Separated from her Grandfather and the school teachers, Susan is engaged on a desperate search. Can a prisoner help her?

In September 1963, a series started that looked at people who had unusual gifts – they could fly, or turn things into ice – but were shunned by society, and were gathered together by a telepathic professor who brought them to his school for gifted youngsters. They were known as the X-Men, because they had extra powers (not, contrary to popular belief, because of their leader’s surname). Two months later, another series started, one that featured a young unearthly girl who had a latent power of telepathy, that only came to the fore very occasionally. Her (adopted) name was Susan Foreman. What would happen if she encountered the X-Men?

That seems to be the starting point of Julian Richards’ unusual tale that takes us back to the heart of the Companion Chronicles idea – a story about those who travel with the Doctor, and seeing things through their eyes. It’s a three hander between Carole Ann Ford as Susan (you have to say that nowadays, as the most recent appearance of the character saw her played by Claudia Grant), Mark Edel-Hunt as Virgil, and Lisa Bowerman as the colonel. When you hear Bowerman’s character’s name, you may guess at her role in the story, and she lives up to its nominative determinism (sounding as if she’s having great fun with the part!), while Edel-Hunt and Ford play well off each other through the twists of trust in the script.

Verdict: Just as the novel The Indestructible Man used the ethos of Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlet within the Doctor Who universe, so this homages Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s creation in inventive ways. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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