September 24, 2024: Tales of the TARDIS / Children in Need Special 2023

It's been over a year since "The Power of the Doctor" aired, but now the 60th anniversary is fast approaching.  (And, incidentally, since my last post I've somehow passed the 10th anniversary of the start of this blog.  Anniversaries all around!)  As we learned at the end of the previous episode, the incoming fourteenth Doctor somehow looks like a slightly older version of the tenth Doctor, and it's been made fairly clear that the 60th anniversary specials will be focused on David Tennant and (unlike the 50th anniversary special) won't be another multi-Doctor story.  But that doesn't mean we can't have other Doctors.  And so, in order to celebrate the arrival of nearly the full run of the 20th-century version of the show to iPlayer, the production team created six short scenes involving old Doctors and companions to serve as introductions and conclusions to six of those stories, edited into single-episode form, and released them under the umbrella title of Tales of the TARDIS.

The setting for these scenes are all in a "remembered TARDIS", a hodge-podge of various TARDIS bits jammed haphazardly together, along with items from past adventures generally strewn about everywhere.  In each of these segments we're introduced to older versions of a pair of people (Doctor/companion for three of them, and two companions for the other three) who take the opportunity to tell each other the story of one of their adventures -- in other words, to introduce the edited version of the classic story in question.  In this regard it's a lot like the Lockdown "season" in 2020, only this time the focus is on the 20th-century run instead of the 21st-century stories.  Plus, the nature of this remembered TARDIS is that we can meet up with people who've left the Doctor and see what happened next, without needing to worry about visiting their times and places.  And much like how this TARDIS is jumbled together, with Doctors and companions from all over the universe, so too is there no specific, chronological order to the stories we're presented.

Instead we start with the fifth Doctor and Tegan, encountering each other and commenting on how old they look -- in Tegan's case due to aging, in the Doctor's case possibly due to the nature of the remembered TARDIS (or possibly something to do with timestreams, according to the seventh Doctor in the final segment of these six) -- before encouraging each other to remember Adric's final adventures against the Cybermen (in other words, Earthshock).  And if that was all these did, that would be rather sweet, but instead they've decided to push things a little bit.  In this case, Tegan points out the nature of the show back then and how they never really stopped to grieve: "He died, we sailed on, we had more adventures.  We never stopped.  We never stopped to think!"  "That's because of me," the Doctor says a bit ruefully.  "I never stop to think."  The nature of the segment means it can't do more than just observe these issues, but it's still a nice acknowledgment.  If there's any real quibble to be had here, it's that this reunion has slightly less impact, since we just saw something similar in the last episode. (Well, that, and the slightly odd suggestion that not only does Tegan live with Nyssa, but that she sleeps in jeans and a dressy button-down blouse.  Assuming that's what that line of dialogue means, that is; it's a bit hard to work out the actual intent of the line.  But I digress.)  But it's still nice to see the fifth Doctor and Tegan again.

Peri and the sixth Doctor in the remembered TARDIS. ("Tales of
the TARDIS: Vengeance on Varos") ©BBC

The next four segments provide various means of catching up.  We meet Jamie and Zoe as they remember the events of The Mind Robber, where not only are their memories of the Doctor and their adventures permanently restored post-The War Games (and you can just picture writer Pete McTighe gleefully righting this wrong, 54 years later) but we learn that Jamie is a grandfather and Zoe is a President (of what specifically, we don't know), both making the Doctor proud in their own way.  Then it's time for the sixth Doctor (in a tasteful tan and burgundy ensemble instead of the multicoloured patchwork outfit) and Peri to encounter each other.  "The warrior queen!" the Doctor exclaims.  "You got old," Peri remarks.  "And bigger. And beardier!" he replies. "Time marches on, Peri, even for a Time Lord.  It really has no respect."  Perhaps the most striking thing about this segment is, for those who only know the sixth Doctor from his TV stories, how much softer Colin Baker's portrayal here is.  For those of us who've grown accustomed to Baker's performance on his Big Finish audios over the years this makes perfect sense, but I wonder how jarring it is for that viewer who's making their way through the content on iPlayer.  But in any event, it's still great fun to see the two of them interact together, with a sense of wonder and adventure that was occasionally lacking back during season 22.

After that we get Jo Jones (née Grant) meeting up with Clyde Langer from the Sarah Jane Adventures, in a pairing first seen in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Death of the Doctor, so that Jo can tell Clyde about the time she met three Doctors in, er, The Three Doctors.  ("Well, no, actually, two and a bit," Jo says.)  The perhaps surprising thing in this segment is that we learn Clyde hasn't actually told Rani how he feels about her -- surprising because, as Jo notes here, "I saw it every time the two of you were together."  But it seems like Jo gets through to Clyde when she implores him to tell Rani.  And then there's the sweet way Jo is reunited with her husband Cliff after he had passed away, thanks to this memory TARDIS.

The next segment has us revisit the first Doctor era, as Steven and Vicki return to remember The Time Meddler.  We get to see Steven is still the ruler of the planet of the Elders ("I did become a king, you know," he tells Vicki), while Vicki and Troilus are happily married, Troilus having survived the fall of Troy after all.  It's really lovely to see Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien slip back into their characters, and the way Steven calls Vicki his little sister is nicely touching.

The final one of these Tales of the TARDIS features the seventh Doctor and Ace, recalling The Curse of Fenric.  In some way this is the most interesting of these six Tales because it carries on the brief conversation between the two that happened in "The Power of the Doctor".  There Ace told the Doctor she hadn't understood the burden he carried; here the Doctor apologizes more directly: "I did things I'm not proud of.  I used you, manipulated you, kept secrets.  No wonder you abandoned ship."  We also learn that Ace left after an adventure fighting the Rani, with the Doctor accidentally dropping her off in London, Ontario, instead of London, England.  It's clear that these two still have affection for each other, with both having had time to reflect over their falling-out, and while ending with a quotation from the end of Survival might perhaps be a bit obvious, it's also a nice send-off for these little segments: the Doctor and Ace, once again fighting injustice in the TARDIS.

Tales of the TARDIS isn't a huge, important story; it's just a way to spend a bit more time with some beloved characters while also remembering some of the stories that made them beloved in the first place.  But it's genuinely a delight to have these moments here at the 60th anniversary -- and if they get to address some unfinished business and tie up a couple loose ends along the way, so much the better.

The fourteenth Doctor regards the Dalek that he smashed into. ("Children
in Need 2023") ©BBC

But now it's time to leave the past and turn to the future -- even if that future curiously looks like the past.  It's time for the fourteenth Doctor to make his debut, and, much how David Tennant first appeared in a short Children in Need scene back in 2005 as the tenth Doctor, so too does he do the same thing here as the fourteenth Doctor in 2023's edition of Children in Need. Officially, this special is just called "Children in Need Special 2023" (or slight variations thereof), but writer Russell T Davies called it "Destination: Skaro" in an Instagram post, which is as good a name for this as anything.  As with the other Children in Need specials, this isn't meant to be anything too crazy or intense: instead, we observe Davros at the creation of the Daleks.  It's so early, in fact, that Davros here isn't confined to his Dalek-like chair, instead appearing as a rather hunched-over scientist (although he's once again played by Julian Bleach, in a nice bit of continuity). Supposedly Davies made this change to Davros because he didn't want to perpetuate the stereotype of disabled people being evil (something I must confess I never considered, having thought about his condition entirely in relation to the look of the Daleks themselves -- but perhaps that's my privilege showing), but it does push the creation of the Daleks back relative to Davros's accident and lead to all sorts of puzzles for fans trying to work these sorts of things out.

But that's a lot of continuity weight to put on something that's meant to be quite slight.  The scene is mainly about Davros's assistant, Castavillian, trying to come up with a good name for the Mark III travel machine, one that's an anagram of "Kaled".  (Which probably therefore also plays havoc with Dalek history versus how we see things play out in Genesis of the Daleks, but never mind.)  As Castavillian contemplates different possible names, the TARDIS smashes into reality from the vortex, embedding itself into the wall and shearing off the Mark III's multi-dextrous claw.  And then David Tennant appears as if he'd never been away: "Hello!  Just passing by, 'cos I got a bit lost.  It's funny, sixty minutes ago I was this really brilliant woman, and now I've got this old face back again.  I mean, why?  'Why?' I ask of you, my brand-new friend.  Why?"  But it's when he realizes he smashed into a Dalek, and that he's there at the very beginning of the Daleks, that he begins to panic slightly. "Look, I was never, ever here.  Never!" he says as he realizes the bootstrap paradox he's creating, referring to the Mark III as a Dalek and using the word "exterminate".  And apparently the Doctor is responsible for the iconic Dalek plunger arm, as he literally takes a plunger and jams it into the socket where the claw had been, in an effort to fix the Dalek before Davros comes back.  "Never here," the Doctor says as he departs. Fortunately for Castavillian, when Davros does come back and see it, he decides he likes the plunger.

"Destination: Skaro" is a fun little chance to see David Tennant as the Doctor once more before he makes his full-length debut.  As long as you don't think about it too hard -- and you ignore the genuinely appalling "funny" score that may be some of the worst music in the entire series -- then this is a nice little teaser before the main event.

But now the main event has arrived: it's time for the first of the 60th anniversary specials -- "The Star Beast"...