Kaleidoscope

Third Doctor Adventures #10

Released: 25 October 2022

Listened: 1/20/23

It seems like the Third Doctor Adventures are now boxes with just a single long story. This one once again features Tim Treloar, John Culshaw, and Sadie Miller, all of whom continue to sound better and more confident in their roles. It also features Christopher Naylor as Harry Sullivan, making his chronologically first appearance as UNIT’s new Chief Medical Officer. The story takes advantage of the Cold War, having sections take place in Siberia, and the Russians as the bad guys behind a lot of what’s going on. What actually is going on is a bit tricky, because there are a number of overlapping plots. Mostly, there’s an unusual alien named Kaleidoscope (“Kal”) of the naive, “just want to learn about Earth” type, although he picks up skills and information amazingly quickly, and even replaces the Doctor as UNIT scientific advisor for a bit. He even has his own adventure thwarting a demonic invasion, almost entirely off-screen. There’s also a swarm of nanobots that invade a military base, as they do, with the requisite butting of heads between the Brigadier and a hard-nosed Air Commander, who of course won’t listen to anything the Doctor says. He’s played by Mark Elstob, who frankly overacts the part, with the Commander being by turns stubborn, indecisive, and cowardly. He’s matched in the overacting department by Helen Goldwyn, playing Daphne Green, an old friend of the Brigadier’s who vamps up every scene she’s in. As both Elstob and Goldwyn are skilled voice actors, I have to conclude the over-the-top-ness is the result of Nick Briggs’ direction. Admittedly, everybody seems to be having a lot of fun and not taking the whole thing too seriously. There are a pile of continuity references, some of which are quite meta, aimed directly at the listener. The Brigadier even cracks a “reverse the polarity” joke, which I rather doubt he would have done in the classic series. We even get an explanation for why Sarah Jane got a new car between “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” and “Planet of the Spiders,” which is wholly unnecessary, but there it is. It seems like the point is really the character interactions and continuity references, rather than the plot itself. Which is fine now and again, but I hope the series doesn’t continue that way.