The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Leviathan

Leviathan: Part One (15/02/26)

Wow! Now that was good! It shouldn't really be a surprise that, with the success of Robin Of Sherwood on ITV, a story like this was proposed. Right now, in some other universe, Robert Holmes would have got as far as scripting Yellow Fever And How To Cure It and Big Finish no doubt would have adapted that to great acclaim (I'm sure) and I'm listening to the Sixth Doctor and Peri battling the Autons in Singapore with possibly the Master or the Rani or both involved, too, but I honestly don't think it would have been a patch on this story - or the first episode, at least. 

The influence of ITV's Robin Hood drama is very clear from the start. The TARDIS arrives in what appears to be a Medieval English woodland to witness Gurth (I wonder how he got that name!), a young local, being hunted by Herne the Hunter and a pack of dogs. Peri, at this point, looks up the history of Herne for context, leaving out the part that the figure of British folklore was an important character in Robin Of Sherwood (1984-1986). She and the Doctor then go to help Gurth, hiding in some caves which happen to contain the hidden base of a group of outlaws known as The Pariah. These outlaws take the opportunity to attack Herne and his dogs and drive him away at the cost of one of their own and, whilst the Doctor discovers that the dogs (killed by the outlaws) are androids, Gurth and then Peri are taken prisoner.

The Doctor makes his way to the village, encountering the local Priest, Osbert, and his housekeeper, Maude, noting various curiosities such as the lack of shops or a tavern, white bread and high cleanliness in the priest's cottage, until he's arrested and taken to the local castle's dungeon. Meanwhile, the outlaws have taken a crossbow from one of the guards accompanying Herne which is actually a laser weapon and use it to blow a hole in the castle wall. The Doctor (on the other side) wins their trust by getting them to hide while he's taken to be interrogated by the Baron, but an ensuing fight between the outlaws and the Baron's soldiers ends with them being driven away or dead. 

During the Doctor's encounter with the Baron it turned out that someone called Zeron is pulling the strings and that they're associated  with The Sentinels Of The New Dawn whose Rising Sun emblem is the Baron's coat of arms and on a tapestry in the Priest's cottage. This group were mentioned at the start of the episode when Peri was looking up the history of Herne in the TARDIS data banks - they used a seven-foot-tall biomechanoid of Herne as their chief assassin. There was a sword fight between the Doctor and the Baron which was initiated with possibly one of Colin's best delivered lines:

Baron: Do you know how many I've killed?

Doctor: I know how many I have, Baron. Be thankful you don't!

I swear, if this story had been filmed it would have made up for how bad this series (and this era so far) has been! Colin trouncing a Medieval Baron in a swordfight? Yes please! Scenes of him comforting one of the outlaws as he died (which was a bit like the scene with the mutant in the Dalek story but with better context) and facing off against the Priest and Zeron - these are things largely absent from the Sixth Doctor's era so far, or spoiled by being in otherwise shoddy stories.

The mystery further deepens when Peri finally persuaded Gurth to take her to the village to find the Doctor where they found the priest's house deserted - Gurth lived there with Osbert, Maude and a young girl called Althya - and, while there, the rest of the village turned up with Osbert and a new Gurth; a younger doppelganger. This all fits with Gurth being hunted because it was 'his time', that he had no concept of parents or relatives beyond 'Uncle' Osbert, and that the Pariah are all escapees from Herne's hunt who are none much older than twenty. Gurth and Peri made it to a barn where they found the Doctor (who'd escaped the castle) and they fled by horse to the outlaws' cave where the Doctor located a hidden door which led to the frankly brilliant cliffhanger.

This was all built up to very well and it was quite clear that this wasn't Medieval England from all the little clues laid out throughout the episode, but none of that detracted from the reveal of the Doctor, Peri and Gurth stepping from the cave into a metal corridor to look out of the porthole of a massive ship travelling through space! I think that's got to be the best cliffhanger the Sixth Doctor never had and I'm not sure it could even have been spoilt if they'd done it with a crash-zoom on Colin's face! 

It's a huge shame this one was never made in 1986 and an even huger shame it wasn't even scheduled as part of the cancelled season. It taps into the popularity of Robin Of Sherwood at the time - viewers had seen Robin of Loxley die at the end of the previous season and the new series, which would start at the beginning of April 1986, would see Jason 'Jondar' Connery take over as Robert of Huntingdon, the second Robin Hood. Also, judging by how good the location work was for that series, as well as the BBC's own The Tripods, plus The Mark Of The Rani, Revelation Of The Daleks and the upcoming opening episodes of the real Season 23, it would have looked very impressive. Whilst the opening three stories make me feel like we dodged a bullet when the show was put on hiatus, this story, or something like it, could have been the show's saving grace. How the story is concluded may change my mind but this episode has been the highlight of the Sixth Doctor's era so far!

Leviathan: Part Two (22/02/26)

It's a massive shame this story was never commissioned as I'm fairly sure it would have translated very well on screen, looked incredibly good, and been a highlight of the Colin Baker era. Since Paul Finch scripted it from his father's storyline there's no guarantee it would have been quite the same (especially after Saward had got his hands on it), but the mix of Robin Of Sherwood visuals with the sort of Sci Fi elements we got in Terminus, Vengeance On Varos and Revelation Of The Daleks would have made it stand out in a season which, so far, has been pretty bland and uninspiring. I also think Yellow Fever And How To Cure It could never have been remotely as good as this might have been despite the possibility of filming in Singapore with a script by Robert Holmes, and largely due to the prospect of the return of the Autons, the Master and (maybe) the Rani - I mean, look at the mess they made of the Sontarans. I don't think the Autons would have been a patch on their 70s versions. 

The second episode was as packed with events as the first. It turned out that the Medieval society was on a Leviathan spaceship (hence the story title) disabled by a meteor storm, and the young inhabitants were clones overseen by Aunts and Uncles until they were old enough to start questioning things, at which point they'd be sent to be 'recycled'. This meant they would be melted down and their bodies would be used to feed the growing foetuses of their replacements. This was the fate that befell Siward after he was killed fleeing the castle which the Doctor and Eada witnessed as they explored beneath the throne room, Peri and the other Pariahs having escaped. All of this was overseen by the Baron and he, his guards, and the Aunts and Uncles were all robots ruled by the ship's computer, Zeron, which had also been damaged by the meteor storm.

Meanwhile, a freighter had stumbled across the drifting Leviathan and its captain, Chandris, and his deputy, Gregorian, planned on salvaging the wreck. Their other crewmate, Soltan, wasn't keen on the idea, however, especially after he learned that they'd hacked into the Zeron computer and instructed it to terminate all the Humans on board as they were only clones and not worth saving. Ultimately, he ended up contacting the Doctor and Peri and helping them rescue the survivors on the Leviathan, and there was a subplot about The Sentinels Of The New Dawn - a 22nd Century Illuminati who had mysteriously disappeared - who turned out were hiding aboard the Leviathan and using it to travel to a new homeworld to escape justice for their crimes, guarded by the Herne and feeding off the clones while they were in hypersleep. Except the systems keeping them alive had been knocked out by the meteor storm and they'd all died in their sleep. They didn't really impact the story except for being an explanation for everything going on and were set up as a likely Big Bad at the start of Part One, but I quite liked the world building they brought to the story and the message that even the most rich, powerful and corrupt can find themselves at the mercy of nature and meet an ignominious fate.

I don't feel I've written nearly enough on this story, but it was incredibly well plotted, had an incredibly good cliffhanger, featured some great performances, saw Colin performing at his very best with a Sixth Doctor who I wish we'd seen much more of on screen and, thanks to it sharing elements with contemporary shows such as Robin Of Sherwood and The Tripods, was very easy to visualise and felt very much of its time. There was even some fairly violent and gruesome bits which felt like they fitted in with what we'd seen in the previous season but here didn't feel overtly gratuitous. All in all, I think this is one of the best Colin Baker stories I've experienced so far and is vastly superior to the stories which we know were going to be a part of Season 23 and were completely scripted at the time. Oh well, onward we go!