The Doctor, Sarah and Harry return to Nerva – to find its crew under attack…

This is John Dorney’s adaptation of Gerry Davis’ original script for the fifth story of Season 12 and as such fits neatly as an alternate path between Genesis of the Daleks and Terror of the Zygons. If you subscribed to DWB back in the mists of time – or have the Compendium – you’ll have read a version of this and know how much Robert Holmes rewrote the story. However, there’s a great deal that didn’t get fundamentally altered, because it did work, and what we have here works well in its own right. The Cybermen’s reason for destroying the asteroid is similar – but there’s none of the legendary planet of gold discussion, nor do half as many people end up visiting it. (And had this been shot originally, we might have lost of the legendary anecdotes from Doctor Who convention history.)

The characters on board Nerva are similar but different, and director Nicholas Briggs has drawn together a strong cast. That cast of course required new actors to step in for the much-missed Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter, and while neither Sadie Miller nor Christopher Naylor try to do a precise impersonation of their counterparts, the heart of the characters is spot on. Sladen or Marter’s way of emphasising certain words is emulated and the sibling bickering between Sarah and Harry comes across well. I’m looking forward to hearing both return to the roles over the coming months. Tom Baker is on fine form throughout – there’s an energy to his performance that belies his age as he recreates a story from nearly 50 years ago.

Continuing the idea that this is an alternate version from 1975, the same composer would have been hired, and Briggs provides a Carey Blyton-esque score. Briggs’ pastiche works well – although I suspect there may be more of it than the 26 minutes Blyton wrote.

Verdict: Those sneaky tin-men are back in a superficially similar but actually very different tale that comes together very well. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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