We have our first multi-Doctor audio for the Big Finish Lost Stories range, featuring the First (Stephen Noonan), Second (Michael Troughton), and Third (Tim Treloar) Doctors; all originally portrayed onscreen by William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee respectively. Simply titled Deathworld, it revisits the early roots of The Three Doctors with John Dorney adapting the original treatment by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, as submitted to the BBC in 1972.
So… what makes Deathworld dramatically different from the Season 10 serial, which opens Doctor Who‘s 10th anniversary celebrations?
The audio adaptation doesn’t feature Omega and his grotesque Gel guards, since they weren’t conceived at that point. Instead, a personified Death (Joe Shire) and the President (Dianne Pilkington) play chess, with the Doctors and their companions being pawns in the game. (FYI, I’ve never played chess in my life, so please forgive me for my lack of knowledge.) Taken from their respective time periods, the lead protagonists are placed in different locations on the board whilst pitted against the Seven Deadly Sins (voiced by director David O’Mahony). Considering that some elements were later reused in The Five Doctors, it’s totally understandable that budget constraints were a key factor in the early 1970s.
While Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) is featured as one of the main companions, alongside Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Jon Culshaw), the First Doctor’s appearance has been greatly expanded. Sadly, due to ill health, Hartnell wasn’t able to physically appear alongside his immediate successors onscreen; save for filming his final scenes at Ealing Studios, by reading his lines from cue cards. Nevertheless, it’s a real honour that he had the lifetime opportunity to do promotional photos with Troughton and Pertwee – all together as a trio.
If the main concepts weren’t intriguing enough, alongside Tim Steemson’s atmospheric sound design and music, there were also some nostalgic references which turned out to be quite funny. Firstly, the Second Doctor and Jamie have no idea who the Brigadier is, with the latter hilariously getting the wrong impression that the Cybermen are working with the Yeti; all because Deathworld is set before The Web of Fear and The Invasion in their timeline. And secondly, the First Doctor mistakes the Brigadier for Bret Vyon (from The Daleks’ Master Plan) upon encountering; I personally like to think that Bret is the Brigadier’s descendant, hence both characters being portrayed onscreen by the late Nicholas Courtney.
It feels refreshing to have the three recast Doctors interacting with each other, from working as a team to their constant bickering, in a similar fashion to their original actors. What intrigues me about this is that both Noonan and Troughton have previously appeared in the Third Doctor Adventures, but as different characters — two of my favourite stories in the range, Troughton in Primord (from Volume 5), and Noonan in Kaleidoscope (not to mention Treloar and Manning doing the same in Beyond War Games, just months after Troughton made his early debut in The Annihilators).
After adapting two of my favourite Lost Stories, The Elite and Return of the Cybermen, Dorney doesn’t miss a trick at bringing Deathworld to life (no pun intended); he’s very much an expert at weaving Baker and Martin’s original plot strands, plus his own additions, into the script. Although I won’t spoil a certain moment, which I suggest clicking until after you finish listening to the audio, allow me to quote one of my favourite songs in the Whoniverse, “There’s always a twist at the end.“
Overall, Deathworld is one of the strongest entries in the Lost Stories range, equally outstanding as Operation Werewolf. Despite the unfortunate delayed release, as a result of ongoing issues with the revamped Big Finish website and app, it was definitely worth the wait for Big Finish’s alternate take on The Three Doctors. Strangely enough, on a separate note, both the main cover artwork and the cast listing have the companions receiving the lead star billings. That’s because of the casting being arranged in “alphabetical order”, which Dorney confirmed on social media. But don’t worry, the alt cover fixes that.
Deathworld is available now from Big Finish.
