| SWORD OF ORION by Nicholas Briggs |
| Story 17 Synopsis: The Doctor takes Charley to the Garazone Bazaar, looking for treatment for Ramsay, their Vortisaur. Instead, they stumble on a smuggling operation, and when the TARDIS is taken on board ship, they race to join it. The salvage ship travels to where another ship drifts in space. The TARDIS gets the Doctor and Charley to the other ship, where the crew are attacked by mysteriously powerful beings. The sabotage of a small creature causes further trouble, but the Doctor convinces the ship's Captain, Deeva Jansen, that they are innocent. She and the Doctor investigate further, finding the Cybermen aboard - the sabotage being caused by a Cybermat. With the Cybermen preparing to emerge, the plans for salvage are abandoned. But the ship's trapped. The Doctor suspects Jansen has a plan, and finds she was sent on this mission because of an android war in the Orion system. But she too is an android, and far from attempting to persuade the Cybermen of an alliance, she is merely storing information about Cyber-conversion, for use by her employers, and also the androids. The Doctor begs her not to part with the information, and when the ship breaks up, she gives her oxygen supply to Charley. The Doctor and Charley make it back to the TARDIS, everyone else being dead. |
| Review:- Ms Pollard's 1st trip into space sees her run into one of the Doctor's oldest enemies... This was one of a few early BF plays (such as The Mutant Phase, and Minuet In Hell) that originated in a mid-1980's series called Audio Visuals, which were unwittingly proto-BF, but very much fan-only. Here, the dreaded Cybermen emerge from the shadows to threaten once again. But to mixed results. The opening episode sets up the characters well, and both Jansen and the scheming Grash come across compellingly well. Indeed, Grash is as nasty as Bruce Montague's previous appearance in The Genocide Machine was docile. He certainly keeps the listener's interest, whilst the mysterious Deeva Jansen seems to have secret plans of her own, too... The pace means that the Cybermat attacks have to hold attention for a long time before it becomes clear who is responsible. Once revived, the small cast means their ambitions must be correspondingly small, too, and the final episodes provide some reasons, at last. The Cybermen reflect twin themes in the play. Whilst Jansen's crew are scavengers on a small scale, of goods and valuables, the Cybermen scavenge for life. They thrive by adding people to their ranks, but here have been forced to hibernate as the results of an ion storm which affected their systems. Similarly, and more pertinently to the plot, their status as biomechanoids suggests they might get involved in the human-android Orion War. The idea that they might be able to give either side the decisive advantage leads the listener to suppose that this is Jansen's secret motive. In fact, she's double bluffing, not interested in any such deal, rather the details of the Cyber-conversion process (though how much of a secret could this be? How wrong are the humans doing it in tests?). And on top of that, whilst nominally preparing to give the information to her human superiors, she will also give it to her own kind, the androids. There are suggestions about her unusual behaviour in earlier episodes to make the revelation of her true nature seem less of a shock when it comes. The title derives from this intrigue, and whilst snappy, it doesn't seem to be fitting. Charley seems rather plucky, befitting her 'Edwardian adventuress' tag, though quite whether she accepts rather too much to be credible is another question. Sometimes her tact is lacking, which does her little favours. As for the Doctor, he talks his way out of execution, wins Jansen over whilst suspecting her, and takes a long time to deduce the involvement of the Cybermen (and this is silly as the plot is reminiscent of previous adventures of his). He does persuade Jansen not to spread the data she collects, but is unable to save her life in return. He tries to save the Cybermen and fails at that, too. The ion storm which finishes the story is beyond his control, too. He seems more a servant of events, rather than an agent of change. Overall, a bog-standard Cybermen story that stays small-scale throughout despite intentions to run wider, and where the huge death toll isn't compensated by the lackadaisical resolution. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |