Mission to Magnus

Lost Stories #1.2

Released: 9 December 2009

Listened: 4/4/20

This is one of those stories that pulls in stuff from the Doctor’s past without considering whether it makes sense. It makes an awkward story, but one that probably fits in 1985, when JNT didn’t care that much about story quality. In this case, there’s a Time Lord named Anzor, on a mission from the High Council to the planet Magnus. Magnus is a planet entirely populated by women, where men die of a virus before they reach maturity. So of course Anzor is a raging sexist, which makes little sense for a 1985 story, but is even worse now that we know about Time Lords’ flexibility as relates to gender. Anzor is also an old classmate of the Doctor’s, a bully who the Doctor is terrified of at the beginning of the story, but not later, for no reason. Sil is here, also for no real reason, having lost face after his failure on Varos. In the second part, Anzor disappears, and the Ice Warriors turn up, trying to knock the entire planet out of orbit, which is a bit of a stretch even for them. The whole story ends up making little sense, and is shockingly sexist. The extras reveal that the cast knows it too, and thinks it’s OK because people will understand that it was meant to be performed in 1985, but I think it was appallingly sexist even for then. I really dislike this one.