(Sarah G. Hadley) 2 episodes.
The Doctor and Mark must face their fears to overcome a criminal and his alternate reality.
From the Back Cover:
"I'm convinced, Mark. It seems that we have somehow slipped into an alternate universe."
"Are you sure?"
"Either that or we just fell through the looking-glass."
The Doctor and Mark have come to Washington D.C., circa 2013, for a spot of lunch and a look at the sights. What they find is something quite different...
"I can do anything I desire. I can create buildings, I can pass laws..."
"Yes, and I imagine, if you wanted to, you could make a chorus line of Daleks wearing hula skirts and dancing the conga! Oh, come on man, don't you want to escape?"
The Doctor and Mark have been trapped by a criminal with tremendous power; enough to create his own universe. He has everything he could ever want...except someone to share it all with.
"No, Doctor. You and your companion will stay with me...forever."
Will the Doctor convince their captor to let them go? Or will the timelord and his companion go insane from tests challenging their fantasies, their guilt, their fear, and their mind?
Plot:
The TARDIS accidentally falls into an artificial dimension acting as a prison for Albert Ynotz who has the ability to control everything in that universe to pass the time. Since he’s effectively God, he has no inclination to leave, and decides to trap the Doctor and Mark there to keep him company and telling him how clever he is at running this universe. After subjecting the duo to the horrific torture of continuity-based angst flashbacks, Ynotz gives them the Survivor treatment by dumping them on a desert island. Ynotz goes mental when they refuse, then the Doctor recites Who trivia until the false universe vanishes. The Doctor offers to take Ynotz out of his private universe where every fantasy is played out for him. Ynotz unsurprisingly tells the Doctor to sod off. The TARDIS returns to reality.
Story:
A story about a single deranged criminal imprisoned in a fantasy land of his own making and threatened by the arrival of the TARDIS crew is a theme Rob Shearman touched in his audio play Punchline, then again in The Holy Terror, before focussing on various elements of it in Jubilee, Scherzo and The Chimes of Midnight. It is a simple but powerful idea, and it’s a shame Fictional Hypothesis doesn’t have the time to explore it properly. Instead it comes across as a blur of The Celestial Toymaker and The Mind Robber – false TARDISes, a lonely god wanting company and entertainment, scenes forcing the main characters to live unpleasant memories, tests for the TARDIS crew to endure... even Ynotz crime is reminiscent of The Ribos Operation and The Pirate Planet, and his emotional state just like Kane in Dragonfire.
However, some matters stretch credulity – the Doctor’s mindless acceptance of weirdness in the first episode, and the inconsistent behavior of the Prisoner in the second pale against the idea of a society imprisoning a white collar criminal in a fantasy land for two centuries. If they have the technology to reshape reality, they should really be more responsible for it. The story’s use of comedy and continuity is entertaining in its own way, and it’s sad that a story showcasing the Eleventh Doctor and Mark should be so short and ultimately pointless.
Personal Appreciation: **
A traditional Rob Shearman story before such concepts existed.
Character Stuff:
This Doctor is obsessed with 2013 Washington DC hot dogs, which are delicious. He’s something of an expert in this time period, knowing its history off by heart – though he hasn’t been there for 500 years time, his time. He helped out construct the Roosevelt Monument and his fourth incarnation visited 2013 Texas and taught the locals how to cook a steak. He doesn’t seem to be acting the fool this week, but IS a fool to the point Mark snaps and yells at him. He recently allowed the TARDIS to take off without them, an incident Mark is still sore about, and once went to Exo-Space with a companion called “Fender”. He can do bird impressions that sound like Ron Grainer and the Radiophonic Workshop. He prefers his hot dogs with mustard and pickle relish. He always claims there is time to spare. He’s still got his sonic screwdriver, jelly babies, loves fishing for gumblejack and is furious at black segregation or slavery, especially in the enlightened future. He’s still got the knack of Venusian karate. He has an unforgivably dark past he is trying to forget and has gone to great lengths to hide it. He is upset even to be reminded said past exists. Perhaps significantly, he is reminded of it by a paperback edition of Lies of a Time Lord by Anonymous.
This week, he definitely is a future Doctor – else reminding him of Adric and Peri’s demise in Earthshock and Mindwarp respectively wouldn’t hit very hard (we also have the TV Doctors appearing in the Audio Dramas – is that a first?), along with flashbacks to Trial of a Time Lord, Logopolis, (maybe) Adrift, Planet of Fire. He remembers Katarina, Mike Smith (Remembrance of the Daleks), Kaftan (Tomb of the Cybermen), Commander Lytton (Attack of the Cybermen), Oscar Botcheby (The Two Doctors) Professor Tyler and audio companions Sara (not Jane Smith or Kingdom), Roy, and Kathy. The Doctor defends his actions by recalling his success in Terror on Terra, The Invasion, The Two Doctors and does the old Curse of Fenric trick by reciting companion names: Susan, Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Melissa, Sara, Tasha, Frodo (?!), Professor Jackijj (The Caves of Androzani), Victoria, Liz, Susie-Jo, Ben and Mel.
Mark is sick of troublesome alternate universes and the Master (suggesting either he’s in a really cranky mood and exaggerating or else there’s plenty of missing adventures.) He loses patience with the Doctor and tries to steal the Doctor’s key to the TARDIS. He knows how to cancel the TARDIS coordinate buffer (effectively a handbrake stopping the ship from taking off without them aboard.) He doesn’t know what hot dogs are, except they are made of meat. He has a more or less clear conscience over the men he’s lost, but the Prisoner is able to snap his confidence, but he never shirks from accepting responsibility of command. Once again, the idea of the Doctor fishing winds him up surprisingly quickly. He considers a peaceful life without Zylons or battle plans. He is prepared to slaughter the Prisoner given the chance.
Dara is a vegetarian and seems confident that she can quit the TARDIS for an afternoon at the Louvre and ever return. She’s right. Damn.
Observations:
Dara’s not in this one! Oooh, ECSTASY! She never appears! OOH! NIRVANA! They even abandon her in France in the last episode! LET JOY BE UNCONFINED!!!
Too many continuity references too quickly... the Master, City of Death, a swipe at Fox studios, Bill Clinton, the story being set during Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary, Dalek merchandising, the E-Space trilogy, Inferno, Battlefield... once the Doctor starts whistling his own TV theme tune, we surely approach MAXIMUM FANWANK!
“Either that or we fell through the looking glass.” Are you trying to tell us something?
Why hasn’t sensible Mark demanded his own TARDIS key yet?
That android policeman is pretty slow on the uptake, isn’t he? “You have your own intelligence and must be destroyed,” is actually rather creepy if you think about it, but it’s down to the music.
Speaking of which, the music segues from The Awakening (spooky ghost music and cheerful May Queen tune depending on the mood of the scene), The Curse of Fenric, Ghost Light and Resurrection of the Daleks more times than can be healthy.
And we are supposed to expect that the theme music is in fact, Gallifreyan birdsong?
So an alien being with an infinite life span and the powers of God... can’t stand people with colour?
Mark has nightmares of Chip Jamison’s voice... I’m right there with you, man.
Seriously, how many unseen adventures are mentioned in this story?
Rule for inter-dimensional travelers – do not judge the whole universe on the availability of hotdogs.
Preposterous Plot Points:
You’ve landed in a parallel universe. You KNOW you’ve landed in a parallel universe. STOP ACTING SO DAMN SURPRISED AT EVERYTHING!
And both the Doctor and Mark have heard all about Albert Ynotz?
How can the Doctor remember scenes he was not present?
Surely Kathy didn’t die? She was found alive and well? Did she directly afterwards? Bad karma, there.
Presumably, the Prisoner’s telepathy allows him to reshape his universe into a skewed version of where the Doctor was intending to arrive. Else, it starts to look a bit unlikely. Yet, he cannot read the Doctor’s mind to learn who King Midas was.
Notable Dialogue:
In a shock move, at no point is the title referred to in the dialogue or even alluded to.
DOCTOR: Washington DC, year 2013. Good year for a hot dog, wouldn’t you say?
MARK: 2013?
DOCTOR: Yes, quite an interesting year – the Disney Company’s just released another in a string of feature films. FOX, they just axed the most popular program on television. Everybody hates the President. And there’s a wonderful four-inch Dalek toy inside every box of Fruity-Tooty Crunch Cereal.
Why bother with dialogue when you can just exposit?
PRISONER: I am... I was... Albert Ynotz.
DOCTOR: Ynotz? Where have I heard that name before? Weren’t you involved in the... er... something or other?
MARK: The planetary counterfeit scandal of Senex V?
DOCTOR: Yes, that’s right! I read about you at the Academy!
PRISONER: Precisely. I was sentenced to live in this parallel dimension for two hundred years. My only means of entertainment was this helmet, which allows me to create imaginary worlds... universes... all subject to my will. Once my sentence was complete, I was free to leave. Instead, I decided to stay, having found that my reality was the only one I could live with anymore.
DOCTOR: The ultimate choice. To have a world, a world all your own, the only price being your freedom...
PRISONER: I’ve been here so long, I no longer think of myself as a person any more, but as an entity. Just the Prisoner.
Pay close attention to this, cause it’s something of a running theme...
DOCTOR: Lies of a Time Lord by Anonymous. Very interesting indeed. Yawn.
PRISONER: Why don’t you read the first page?
DOCTOR: All right... How did you know that?!
PRISONER: Your own mind told me. Yes, everything you know I know. Your deepest, darkest secrets, Doctor. It seems your past is...
DOCTOR: THE PAST!
PRISONER: Yes, but still a part OF you, no matter how much you’ve tried to deny it. Or hide it.
DOCTOR: (PAINED) Why do you revisit this to me?
PRISONER: Doctor? Doctor? A moment of inward reflection? Oh, I had to look long and deep to find this, you know. You buried so far beneath even you had begun to believe it was a terrible nightmare, a story that you heard long ago that happened to someone else. You’d believe ANYTHING as long as that bit of history was dead and buried.
DOCTOR: You can’t know. I made sure...
PRISONER: You made sure of what, Doctor? That no one else would find out? But I did! This façade you cover yourself in masks the real you, but you can’t keep it hidden forever. You know that, don’t you?
DOCTOR: We have all done things in the past that we regret.
PRISONER: Regret?! Is that what you would call it?! Do you honestly think that makes acceptable restitution?!
DOCTOR: It’s all I can offer.
PRISONER: But there is more, Doctor! You who took must now give! Your lives, Time Lord. Would you give your lives to bury the past?
DOCTOR: I cannot undo what I have done!
PRISONER: Your lives. Give them up and you’ll finally be free.
DOCTOR: NO!
PRISONER: Would you not give your immortality up to be free from the spectres that haunt you? Say it! “I want to be free! I want to be free!”
DOCTOR: YES! Let my past die with my regeneration...
DOCTOR: A person cannot be tempted by something he doesn’t want.
Cliffhangers:
1. The Doctor suggests to Mark they head back to the TARDIS rather than hang around the loser in front of them, and Ynotz announces he intends to keep them with him – forever. A bit like... well... far too many cliffhangers to recount, but start with Stones of Blood cliffhanger three and work your way outwards.
2. France, 1996. But when the local fast food outlet claims they have no hotdogs, the Doctor and Mark panic and flee to the TARDIS, thinking it is another false reality. In fact, the angry Frenchman was simply out of hotdogs, not that they never existed. Still, that’s the French for you.
Miscellaneous:
The title sequence is changed again. This time the Dominic Glynn’s Trial of a Time Lord theme tune and the photo of the Doctor is no longer so painfully embarrassing but now we crash zoom into his right cheek instead of the eyes as is traditional. The middle eight is still punctuated with slivers of the Tom Baker title sequence flashing over the starscape in time with the music, but there are no more twists and turns. The logo is different too.
What Could Have Been Done To Improve It:
- Lose the Doctor’s stupidity in episode one.
- Keep the music a bit more centred rather than from all over the 1980s.
- Give it some plot and better characterization of Ynotz.
The Party Line:
Alice Through the Looking Glass fans would love this story. Anyone else might find it all a bit too silly. The Doctor’s eccentricity is OTT, but admittedly very funny. The story suffers terribly from the minimalist interpretation given; it seems almost that this was something done at the last minute, which it was. Due credit is given to the writer for coming up with what’s here, but it definitely needed the time for some extra fleshing out. David Segal gives a great performance as the tortured Prisoner. The scene at the end where the Doctor tries to convince the Prisoner to leave his world and the Prisoner deciding to stay is worthy of an award.
The Awful Truth:
A rather derivative story, clearly written at the last minute. The Prisoner changes mood randomly according to the plot – and fantasy worlds with lots of continuity angst is pretty much the easiest fan fiction to write. When the Prisoner is actually written as pitiful, it’s rather moving, but it’s hard to give a damn about him. Certainly the farewell scene is not much cop, being totally predictable and a dramatic copout as the self-imposed exile... remains a self-imposed exile. Nice concepts, but very much a stopgap story.
Illustrations:
The cover for Fictional Hypothesis. Seriously, what is wrong with Mark's head?!
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