter, and is therefore short and nippy. Ace is rather hopelessly written and plotted, whilst the Doctor tries to walk into the trap without knowing it's a bigger trap than he thinks, and the Master turns up, but it's not the real Master, though the real one does turn up (see also Verdigris for exactly that same move), and there are horrid animalistic monsters, as well as monstrous creatures who have tried to save their race through drastic body surgery (you know, like the Cybermen), and there are the cunning TV people, and... so on. To be fair, there are at least a couple of moments that have been copied in the New Series. The idea of a race keeping millions of suffering people in flesh banks, which are then released for a diversion, turns up in New Earth. And the TV signal that will zap all its viewers turns up in The Idiot's Lantern. It's spotting things like this that keeps a reader awake. The rather sudden nature of the denouement doesn't help matters. Just when it seems the game's up, everything turns on a sixpence and the day is saved - the TARDIS isn't revealed on live TV, the Fleshsmiths not only are not killing the Doctor, but are being destroyed themselves instead, and Ace is stopped from committing murder. And yet Vogol Lukos still meets with a punishing end at the hands of the Master, who inexplicably survives his predicament and escapes from Scrantek. This isn't homage, it's grave-robbing. The final nail in the coffin in the dramatic non-ending, where the Doctor learns that Ace has been killed by someone, without his knowing it. This serves to lead into the next Tucker/Perry book, Loving The Alien. Given that the revelation of her death is treated as almost a side issue by Channel 400, it's hard to expect readers to suddenly care at the end. So a story in its prime? No, just one that should have been cancelled. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |