The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Macros

The Macros: Part One (22/03/26)

That was a really interesting episode with some clever ideas and plenty of atmosphere and tension. Most interesting, though, is that it's written by actress Ingrid Pitt and her partner, Tony Rudkin!

It's based around the legendary Philadelphia Experiment with the Doctor and Peri arriving on the USS Eldridge. These early scenes of the Doctor and Peri walking around the decaying remains of the naval vessel were the most atmospheric and very reminiscent of both The Space Museum where, as here, they were invisible to the people they encountered, and the SS Bernice sequences of Carnival Of Monsters. The ship is being eaten away by a green rust and they soon encounter Professor Tessler and the ship's Bosun who were shielded from the effects of the experiment (apparently) because of where they were inside the ship. The Doctor commits to helping them and, after analysing the green rust, figures out the Eldridge is trapped in a time loop it can't escape because its energy is being drained by a microscopic dimension. This is where the story went off at a tangent.

The microscopic dimension is basically a Fascistic world ruled by Presidentor Osloo, a Thatcher-like figure who married her way into power and has harnessed the energy from the Philadelphia Experiment for her planet's needs. Travelling to the micro-dimension, the Doctor and Peri both fail in getting her to stop, the Doctor being arrested and imprisoned with Osloo's stepson, Ezz, who she's arrested for opposing her regime, and Peri managing to get to speak to her but also arrested for being one of Ezz's supporters (an assumption made when Peri said she needed Osloo to stop draining power from the energy barrier created by the Experiment). All this despite the Doctor offering to provide an alternate energy source.

It's basic, repressed society, Cold War-style stuff which probably rings even more familiar in 2026 than it did in either 1986 or 2010 (when this audio was adapted and recorded). It's a really interesting idea which led to a very unexpected cliffhanger. Upon arrival in the micro-universe, the Doctor had adjusted the TARDIS interior (or something) to compensate for Peri's different physiognomy to that of the micro-dimension. Having escaped with Ezz and his partner, Yka, the TARDIS materialised back on the Eldridge in time for them to witness the wheelhouse about to collapse and crush Tessler and the Bosun. Peri ran out to save them, but before the Doctor could compensate for the difference between dimensions and the cliffhanger saw Peri aging to death! It's a very cool idea which was subtly flagged early on yet came out of the blue. It makes you wonder if this is it for her (I mean, obviously not halfway through a story) as the story begins with the Doctor and Peri discussing their destination being Brooklyn so she could see her mother and stepfather (or at least check up on them) after disappearing from Lanzarote. Could they feasibly kill Peri off in the last story of the season? It would arguably be an impressive way to go, saving the Professor and the Bosun's lives, but also rather silly. I'm intrigued as to how this will be resolved. As with Leviathan and The Hollows Of Time, this has been an improvement on the first three serials.

The Macros: Part Two (29/03/26)

That was a really interesting story. The Doctor managed to get Peri back into the TARDIS before she aged to death and took her to the Zero Room to recover (it seems he must have constructed a new one since Castrovalva). This all seemed a little contrived - a dramatic situation happening just because the episode needed a cliffhanger, but it had relevance to the end of the story which was a nice payoff. 

Meanwhile, Osloo persuaded Ezz's friend Mers to take her to were he'd seen the TARDIS dematerialise, not believing his story, just as it returned from an expedition to Earth to try and get Professor Tessler's wife to pass on a message to stop the Philadelphia Experiment so that the Professor and the Bosun, and all the now-dead crew wouldn't be trapped in a rapidly decaying void. The Doctor had explained that whilst the Professor and the Bosun had experienced only a week or two of time, it was actually around 60 years since the experiment and there was no way the Doctor could take them back to their own time in the wake of the experiment. 

Osloo commandeered the TARDIS and they returned to the void expecting the USS Eldridge to have disappeared only to learn their mission had failed. Osloo, however, found out that the TARDIS is both a time and space machine and dimensionally transcendental (from the Professor, who sided with her in order to be taken back to his wife) and decided to make the TARDIS her military transport so she could conquer the Earth.

There was a bit of filler where the deck collapsed under Peri leading to Yka being lowered down to save her (which brought back memories of Timelash) before they all piled into the TARDIS and returned to Capron where Osloo (and the Bosun) left the TARDIS before the Doctor had made adjustments to the dimensional field and were reduced to babies (a bit like in The Leisure Hive). On the way there, Osloo had shot the Professor after she revealed she wasn't going to help him, and the Doctor ended up installing a power source (a battery from Earth) which could provide infinite energy to Capron in its micro-universe, and Ezz vowed to try and find his father (possibly not dead as had previously been claimed) before replacing Osloo as Capron's leader. It was a decent story, very character-led, and I could imagine it being filmed in 1985 and being quite a good given a decent enough budget.

Overall, this season has been a very mixed bag and even though the second half was brilliant, two of the stories I listened to were in replacement of unavailable unmade scripts which may have not been as good. Of those stories we did have, the quality was a decided drop from the previous season, repeating previous mistakes and, at worst, simply being embarrassing to sit through. Only Christopher Hamilton Bidmead gave us a good story and, I'm sorry to say, one out of four isn't good enough, especially when that one is the last we come to. I think we dodged a bullet by the show being put on hiatus, but I'll only really be able to say once I've seen the real Season 23 later this year, and who knows what I'll think of that!