Aimed at the Body

Main Range #269

Released: 1 October 2020

Listened: 10/16/20

I’m not 100% sure where these go yet, so I’ll slot them in this “Fifth Doctor solo” period until I learn otherwise. This is another quartet of short stories, under the heading “Shadow of the Daleks 1,” which is odd coming so soon after "Time Apart," with the same format. However, this form was a necessity because of the 2020 Covid lockdown, which rendered some actors unavailable. In this one, the Doctor ends up in Australia in 1933, where he immediately runs into cricketer Douglas Jardine, his girlfriend Flora, and her mother, who are on a trek in the mountains, but have lost their guide. Douglas is a famous, and somewhat controversial cricketer, known for an aggressive style of play, and of course the Fifth Doctor has opinions about this. As an American, it went almost completely over my head, but writer James Kettle does put in enough Cliff’s notes that I wasn’t entirely lost. I don’t know how an actual cricket fan would feel about it. There are Daleks lurking about -- and the one the Doctor sees looks like a new-series Dalek, a fact that he comments on -- but they don’t seem to be doing much of anything, except causing a temporal problem. As a one-part story, it’s nearly meaningless, but as part 1 of an eight-part story, it sets the scene and starts the mystery off nicely.