The Prydonian Chapter

Gun Rules For Gun Nuts

2012-01-01T06:48:00.006-08:00

Just in case there aren't enough guns for you in the original rules.

Small Arms

Weapon/Range/To hit/Shots/Round
Holdout pistol 6” /4+ / 1
Pistol 8” /4+ /1
Victorian Rifle 24"/5+ /1
WWI/WWII Rifle 30"/4+ /1
Carbine 15"/4+ /2
SMG 12"/4+ /3 (burst)
Battle Rifle (1970s U.N.I.T.) 24"/4+ /1
LMG 30"/4+ / 3 (burst)
Assault Rifle (U.N.I.T. now) 18"/4+ /2
SFMG 36"/4+ /3 (burst)
HMG 48"/4+ /3 (burst, STR 4)

All STR 3 unless otherwise stated

SMG = Submachine gun
LMG = Light Machine Gun such as a Bren gun.
SFMG = Sustained Fire Machine Gun. This is the usual weapon fitted to British armoured vehicles. If removed from its mount or tripod and fitted with a lightweight barrel it becomes an LMG.
HMG = Heavy Machine Gun.

Victorian rifles take one action to reload
LMG, SFMG, HMG take 2 actions to fire a burst
Carbines and Assault Rifles may shoot twice in one action
SFMG and HMG may not move unless dismantled (2 actions)
WWI/WWII rifles includes modern sniper rifles
Carbines include everything from the Winchester Repeaters used by cowboys to the Hecklar & Koch's used by modern armed police (as in Aliens of London)

Heavy Weapons with One Crew

Because of the weight of the weapon and ammunition, Heavy Weapons (HMGs, SFMGs, mortars, Bazookas) may not move unless they have two crew, with the exception of Bazookas which may move but only with one shell in the weapon and no reloads. Additionally, HMGs and SFMGs, unless mounted on vehicles, jam if two of the 'hit' dice rolled are the same.

Pinned

If a figure survives a roll to loose a Hit that could have destroyed it, but the dice roll is one or two less than the required score, the figure counts as Pinned for its next activation and may not move or attack. This represents a soldier diving for cover after a near miss, or a monster sent reeling backwards by bullets that didn't penetrate its armour. A figure with more than one Hit is also Pinned for the Activation after it looses a Hit.

A figure cannot be Pinned it it successfully used an Invulnerable, Armoured Body or similar Saving Throw, if it has more than one Hit left or if its DEF is three or more than the weapons STR.

ATRLs ("Bazookas")

Anti-tank Rocket Launchers are powerful but short ranged and inaccurate.

They have a maximum range of 12", hit on a 5 or 6 and are STR 5 in the 1970s or STR 6 for more advanced versions.

Shooting at Vehicles

+ 1 Shooting at a car, van or light armoured vehicle
+ 2 Shooting at a lorry or tank

-1 Target moved more than 10” across line-of-sight
-2 Target moved more than 25” across line-of-sight

Roll d6 for a hit:

1,2 Engine Vehicle immobilised
3,4 Tires Half speed until Repair carried out
5,6 Body
Roll again:
1,2 Driver
3,4 Rear passenger/front cargo space
5,6 Boot/rear cargo space

+1 (to both dice) Shot at from the front
- 1 (to both dice) Shot at from the rear

[More information than any normal person can want about the guns in the New Series of Doctor Who can be found here.]

Leadership and Activation

A variant of the rules we usually play is to allow all of a players figures to activate every turn.

Leader ability is then used to raise the Morale of troops a leader commands. They must be within 12 inches and in line-of-sight and only one leader can influence one group at a time.

Doctor Who Miniatures Game

2012-01-01T06:48:00.004-08:00

Doctor Who Miniatures Game is a tabletop wargame by Graeme Dawson which provides a welcome escape from the grim reality of the real world whilst promoting harmony between the generations. After all, who wouldn't enjoy pushing model Daleks around a board? Not Matt Smith certainly, as you can see.

My first wargame in the Doctor Who universe was at the Derby Old Glory Wargames show in 2008. It was put on by the Fantasy and Science Fiction Society and used some unfathomable rules and a barking mad scenario. However it was immense fun not only year old son who I'd dragged along for the day.

Having discovered that whilst he may not be as keen as I am to wargame the whole of the 1879 Zulu War, he did enjoy pitching UNIT into unequal combat against Cybermen, Daleks, Yetis or anything else I could paint. A faulty link stopped me buying the old Doctor Who Invasion Earth rules, which was just as well because I then found Graeme's free set and haven't looked back.

Like Bruce Forsyth, Doctor Who links the seventies to the noughties, although Doctor Who is at least still funny. Although Graeme's rules were written for the Classic Series, they readily proved adaptable to the new series, largely because thanks to RTD it is exactly the same except for more substantial special effects and flimsier plots.

The rules are quick and easy, with a format familiar to anyone who's played a Warhammer derived set, and provide enough detail to satisfy a wargaming nerd like me whilst remaining playable by a brighter five year old. What's more, thanks to various special rules and other game features, they actually do play like Doctor Who adventures with brain often as not triumphing over brawn.

They are supported by a friendly Yahoo Group of fans who have been innovative in designing scenarios and also in sourcing models for use in the games.

Graeme and co-conspirator Karl Perroton have now branched out into other small screen adventures from the decade of my youth with 7TV, a game that uses the same mechanics as DWMG.

Whilst miniature wargaming seems to be loosing the war of attrition with computer gaming, at least as far as my children are concerned, DWMG still manages to keep me off the streets, and some of my 'straight' wargaming friends have even been persuaded to have a go.

So thanks very much Graeme for the game, and if there's anyone reading this whose never tried it, why not give DWMG a go?

[Note - the pictures here are not from any of my games, and are just placed here to show what is possible if you have the time and talent to do justice to the figures.]

Genesis of the Daleks - first draft

2012-01-01T06:47:00.001-08:00

The Board

In the centre of the board is the Wasteland, 24 inches by 24 inches of pseudo-gravel pit strewn with the debris of war; discarded pieces of equipment, fragments of barbed wire, shell craters etc. Because of the uneven terrain and the swirling smoke vision is limited to 12 inches.

In the middle are some ruins which provide a home to a wandering band of Mutos.

Along opposite edges of the board are the Kaled and Thal trench lines. Shooting at figures in the trenches from the Wasteland is at -2. Behind these lines are the Domes containing the cities of the two sides. The other two sedges of the board are bounded by barbed wire, minefields and clouds of poison gas and are impassable to all figures.

At one end of the Kaled trench line is the door that leads to the Bunker, and at the opposite end of the Thal line is the entrance to their underground missile silo. There is no line of sight to these doors from the Wasteland. The door to the Bunker can only be opened from the inside although its mechanism can be jammed to stop it locking again.

The interior of the Bunker can be represented on the table if there is room, or on a separate board 24 inches by 12 inches. It consists of a series of rooms including Davros's laboratory (where the Time Ring is on a shelf), the cells, the guard room, and the mutations tanks where the Daleks Embryos are being bred. Three

Likewise the missile silo requires a one foot square board on which is the rocket and its launch gantry.

Forces

Kaleds

6 figures (Human Warriors) with rifles and gas masks deployed in the Kaled trench.

The Elite

Davros
Nyder (Administrator, Leader [1]) armed with a pistol
3 Security Guards with SMGs

Davros is in his laboratory along with three (inactive) Mark III Travel Machines. The other figures must be either with him or in the guardroom.

The Thals

12 figures (Human Warriors) with rifles and gas masks, deployed in the Thal trench but with at least 2 figures detached to guard 6 Muto slaves in the missile chamber.

The Doctor

The Doctor and Harry Sullivan are in the Bunker having been released from their cell the door by Ronson (Human Scientist, Invent), a friendly Kaled Scientist. All are unarmed, but Harry can use any gun he is able to acquire.

The Doctor has just opened the door to the Dalek Embryo Tanks, triggering an alarm. Harry and Ronson are either with him or hiding in another room. Their position must be secretly recorded by the player.

The Mutos

6 mutos are hiding in the ruins. Stats are as Human Warriors but armed with Brawl only and have Morale 6. Onje of them is Sarah Jane Smith but as she is disguised as one of their number only the Muto player knows which one she is.

Optional rule

Instead of all the Kaled and Thal soldiers being identically armed, arm one in six with Disruptor Pistols and one in six with just Spears.

Briefings

The Kaleds

You are the military commander of this section of the front line. Your force is weak and badly equipped as all the best troops and equipment are taken by The Elite. At one end of your section is the door to The Bunker. No Kaled soldier may enter there.

Your mission is to defend the trench line and ensure that no Thal can cross them to attack the Dome

The Thals are up to something in the Wasteland, and you must also send out a patrol of at least two men to disrupt their plans.

Mutos also roam the Wasteland. Although there existence is an affront to all true Kaleds, due to the shortage of ammunition you are not allowed to shoot them.

The Elite

Davros is about to unveil his greatest creation; the Mark III Travel Machine. He requires further time to complete his work and you must ensure he is not disturbed. Three, currently inactive, machines are in the Laboratory.

Two dangerous prisoners have recently been captured. They are being held in the cells and must not be allowed to escape.

Finally any traitors to the noble cause of The Elite must be exterminated.

The Thals

You are the military commander of this section of the front line.

Your primary mission is to defend the trench line and ensure that no Kaled can cross them to attack the Dome.

Your secondary mission is to complete the construction of a missile which will destroy the city of the accursed Kaleds. It is being loaded with nuclear fuel by Muto slaves, but the current workers are nearly worn out and new slaves must be caught from the Wasteland.

Additionally there are intelligence reports of a secret Bunker located nearby and you are instructed to investigate and halt whatever is going on in there.

The Doctor

You have been sent here by the Time Lords to strike the first blow in the Time War by stopping the creation of the Daleks. To do this you must enter the mutation tanks where the Daleks creatures are being grown and devise a way of destroying them.

You must also recover the Time Ring from Davros's laboratory and then find Sarah Jane and get her and Harry back to Space Station (not beacon) Nerva.

The Mutos

You are outcasts wandering in the Wasteland and your mission is to survive. You have recently been joined by a young girl who claims to be from another planet.

The Thals are known to be rounding up Mutos for some unknown reason and you must avoid being caught and if caught you must try to escape whatever the risk.

Victory Conditions

The Kaleds

Thal Dome attacked - Minor Victory
Thal soldiers attack your Dome - Minor Defeat
The city is destroyed - Major Defeat

The Elite

Davros completes his work - Major Victory
Davros dies - Major Defeat

The Thals

Kaled Dome destroyed - Major Victory
Kaled Dome attacked - Minor Victory
Kaled soldiers attack your Dome - Minor Defeat
Thals exterminated - Major Defeat

The Doctor

Daleks destroyed - Major Victory
Companions returned safely - Minor Victory
Companion killed or not rescued - Minor Defeat
Daleks created - Major Defeat

The Mutos

At least one Muto survives - Minor Victory
All Mutos killed - Minor Defeat
Sarah Jane killed - Major Defeat

Random Events

At the end of each turn roll a d6:
1-3 Sound of distant artillery fire
4 One figure that moved this turn has stepped on a mine - chosen by the player who activated first. The figure makes an immediate AGI test and if successful has noticed before the mine explodes. They may not move with detonating the mine. A friendly figure needs to spend one activation making the mine safe before the figure can move again. if detonated the mine attacks with STR 5.
5 One section of the Wasteland comes under artillery fire next turn. Any figures in the area are hit at STR 4 on a roll of 4,5 or 6. -1 for being in cover or prone (-2 if both).
6 One section of the Wasteland comes under gas attack next turn. Any figure which remains in the area at the end of the turn who is not wearing a gas mask is attacked at STR 4. the gas then disperses.

To determine where the last two events occur divide the Wasteland into four one foot squares and roll a d6. A 5 a 6 mean the attack fell on the Kaled or Thal trenches.

Playing the Game

Two Player Game

Player One controls The Kaleds, the Elite and The Mutos.
Player Two controls The Doctor and The Thals.

Inside the Bunker

Harry and Ronson may hide in one of the other rooms and their figure is not put on the board until a Elite figure enters the room they are located in to search it or they move into line-of-sight with an Elite figure.

Destroying the Dalek Embryos

Anyone inside this room is attacked each turn by a flailing tentacle which wraps itself around the figure on a 5 or 6. Any grappled figure must resist STR 3 next turn to free themselves.

Every turn he is undisturbed the Doctor can try an Invention Breakthrough and if successful has discovered how to make the tanks blow up. This is then achieved as a normal Invent. However before he can flick the switch the Doctor must overcome the morale dilemma of whether this makes him as bad as the Daleks. If he succeeds in an INT roll he realises it doesn't and he can destroy them.

There is no line-of-sight inside the tanks and any Security Guards entering to stop this can only use Brawl and can only fight one figure at a time.

Making the Daleks

Each turn Davros is undisturbed in his laboratory he can do d6 points of work.

When his tally reaches 30 his work is completed and, unless the Dalek Embryos have been destroyed, his Mark III Travel Machines come into operation as Daleks.

These Daleks are under the control of The Elite and can be used to attack the Thals. (They will only turn on the Kaleds and Davros after the game is completed.)

Arming the Missile

30 nuclear fuel cells must be loaded into the rocket before it is ready to be launched.

One Muto slave can load one cell in one turn.

The Mutos working at the start of the game are very ill from the effects of the radiation. The Thal player rolls a d6 at the end of his Activation and if the number is less tahn or equal to the number of remaining slaves then one dies.

Once the rocket is fuelled it can be launched immediately - killing any Mutos left in the missile chamber.

Catching Mutos

The mutos will not move towards the Kaled lines unless a Thal is moving towards them within 12 inches.

Although the Kaleds can't shoot the Mutos, they do not want them in their trenches and if any Muto enters he must be attacked with a Brawl by the nearest Kaled soldier. His unconscious body will then be pushed back into the Wasteland.

The Escape

If Sarah Jane is amongst the slaves she can persuade them to escape by succeeding in a Morale test for them. They will then start to climb the missile gantry to get out. She can now throw off her disguise.

Everyone climbs at once. It takes an AGI roll to climb one level. Roll once per turn. Three successful roles are required to get to the surface. Figures emerge in the middle of the Thal trenches, but not within 6 inches of a Thal soldier.

Figures that fail an AGI roll have got into difficulty. Lie the figure down and if they fail their next roll they fall. If Sarah Jane falls the nearest muto will try to catch her by making another AGI roll.

The guards will not climb up after the prisoners but may shoot at them until their Morale fails and they surrender. The survivors then climb down and resume work next turn. A guard can then be posted at the top of the gantry to prevent a second escape. If the guards do not want to shoot their work force they can pursue them on the surface, but it takes three turns for them to leave the missile silo (they need permission from their officious boss and time to collect their gas masks and equipment).

Raiding the Domes

Any Kaled or Thal figures which can cross the enemy trench lines are assumed to be raiding their enemies Dome and are out of play.

Ending the Game

The game ends when all events have played themselves out:
The Daleks have been created or Davros is dead or the embryos have been destroyed.
The Thal missile has been launched or the workforce is dead.
The Companions are safe or dead.

The War Doctor

2012-01-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

Note

A scenario for The Five Doctors is available on the DWMG website. By splicing in elements of Patrick Troughton's finale The War Games I've not only upped the bodycount considerably but also provide employment for a number of otherwise redundant 28mm historical figures.

Introduction

Play The Five Doctors as described by Graeme and Karl using the following variations.

Set Up

Six Groups of fighters are deployed one in each grid square across the Death Zone.
Initially these Groups are represented by cards dealt randomly and face down
Groups should be of approximately equal strength. As a rough rule the total of DEF x Hits for each Group should be 15 or 16.
e.g. A Dalek and an Ogron, three Cybermen, four Sontarans, five Humans, a DEF 5 Hits 2 Armoured vehicle with 2 human crew etc
Three Groups should be Monster Faction and three Hero faction. Some Humans can be Monster Faction (e.g. Nazis, criminals, bankers etc)
The Doctor and The Master deploy so that they are on the junction of four grid squares

Playing the Game

Each Group of fighters moves separately. They move six inches in a random direction determined by a d6 roll.

Count the Mountains as 'North'.
1 = move north, 2= move east, 3 = move south, 4 = mouth west, 5 and 6 = don't move.

If a Groups move would take them off the board or into the Mountains reverse the direction by 180 degrees.

If two Groups gets within six inches of each other there is a combat. Turn the cards over if you have not already done so. Because of the brainwashing of the participants in the Death Zone this rule applies even if both groups are Hero faction.

Combat

The 'unnatural mists' rule does not apply and combat continues until one side is eliminated or there is more than six inches between the nearest figures of the two Groups.

If one side runs the other will pursue until the loser is completely destroyed or another enemy is encountered.

If a Group has two potential enemies in view it will attack the one that looks 'more dangerous'. Aliens are 'more dangerous' than humans and Monster faction Groups are 'more dangerous' than Hero faction ones.

Spoils of Victory

The point of the Death Zone is for the fighters to battle it out until a handful of champions remain.

When one Group of fighters defeats another group (i.e. when one side has nobody left who hasn’t failed a Morale test) the reward is that one of the figures in the winning group gains a +1 to hit. This should be the figure that contributed most to the victory and applies to their main weapon only.

Alliances

If the Doctor or The Master move within six inches of a Group they can attempt to overcome the brainwashing that is making them fight and form an alliance.

The Master can ally with any Group he encounters, Hero or Monster faction, but that Group then becomes hostile to all other Groups in play.

The Doctor may only ally himself with Hero faction Groups, but may form a Grand Alliance of as many such Groups as he is able to.

Any Monster faction aliens who meet The Doctor will attack him whilst Monster faction humans will try to take him prisoner.

Getting to the Black Tower

There is a Yeti in the tunnels and anyone entering them will meet it on a roll of ‘1’
·
To move in the Death Wastes requires each figure to pass a Morale test. Anyone left behind disappears into the mists and is never seen again.

Endgame

Once the Tomb of Rassilon is opened Borusa ,aka The War Lord, appears, as in The Five Doctors, but this time he is accompanied by two Chancellery Guards who help in the final battle.

If Borusa is defeated The Doctor is made Lord President in his place.

If Borusa wins The Doctor is exiled to Earth and made to regenerate.

Doctor Who and the Daemons

2011-12-31T09:21:00.000-08:00

(Picture by Daryl Joyce)

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Notes

This is a modification of the version on the DWMG website which is in turn a modification of a scenario by Michael Spencelyah. It is another attempt to make a UNIT v the aliens scenario a bit different. I’ve also tried to give UNIT a purpose in the scenario which they lack in the broadcast story and to give it all a less silly ending.

Set Up

The Doctor is tied to the Maypole in the middle of the village green surrounded by eleven villagers, who also happen to be the local Morris Dancing team. One has a pistol, one a rifle, one a shotgun and the others have improvised weapons. They are preparing to burn him at the stake, thus proving Baldric’s dad’s old motto of never trust men with beards.

Miss Hawthorn is with them trying to persuade them to let the Doctor go.

Bessie is parked nearby.

Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton, are hiding in the Cloven Hoof, adjacent to the green, armed with silenced pistols. They may be in civilian clothes or may have quickly changed back into uniform if you have no suitable figures.

The Brigadier, Sergeant Osgood (UNIT Technician with Invent, Repair and Luck[1]) and 12 UNIT soldiers, including a Bazooka team, are in a convoy of vehicles just off the board, stopped by the heat barrier.

Bok is on guard outside the door to the church.

The Master, alias Victor Magister, is in the catacombs with three Cultists, in full ceremonial regalia, preparing to summon Azal.

Jo Grant is also in the catacombs in her sacrificial-virgin white robes, which make her look suspiciously like the first Romana.

Optional: the UNIT helicopter is parked somewhere in the village.

Remote controlled Bessie

Fortuitously the Doctor has fitted Bessie with a remote control mechanism prior to the adventure. He can drive her from anywhere on the board as if he was behind the wheel himself provided he carries out no other action and can see the car.

Freeing the Doctor

Miss Hawthorn may attempt to get the villagers to free the Doctor by convincing them he is the powerful magician Qui Quai Quod.

This involves first Yates and/or Benton hitting something with their pistols; a long range aimed shot at a small target ( i.e. 5 or 6 to hit). If they both miss then the villagers conclude the Doctor is a great big faker and start to light the firewood. He has five turns before he starts loosing a hit a turn from the flames (I guess the villagers didn‘t use enough paraffin).

If they succeed then next turn the Doctor may use his remote control to bring Bessie to him as a further demonstration of his magic powers. In their next activation the villagers will free the Doctor and henceforth they will fear him.

Penetrating the Heat Barrier

Sergeant Osgood meanwhile is trying to penetrate the heat barrier. He must first make an Invention breakthrough and then build a diathermic energy exchanger. If the Doctor can get himself over to join them he can add +2 to the breakthrough roll and +1 to the subsequent rolls.

Optional: UNIT Helicopter

If the UNIT helicopter is being used, then once the Doctor is free one villager may use it to try to stop the Doctor reaching Osgood and the UNIT team.

The helicopter will make a low level pass at Bessie each turn. After being buzzed the Doctor needs to make a AGI roll to avoid crashing - which results in Bessie being damaged and all occupants being stunned. Once the pass is completed the Cultist makes a Luck roll and if failed he crashes into the heat barrier and the helicopter is destroyed.

Summoning Azal

The Master meanwhile is in the catacombs reciting a nursery rhyme backwards in order to summon Azal. Each turn he is able to do this adds d6 to him summoning total. When this reaches 30 (35 if using the optional UNIT helicopter rule) Azal appears. If the Master is attacked, or carries out any other action, he cannot add to his score.

If Miss Hawthorn is within 6” of the church she can use a dispelling chant to reduce this total by d3 a turn. Again, if she is attacked or carries out any other action she can’t do this.

UNIT versus the Villagers

This section should have a musical accompaniment of slips, jigs and reels.

UNIT may not shoot a villager unless he has a firearm, and then only after issuing a warning (takes one action) or if friendly characters have been fired on.

UNIT must deal with the villagers by using Capture or Brawl. One UNIT soldier can guard 5 captured Cultists.

The villagers will not harm Miss Hawthorn and will only attempt to Capture her. She may defend herself with her umbrella.

UNIT versus Bok

No UNIT soldier may pass Bok whilst he is firing at them, although a Unique model can give it a try if they want to. If this happens Bok gets an extra shot in the Heroic players turn.

In this version Bok only has one Hit.

If Bok is ‘destroyed’ then one figure may enter the crypt whilst he reforms.

Bok is also ‘stunned’ for one turn when the Invention that breaks the heat barrier is used.

Benton may use the UNIT bazooka thus allowing him to use his Luck to try to overcome Bok’s Invulnerability.

The Contrived Ending

If the Heroic characters enter the crypt before Azal is summoned they can disrupt the ceremony by attacking the Master. Unless The Master can fight them off, he has lost.

If Azal is summoned, The Master then tries to persuade him that he should rule the world. Any unique heroic model, other than the Doctor, who enters the crypt in the next turn can put in their own claim and make an INT v INT with the Master (the Doctor for some principled reason doesn‘t want to do this). If they win, their first order can be for Azal to leave the planet.

Alternatively Jo Grant could cause Azal to blow up by offering herself as a human sacrifice, but that would be just silly.

A Masterly Escape

If it looks like it’s all gone pear shaped again, The Master may attempt to make a getaway. He slips out of a secret passageway and appears anywhere within six inches of the church. He must leave the board via the edge furthest away from him. The heat barrier will have gone and Bok will just be a statue again.

UNIT will want to Capture him alive (see Safer Behind Bars) and any surviving villagers or cultists will also be out to get him (see You Have Tricked Us).

He may hijack a vehicle, but the Doctor can use Bessie under remote control to head him off. If Bessie can get in front of the Master in the Heroic activation the Master must change direction by 90 degrees in his next move.

The game ends when The Master is captured or leaves the board.
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Plan foiled and The Master captured - Heroic Victory

Azal destroys the Earth - Monster Victory

Plan foiled but The Master escapes - Draw

Notes on Figures

This scenario was basically designed around the figures made by Woodbine Designs; The Morris and Armed Morris Dancers. If anyone else in the world produces figures for armed Morris Dancers I'll eat Gallifrey Guardian.

All the other figures are available from Black Tree Design, but most of us use Gripping Beast Mo-Fo range for 1970s UNIT.

Yates and benton wore civvies for this story, and massive fashion disasters their outfits were too. Fortunately Killer B Games's Geezer range includes a variety of 70s attired figures that are up to the job.

Battlefield

2011-12-31T05:01:00.000-08:00

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Notes

Battlefield is one of my favourate late Who episodes. However whilst its production values were pretty good by the standards of the decade, the sci-fi elements were poor thanks to an unimaginative props department. Fortunately this can be rectified on the tabletop.

Introduction

In the English countryside near the village of Carbury, a nuclear missile convoy under the command of UNIT's new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera has, run into difficulties. Lying on the bed of the nearby Lake Vortigern is a spaceship from another dimension containing the body of King Arthur, supposedly held in suspended animation, and his sword Excalibur.

Ancelyn, a knight from the other dimension, arrives on Earth to aid the King but is followed by his rival Mordred and the latter's mother, a powerful sorceress named Morgaine. They all recognise the Doctor as Merlin - a fact that the Time Lord attributes to events in his own future.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has come out of retirement to assist in the crisis and stop the Destroyer - an awesomely powerful creature unshackled by Morgaine - from devouring the world.

Morgaine - Moderately Wicked Witch

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /2 /3 /3 /9 /9

Weapon/Range/Notes
Magical Attack/6” Special

Information

Morgaine is a sorceress from another dimension, where she has been engaged in a long war with her former lover Arthur, who is aided by a wizard called Merlin. She is assisted by her son Mordred and although intent on conquest is an honourable foe who fights in a chivalrous manner. She will not steal, will respect truces and ceasefires, will keep her word and usually avoid using weapons of mass destruction.

Notable Appearances Battlefield

Special Abilities
Luck (1)
Invulnerable (2) - Morgaine catches bullets in mid flight and deflects swords
Magical Attack - Morgaine attacks by matching INT v INT with a target within 6 inches. If she wins the target looses a Hit. Morgaine may attack more than one person with her applied INT being reduced by one for each extra target. Alternatively Morgaine may inflict a single Hit of damage on any machine within sight.
Summon Destroyer - If Morgaine has Excalibur she can use two Activations to summon the Destroyer. If she then uses two further Activations - she can unchain him leaving him free to destroy the earth.
Activate Missiles - If the Destroyer fails Morgaine will use the Nuclear Missile to start a nuclear war. This requires her to spend two activations in the control room and the missiles launch two turns later. The launch can be stopped by Morgaine or any Hero Faction figure with access to the controls.

Mordred - Mummy’s boy

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /5 /2 /4 /3 /7 /9

Weapon/Range/Hit/STR/Notes
Sword/melee/3+ /5 /Parry

Special Rules
Parry =- Swords get a free saving throw for melee hits equal to the roll ‘to hit’
Leader (1)

Information

Mordred leads his mother’s knights in battle. Although he looks like a medieval knight he wears advanced space armour and weaponry. Although still bound by the knightly code of chivalry, he is more ruthless than his mother.

Notable Appearances - Battlefield

The Destroyer - Does what it says on the tin

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /1 /4 /3 /9 /9

Weapon Range Hit Str Notes
None

Special Ability
Invulnerable - The Destroyer can only be harmed by silver weapons
Devour World - Once summoned and unchained The Destroyer takes six activations to destroy the earth.

10 Knights - Dimension shifting swordsmen

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /5 /1 /4 /3 /7 /8

Weapon Range Hit Str Notes
Sword melee 3+ 5 Parry
Blaster 12” 4+ 4 Pistol

Knight Commander - As above but Morale 9, Leader (1) and grenades

Merlin - Arthur's Wizard

Stats for Seventh Doctor

Special Rules
There will be no battle here! - Because of the respect all sides hold for Merlin the Doctor may force a temporary truce by force of will. He must match INT v INT with the target and if he wins the target may take no aggressive action for 2 Activations. Merlin may influence more than one character at once by reducing the INT by one for each extra target. Merlin can also use the same skill to persuade Morgaine not to use the nuclear missiles.

Ace - Lady in the Lake

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /2 /3 /3 /7 /8

Weapon/Range/Hit/Str/Notes
Brawl/melee/4+/3/Stuns
Grenade/8"/4+/4/Blast 2", Scatter, Thrown

Ancelyn - Courtly knight

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /2 /3 /3 /7 /9

Weapon/Range/Hit/Str/Notes
Sword/melee/3+/5/Parry

Information
Ancelyn fights for Arthur and Merlin. He is chivalrous and honourable. He has no longer has power armour.

Notable Appearances - Battlefield

Special Rules
Luck (1)
‘My Lady’ - Ancelyn will not leave Bambera whilst she is in danger.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Doris's other half

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /2 /3 /3 /7 /8

Weapon Range Hit Str Notes
Brawl melee 3+ 3 Stuns
Revolver 8” 4+ 3 Pistol

Special Rules
Leader (2), Luck (2)
Inspirational - UNIT figures and Companions within 12” of the Brigadier may use his Morale for tests if required.
Silver Bullets - The Brigadier has thoughtfully pocketed some silver bullets before leaving UNIT HQ. These only fit his revolver and can’t be used in the automatic pistols issued to other UNIT personnel. The Brigadier will not hand over his personal weapon unless incapacitated.

Notable Appearances
The Web of Fear, The Invasion, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos, Colony in Space, The Dæmons, Day of the Daleks, The Time Monster, The Three Doctors, The Green Death, The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Planet of the Spiders, Robot, Terror of the Zygons, Mawdryn Undead, The Five Doctors, Battlefield, Dimensions in Time, Enemy of the Bane

Brigadier Winifred Bambera - Meet the new boss

MOV/DEF/HITS/STR/AGI/INT/MORALE
6 /3 /2 /3 /3 /7 /8

Weapon Range Hit Str Notes
SMG 12” 4+ 3 Burst
Brawl melee 4+ 3 Stuns
Sword* melee 4+ 5 Parry

*Bambera does not start with a sword but may use one if retrieved from a fallen Knight

Information
Bambera is the current Commander of UNIT. Her tough, no nonsense approach is respected by the men under her command.

Special Rules
Leader (2)
Luck (1)

Sergeant Zbrigniev
Stats as ‘UNIT Sergeant’
Assault Rifle
Pistol

Flight Lieutenant Françoise Lavel
Stats as ‘UNIT soldier’
Pistol

15 1990s UNIT Soldiers
Stats as ‘UNIT soldier’
Assault Rifles
Pistols
Grenades
2 x Bazookas
1 x HMG

Special Rules

This scenario uses the Special Rules for Small Arms, Hits on Vehicles and ‘Pinned’ - Gun Rules For Gun Nuts.

The Board

The UNIT convoy is stuck by the shore of Lake Vortigern, which is represented by one table edge. In the centre of the board edge is a partially excavated tunnel. In front of this is the nuclear missile itself, with other UNIT vehicles parked around it in a rough horseshoe. Beyond these vehicles are five bunkers, each large enough for two soldiers and one heavy weapon, which form the outer defences.

Some cover is provided by trees, low hills and ruined buildings, but none must be closer than 12” to the nearest UNIT bunker.

No figures may enter the lake (unless they use the escape hatch - see below). The whole table counts as ‘rough terrain’ for wheeled vehicles.

The Underwater Spaceship

It takes one move for figures to traverse the tunnel (two figures wide) to the underwater spaceship. There ‘Arthur the freeze dried’ lies in state with his sword Excalibur and a note saying "Arthur died in last battle. Everything else just propaganda. The Doctor." This area is best represented by a separate board one foot square.

There is an escape hatch at the back of the ship. Figures which use it (one at a time) emerge next turn on the shore of Lake Vortigern.

Playing the Game

UNIT set up first. Sergeant Zbrigniev and his men deploy within the defences. All other figures are off the board; Lethbridge-Stewart and Lavel in their helicopter, Bambera and Ancelyn in a car and The Doctor and Ace in Bessie.

The Knights set up second. They set up within 6 inches of a land board edge and but not within 12 inches of a UNIT position or 24 inches of Lake Vortigern.

Turn 1
Morgaine’s Faction automatically gets the initiative.

Turn 2
Lethbridge-Stewart’s helicopter appears over the tablet and may be shot down by Morgaine, who may not use any other magic this turn if she does this. Belching smoke it disappears from view over one of the land table edges, otherwise it lands.

Turn 3
Ancelyn and Bambera enter the table in their car from one of the land table edges, but not within 12 inches of Lake Vortigern.

Turn 4
Lethbridge-Stewart and Lavel enter the table on foot from direction their helicopter crashed, but not within 12 inches of Lake Vortigern.

Turn 5
The Doctor and Ace enter the table in Bessie, not within 12 inches of Lake Vortigern.

Chivalry

Figures should conduct themselves at all times in the manner of Courtly Knights, with truces respected and unarmed or incapacitated figures captured rather than killed.

Failure to do so should result in a lose of Victory Points.

The only figure who need not obey these rules is Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Pistols in Melee

UNIT soldiers may use their pistols to defend themselves in melee, but may not fire into a melee if other friendly figures are involved.

Ending the Game

The game ends if the Earth is destroyed, one side has no figures left or if Morgaine has tried and failed to use The Destroyer or the Nuclear Missile.

If the Earth is destroyed Morgaine wins, otherwise the winner is decided by Victory Points system. As there is ‘more honour with the sword’ Morgaine can count any figures killed with blasters.

Winning the Game

If the world is destroyed the Monster Faction wins, but if it survives then points must be tallied up. Points are scored for eliminating opponents.

Morgaine’s Faction

Merlin - 7 points
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - 5 points
Ace - 5 points
Brigadier Bambera - 3 points
Ancelyn - 3 points
Other UNIT figures - 1 point

Merlin’s Faction

Morgaine - 7 points
The Destroyer - 5 points
Mordred - 5 points
Knight Commander - 3 points
Knight - 2 points

Notes on figures

The appearance of the UNIT soldiers in this episode was unique as they had DPM camouflage, UN blue berets and carried Austrian rifles. As far as I know no suitable figures are manufactured so I would recommend either ‘traditional’ UNIT soldiers or the black suited and red bereted ‘modern’ UNIT. I did my best by painting up Assault Group Marines.

Copplestone Castings do a female figure with sword and assault rifle in the Female Troopers set from their Future Wars range.

The missile launcher on TV was a lash up on a low loader disguised under a camoflage net. I've used a cheap 1/48 model of a US Patriot surface to air missile I found on ebay.

As depicted on TV the knights resemble 13th century European knights and any Medieval range would have suitable figures. However Ben Aaronovitch says that when he wrote the story he originally intended the knights to be wearing powered exo-skeletons that, because they were silver, were mistaken for armoured knights when they appeared in the 6th century. If you wish to go for this ‘look’ you could use Warhammer 40,000 Grey Knights, Assault Space Marines, or similar, painted in a silver or metallic colour.

U.N.I.T.: The Coup or Mr. Saxon versus the Sea Devils

2011-12-31T04:33:00.000-08:00

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Briefing: The Master and U.N.I.T.

The Master has returned from Malcassairo in the stolen TARDIS and has set himself up as Mr. Harold Saxon, aspiring politician and currently Minister of Defence, whilst he hatches his plans to become Prime Minister. Knowing as he does the Sea Devils from old he has decides not to take any chances when U.N.I.T. tell him of suspicious underwater activity off the south coast of England. The Royal Navy and U.N.I.T. deploy all their forces and when the surveillance ships and aeroplanes announce that something appears to be coming ashore he has no hesitation in launching an all out attack by land, sea and air.

Objective: kill all the Sea Devils

Figures and Models

Mr. Saxon (stats as in Last of the Time Lords) and his bodyguard (human security guard with pistol and body armour) in a suitably expensive car
One U.N.I.T. squad consisting of a Sergeant, 4 soldiers and a two man bazooka team in a helicopter.
Another identical U.N.I.T. squad in a hovercraft which has an HMG.
A U.N.I.T. armoured car with an HMG

Briefing: The Sea Devils

A colony of Sea Devils (or Sentient Aquatic Reptiles as they prefer to be called) has revived form its hibernation of the coast of England. Learning of the fate of their brethren up the coast and their land dwelling kin in Derbyshire they have decided that they cannot fight the humans who now rule their planet and so wish to make peace. They have identified a suitable human with whom they wish to make contact and have invited her to a remote spot near the coast where she is to meet a peace delegation.

Objective: to make contact with Sarah Jane Smith and to make the offer of peace

Figures

7 Sea Devils

Briefing: Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane has received an enigmatic and slightly fishy message inviting her to a rendezvous at a deserted spot by the sea. Suspecting this may not be an adventure for children she has decided to invite along her old friend Sir (formerly Brigadier) Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. The old soldier appears to be mellowing in his old age and is now somewhat suspicious of the gung-ho approach of his former U.N.I.T. colleagues.

Objective: to find at least one Sea Devil and escort him off the board, probably by hiding him in Sir Alistair's car.

Figures and Model

The character-formerly-known-as-the Brigadier (stats as normal but armed with a concealed gun in his walking stick: 4,5 or 6 to hit, range 8 inches, STR 3) and his car.
Sarah Jane Smith

The Board

The board represents a deserted and inhospitable part of England's coast. One of the short edges is a beach with sand dunes. The other is a canal with a straight road running along the seaward side of it. The rest of the board is marsh.

The hovercraft may only move over the sea and the beach and cannot enter the dunes. The sand dunes are difficult terrain for everyone and impassable for vehicles.

The marsh is also impassible for vehicles and is difficult terrain for humans, however because of their webbed feet Sea Devils can move normally across it. Additionally because it is a maze of depressions, rivulets, pools and squidy grass visibility is limited to six inches into or within the marsh. However because they have an aeroplane in the sky directing operations soldiers can always move as if they can see every other figure or model on the table.

Only Sea Devils may enter the canal and whilst underwater can only be attacked with hand grenades.

Playing the Game

Two player game

Player one - Mr Saxon and U.N.I.T.
Player two - The Sea Devils and Sarah Jane and The Brigadier

Three player game
Player one - Mr Saxon and U.N.I.T.
Player two - The Sea Devils
Player three - Sarah Jane and the Brigadier

Four player game

Player one - Mr Saxon and his bodyguard
Player two - U.N.I.T.
Player three - The Sea Devils
Player four - Sarah Jane and the Brigadier

Five player game

Player one - Mr Saxon and his bodyguard
Player two - U.N.I.T. squad in helicopter
Player three - U.N.I.T. squad in hovercraft
Player four - The Sea Devils
Player five - Sarah Jane and the Brigadier

As the hovercraft and helicopter are primarily used to deposit troops on the battlefield they do not need to be represented by models.
The sea and the canal can be represented by the board edges rather than having to be modelled.

Order of play

Sir Alistair's car is parked in the middle of the road with Sarah Jane and Sir Alistair either in it or next to it. In the two player game they may not move until a Sea Devil gets within six inches of them.

Before the game starts: The player(s) controlling U.N.I.T. and Mr Saxon secretly record which side of the board the armoured car and Mr Saxon's car will enter from.

Turn One: The Sea Devils enter the board from the sea (obviously) and may make a full move. U.N.I.T. radar detects them and the game is on.

Turn Two: The U.N.I.T. helicopter may land anywhere except in the sea or in the canal.

Turn Three: The hovercraft enters the board from the sea.

Turn Four: The armoured car and Mr Saxon's car enter the board form the directs previously recorded.

Mind the civilians

U.N.I.T. may not shoot at unarmed civilian models (although they may be attacked using Capture and Brawl) and cannot shoot at a civilian car except in the situation where a U.N.I.T. soldier is on the road and an unidentified car is driving towards them and not stopping.

Mr Saxon may shoot anyone he wants to, of course, and so can his bodyguard if he is with him.

Oh It's You Sir

As they have not been given any contrary orders the U.N.I.T. soldiers will obey Sir Alistair once they know it is him. (This involves a moving within six inches of Sir Alistair if he is in the open or up to his stationary car). Once they have identified their former commander the information will be passed on and Sir Alistair and his car cannot be stopped again by U.N.I.T.

Additionally Sir Alistair may use his leader ability to activate U.N.I.T. soldiers within six inches. Figures thus activated may not be activated again in their next activation phase. Note that for U.N.I.T. Mr Saxon and his bodyguard count as civilians.

Sonic Lipstick and Laser Screwdrivers

These can be put to various uses subject only to limitations of games master approval and good taste.

Examples could include:
Producing a deafening blast of noise in a soldier or bodyguard's headset. This requires a roll of 4,5 or 6 and affects all suitable models within six inches. The victim's are stunned for one turn. This can only be done once (they disconnect the headsets!).
Immobilising a car. Again requires a roll of 4,5 or 6, has a range of six inches and is also a temporary effect but can be repeated.
The laser screwdriver can also be used as a weapon that inflicts one hit point damage.

Morale

Count the U.N.I.T. soldiers and Mr Saxon and his bodyguard as separate groups for morale tests. This means that if his bodyguard is disabled Mr Saxon must make a morale test at -1 for suffering 50% casualties. The bodyguard may not move more than 6 inches away from Mr Saxon and will evacuate him to safety if his boss looses a hit.

The Sea Devils carry out morale tests as normal but as Sir Alistair's car represents safety they can 'retreat' towards it if they fail the test.

Event Cards

A player may use an event card marked "Hero" or "Monster" if his forces contain at least on model of the correct type.

End of the Game

The game ends when all the Sea Devils are dead or when one has exited the board in the company of Sarah Jane or Sir Alistair.

Aftermath

If Sarah Jane manages to escape with a live Sea Devil a press conference will be hastily arranged at Sir Alistair's house the next day. The ambassador will give his message of Peace Between Species to a bewildered TV viewing public. However a press release from the Ministry of Defence explains it all as a prank by a retired officer disgruntled about his pension, a disreputable journalist and a man in a rubber suit. A scandal involving a minor celebrity and a haddock then dominates the air waves and people quickly forget about the whole incident.

Griffon 2000 Hovercraft model produced and painted by S & S Models.

Autons Again!

2011-12-31T04:18:00.000-08:00

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Oh no, not again! Once more shop dummies are coming to life across London. Fortunately U.N.I.T. are pretty sure who’s behind it and so Colonel Mace and the men plan a raid on Magister Plastics, a company they’ve had their eyes on for a while. Unfortunately most of the men needed for the job seem to have been suddenly sent on leave, or posted to Bermuda or reassigned to the Women’s Auxiliary Balloon Corps.

Notes

This scenario came about from looking at what makes DWNG different form a conventional wargame. Primarily this is this the prescence of The Doctor who can usually wipe out the aliens single handedly with an Invent, travel anywhere he wants to using his TARDIS and survive where others can't using his massive Luck. He is like a sort of Super SAS, and so this scenario makes the Hero player choose whether to use him on a risky behind-the-lines raid or have him support the conventional forces - the sort of decision that a real commander has to make if he has Special Forces in his Order of Battle.

U.N.I.T. set up

Colonel mace and the gang out are outside the gates of Magister Plastics.
The Doctor and a Companion are in the TARDIS, which is in the Void.

Monster Set Up

The Nestene Consciousness is in the factory.
9 Autons are within the factory walls.
Meek, a human lackey, is skulking around too.
2 Auton Copy security guards are by the gate.
A couple of Animated Plastic wheelie bins are in the yard
Also in the yard are several barrels of Auton Plastic
A fuel tanker is parked up in the yard as well.
Boxes, cars and so on provide plenty of cover within the factory walls.

Playing the Game

Each turn after the first draw a card before rolling for the initiative.

Any Ace - Sea Harrier with 4 bombs now available
Black King - Armoured car arrives to help U.N.I.T.
Black Queen - Car with 3 Police Marksmen arrives (2 Carbines and 3 Pistols)
Black Jack - A Companion joins U.N.I.T. in Bessie
Black numbered - TARDIS materialises inside factory
Red King - General Fettishaw-Freak (an Auton Copy) arrives
Red Queen - Auton Copy Police Officer arrives
Red Jack - A Companion is found a prisoner in the factory
Red numbered - An Auton appears from the edge of the board (odd numbers from the left, even from the right)

Carbines - as Assault Rifles but with 15” range.

Each event apart from the last can only happen once.

The Autons within the factory have orders to guard it and will be facing the main entrance. They may advance, but will not react to anything happening behind them.

Dealing with Auton Copies

Auton Copies may not be shot until they have revealed themselves to be Autons (by firing, being jammed by the sonic screwdriver or affected by the anti-plastic). If they are in the way they can be arrested and handcuffed by a brawling attack. Not that handcuff’s work on Autons…….

General Fettishaw-Freak will order the U.N.I.T. soldiers to cease fire, which they will initially do. Colonel Mace will then have to try to outsmart him with an INT v INT to get them to attack again (“I have orders from Geneva” etc etc). Once the General is beaten U.N.I.T. can then try to bundle him out of the way.

The Auton Police Officer can order the real police to leave.

Solutions

The barrels of Auton Plastic can be used to Invent anti-plastic (1d6 doses - each dose causes 1 hit to Autons or the Nestene)
The air strike should take out the Nestene Intelligence.
If the air strike fails the fuel tanker can be made to explode like a bomb and can be driven into the factory.

Victory Points

Monster Faction

Factory still under Nestene control - 4 VP
Doctor killed or forced to regenerate - 3 VP
Companion, Colonel Mace killed - 2 VP
U.N.I.T. solder, policeman, Meek killed - 1 VP

Hero Faction

Factory occupied - 4 VP
Nestene Intelligence - 3 VP
Factory destroyed - 2 VP
Each Auton, Auton Copy, Animated Plastic - 1 VP
Meek under arrest - 1 VP

The Exterminator

2011-12-31T03:59:00.000-08:00

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Freedom fighters from the future trying to change history pursued by indestructible cyborgs - Doctor Who did it first!

Introduction

There have been strange goings on at Auderly House. Ghostly intruders appear and then vanish. Several U.N.I.T. soldiers guarding the building have disappeared, however crusty old diplomat Sir Reginald Styles refuses to consider holding the upcoming peace talks anywhere else. Colonel Mace decides it’s time he called in his Scientific Advisor.

The Board

Introduction

Auderly House is an old house set in parkland and the house is approached by a long curved driveway. The estate is surrounded by a high wall that requires one move and an AGI test to climb over. Inside the grounds are trees, bushes, out houses, a tumbledown folly - meaning lots and lots of cover. The area 6 inches around the house though is grass. Outside is parked Styles’s Armoured Jaguar and a U.N.I.T. Land Rover with an HMG in the back. (Alternatively this could be an ordinary car and an armoured Land Rover, depending on the models available).

Monster Set Up

The monster player gets to control both the Daleks and their Ogron side kicks, and the Guerrillas. The Daleks and the Guerrillas both want to kill Styles, although for different reasons. The Daleks think he’s a goody who will prevent a nuclear war, the Guerrillas think he’s a baddy who is trying to start one.

The Daleks will Time travel to Auderly House in three teams, each of one Time War Dalek and two Ogrons. The idea is to bracket the house to avoid Styles slowly getting into his car and driving away, which is where the original attack in 1972 went wrong……..

The Guerrillas are fewer in number and only have three figures, (John Connor and friends) who must all arrive at once. All have normal human Security Guard stats except for Connor who has Leader (2) and Luck (1). They are armed with Ogron Disintegrator Pistols (Range 12", STR 4, Disintegrator, Pistols) and High Explosives.

Both the Daleks and the Guerrillas have a detailed map of Auderly house and so can plan the point of their arrival accurately. However they have no idea who is guarding the place or where they are located. The Monster player should mark on a sketch map of the board exactly where the two Daleks and the Guerrillas are due to materialise, which cannot be within 12 inches of the main house, before the Heroic player sets up their figures.

Natural Enemies

The Daleks wish to finish off the Guerrillas even more than they want to get Styles and the Guerrillas know this.

If a Guerrilla finds themselves in line-of-sight of a Dalek or Ogron they will immediately hide in the nearest cover where they cannot shoot. Whilst hiding they cannot shoot and cannot be seen unless a figure comes within 6 inches. (The ease with which they can do this, and the ability of the Guerrillas to slip past U.N.I.T. patrols without being seen suggests the Guerrillas are actually wearing some kind of hi-tech reactive camouflage clothing that can adapt itself immediately to its surrounding - but that is just speculation.)

If there is nowhere to hide the Guerrillas and Daleks will shoot at each other, regardless of what else is going on. This shooting will be simultaneous.

Heroic Set Up

Styles (Administrator with Luck(1)), his Bodyguard (Security Guard with Bodyguard Special Ability [see below], Body Armour and a Pistol), Colonel Mace, Martha and the Doctor are in the main house.

To guarding Styles Colonel Mace has team of twelve U.N.I.T. soldiers led by a Sergeant. Each has an Assault Rifle, Grenades, Pistol and Body Armour and a Bazooka is available. Some will be deployed either on their own or in pairs around the grounds keeping watch, at least one of which must be by the front gate and the rest can be in reserve at the main house, ready to be sent where they‘re needed.

The aim of the game is to keep Styles alive at any cost.

Playing the Game

The Monster player automatically moves first in the first turn. They roll for each of the four time travelling parties and on a 4, 5 or 6 they materialise. Once on the board they have a turn to move or shoot before U.N.I.T. can react.

Colonel Mace cannot react until he has word of the attack form one of his men who has seen a Dalek, Ogron or Guerrilla, and not been disintegrated for his trouble. He can then, if he wants, try to persuade Styles to leave the building. This takes a whole turn and a U.N.I.T. soldier must be assigned to Styles to see he actually moves, otherwise he will endlessly collect together his papers. Otherwise, unless Styles can actually see Monsters shooting at him, he will stay put.

Styles can be loaded into either car and as he will hide on the floor it is not necessary for the Heroic player to reveal which car Styles is in if they both drive off at once.

The Doctor

Once he comes face to face with a Monster the Doctor will have no trouble working out what’s going on. By making an Invention Breakthrough roll he can re-tune his sonic screwdriver to manipulate the time travel devices and send them back to the 22nd century. This is done in the normal way and the Doctor has to be within 6 inches and requires a roll of 4, 5 or 6. Only one figure can be sent back at a time.

Winning and Loosing

If the Heroic player can get Styles off the board in more or less one piece then they have won. Styles goes off and negotiates a peace treaty and the world is safe.

If Styles is shot and wounded by one of the Monster player’s figures then they have won.

However it turns out subsequently he really was a baddy trying to wreck the peace talks. If it was the Daleks that got him then they have inadvertently changed history and exterminated themselves. That is the problem with low-tech time travel - it creates paradoxes whenever it’s used.

Rule Amendment: Vehicles

Obviously this scenario won’t work if U.N.I.T. can just load Styles into their disintegrator proof vehicles and drive him away.

If a vehicle is hit by a disintegrator gun dice as normal to see if the car or a random passenger is hit. If it is the car, and the weapon’s STR overcomes its DEF (3 for the Land Rover and 5 for the Armoured Jaguar) the vehicle takes a hit. Roll a d6: 1,2; engine damaged, vehicle stops, 3,4; tire punctured, half speed, 5,6; hit on random occupant.

It can be fixed by a Repair, but you probably won’t have time.

Rule Amendment: Bodyguard

This Special Ability is similar to Blocker but applies to a person (called the Principle) rather than a place.

The Bodyguard acts as a Blocker to anyone approaching the Principle. Additionally the Bodyguard can screen the Principle from missile fire over a 180 degree ark. Any shots directed at the Principle which are on target hit the Bodyguard.

Day of the Daleks

2011-12-31T01:00:00.000-08:00

[This is a scenario for the wargame Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Notes

This is probably the scenario I'm most proud of. Games like this, where one side has more powerful forces than the other on the table are very difficult to balance. However we've played this numerous times and Styles appears to die just about as often as he survives.

Introduction

There have been strange goings on at Auderly House. Ghostly intruders appear and then vanish. Several U.N.I.T. soldiers guarding the building have disappeared, however crusty old diplomat Sir Reginald Styles refuses to consider holding the upcoming peace talks anywhere else. The Brigadier decides it’s time he called in his Scientific Advisor.

The Board

Auderly House is an old house set in parkland and the house is approached by a long curved driveway. The estate is surrounded by a high wall that requires one move and an AGI test to climb over. Inside the grounds are trees, bushes, out houses, a tumbledown folly - meaning lots and lots of cover. The area 6 inches around the house though is grass. Outside is parked a U.N.I.T. Land Rover with an HMG in the back and Styles’s diplomatic car. On the side of the house opposite the entrance a path runs along the outside of the wall at the end of which is an old tunnel.

Monster Set Up

The monster player gets to control both the Daleks and their Ogron side kicks, and the Guerrillas. The Daleks and the Guerrillas both want to kill Styles, although for different reasons. The Daleks think he’s a goody who will prevent a nuclear war, the Guerrillas think he’s a baddy who is trying to start one.

The Daleks will Time travel to Auderly House in three teams, each of one Daleks and two Ogrons. The idea is to bracket the house to avoid Styles slowly getting into his car and driving away - which is what he would obviously do if the attack was launched from only one side…....

The Guerrillas are fewer in number and only have three figures, (Anat, Boaz and Shura) who must all arrive at once. All have normal human Security Guard stats except for Anat who has Leader (2) and Luck (1). They are armed with Disintegrator Pistols (Range 12", STR 4, Disintegrator, Pistols) and Dalekanium High Explosives.

Both the Daleks and the Guerrillas have a detailed map of Auderly house and so can plan the point of their arrival accurately. However they have no idea who is guarding the place or where they are located. The Monster player should mark on a sketch map of the board exactly where the three Dalek teams and the Guerrillas are due to materialise, which must be within 6 inches of a table edge, before the Heroic player sets up their figures.

Natural Enemies

The Daleks wish to finish off the Guerrillas even more than they want to get Styles and the Guerrillas know this.

If a Guerrilla finds themselves in line-of-sight of a Dalek or Ogron they will immediately hide in the nearest cover where they cannot shoot. Whilst hiding they cannot shoot and cannot be seen unless a figure comes within 6 inches. (The ease with which they can do this, and the ability of the Guerrillas to slip past U.N.I.T. patrols without being seen suggests the Guerrillas are actually wearing some kind of hi-tech reactive camouflage clothing that can adapt itself immediately to its surrounding - but that is just speculation.)

If there is nowhere to hide the Guerrillas and Daleks will shoot at each other, regardless of what else is going on. This shooting will be simultaneous.

Heroic Set Up

Styles (Administrator with Luck(1), Miss Paget (Civilian), the Brigadier and the Doctor are in the main house.

To guarding Styles the Brigadier has team of twelve U.N.I.T. soldiers led by Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton and including a bazooka team. Some will be deployed either on their own or in pairs around the grounds keeping watch. At least one must be by the front gate and another in his Sunday best is at the front of Auderly House. The rest can be in reserve at the main house, ready to be sent where they‘re needed.

The aim of the game is to keep Styles alive at any cost.

Playing the Game

The Monster player automatically moves first in the first turn. They roll for each of the three time travelling parties and on a 4, 5 or 6 they materialise. Once on the board they have a turn to move or shoot before U.N.I.T. can react. A team materialising in the tunnel does not need to be put on the board until it emerges.

The Brigadier cannot react until he has word of the attack from one of his men who has seen a Dalek, Ogron or Guerrilla, and not been disintegrated for his trouble. He can then, if he wants, try to persuade Styles to leave the building. This takes a whole turn and a U.N.I.T. soldier must be assigned to Styles to see he actually moves, otherwise he will endlessly collect together his papers. Otherwise, unless Styles can actually see Monsters shooting at him, he will stay put.

Styles can be loaded into either car and as he will hide on the floor it is not necessary for the Heroic player to reveal which car Styles is in if they both drive off at once.

The Doctor

Once he comes face to face with a Monster the Doctor will have no trouble working out what’s going on. By making an Invention Breakthrough roll he can re-tune his sonic screwdriver to manipulate the time travel devices and send them back to the 22nd century. This is done in the normal way and the Doctor has to be within 6 inches and requires a roll of 4, 5 or 6. Only one figure can be sent back at a time.

Winning and Loosing

If the Heroic player can get Styles off the board in more or less one piece then they have won. Styles goes off and negotiates a peace treaty and the world is safe.

If Styles is shot and wounded by one of the Monster player’s figures then they have won.

However it turns out subsequently he really was a baddy trying to wreck the peace talks. If it was the Daleks that got him then they have inadvertently changed history and exterminated themselves. That is the problem with low-tech time travel - it creates paradoxes whenever it’s used.

Rule Amendment: Vehicles

Obviously this scenario won’t work if U.N.I.T. can just load Styles into their disintegrator proof vehicles and drive him away.

If a vehicle is hit by a disintegrator gun dice as normal to see if the car or a random passenger is hit. If it is the car, and the weapon’s STR overcomes its DEF 3 the car stops due to damage to the engine or wheels. It can be fixed by a Repair, but you probably won’t have time.

Heavy Metal

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[These are a some additional rules for the Doctor Who Miniatures Game, a wargame I am rather partial to]

Rules for Armoured Vehicles

Armoured vehicles are complicated and expensive. Tracked vehicles are unable to move long distances on tarmac without damage to themselves and the road and so will rarely be used in built up areas.

All armoured vehicles have greatly restricted visablity. Monsters can only be seen if they are directly in front of the vehicle or its turret unless the commander of the vehicle sticks his head out of the top - which can be a little dangerous for him.

Armoured vehicles have most of their armour at the front and so their DEF is + 1 if attacked from the front quarter. As the rear is less well protected DEF is - 1 in that quarter.

Hits on Armoured Vehicles

All armoured vehicles have multiple Hits, but each loss of a hit point has a consequence. Roll a dice after every hit is lost:
1,2 - Wheels or tracks hit. Mobility halved until a Repair is carried out. (You have to get out to do this).
3,4 - Engine or driver hit. Immobilised.
5,6 - Weapon or cargo hit.

Cupola HMG

In addition to the main armament listed, each of these vehicles has a HMG mounted on the commanders hatch. When firing it the commander isn't protected by the vehicles armour and instead counts as a normal target in cover.

Challenger Tank

Appearances: The Runaway Bride, Turn Left
Used by the army to blow up the Racnoss spaceship, they would no doubt be useful against smaller opponents too.

Type/Move/DEF/Hits/Armour Saving Throw
Tracked/8/7/3/+2

Weapon/Range/STR/Notes
120mm AP/60"/7 AP=Armour Piercing
120mm HE/60"/4 HE=High Explosive - blast radius 4"
Coax HMG/40"/3/Burst
(Only one of the above may be fired in a turn)

The 1970s equivalent was the Chieftain Tank, which was slower (move 7) and only DEF 6

Scorpion Tank

Appearance: Robot
Called in by the Brigadier to deal with the titular mechanoid, it lasted about 10 seconds before being vapourised - possibly because it was in fact just an Action Man model superimposed in the foreground.

Type/Move/DEF/Hits/Armour Saving Throw
Tracked/10/5/2/+2

Weapon/Range/STR/Notes
76mm AP/50"/5/AP=Armour Piercing
76mm HE/50"/3/HE=High Explosive - blast radius 3"
Coax HMG/40"/3/Burst
(Only one of the above may be fired in a turn)

Note: modern versions have had the 76mm gun replaced with a 30mm autocannon (see Fox below)

Fox Armoured Car

Appearance: Aliens of London
Seen parked outside Heathrow Airport, which was not particularly useful as the aliens were in Downing Street, and was bit out of place as the Slitheen landed in 2006 and the vehicle was retired from service in 1993.

Type/Move/DEF/Hits/Armour Saving Throw
Wheeled/10/5/2/+2

Weapon/Range/STR/Notes
30mm autocannon/5/4/Burst
Coax HMG/40"/3/Burst
(Only one of the above may be fired in a turn)

The 1970s equivalent was the Saladin which had six wheels and a 76mm gun like the Scorpion.

Saxon Armoured Personnel Carrier

Appearances: Aliens of London, World War Three.
Used in the Doctor's 'arrest' this vehicle is then seen parked outside Downing Street. It is basically an armoured lorry to ferry troops to the front line and isn't designed as a combat vehicle.

Type/Move/DEF/Hits/Armour Saving Throw
Wheeled/10/5/2/+2

Weapon - Cupola HMG only, but can carry 10 soldiers in the back.

This vehicle entered service in 1983. Before that the army just used ordinary lorries.

Modern U.N.I.T. and Armed Police

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[These are a some additional rules for the Doctor Who Miniatures Game]

Twenty First Century U.N.I.T

EPISODES

The Christmas Invasion, The Sontaran Stratagem, The Poison Sky, Turn Left, The Stolen Earth, Planet of the Dead

WEAPONS

All soldiers have the following:

Range/Hit/STR/Notes
Assault rifle/18”/4+/3 autofire (2 shots)
Pistol/8”/4+ 3/+1 at short range
Baton/melee/4+/4/stuns

Also available ATRLs (‘bazookas’).

EQUIPMENT

Body armour - usual rules apply

Comm link - all U.N.I.T. personal can remain in radio contact, but can be jammed. Sonic screwdrivers can make the headsets emit a high pitched sound that stuns operators.

Hand cuffs - STR 7. To put them on a resisting opponent requres a successful Brawl. Once cuffed the detained person cannot run or use their arms.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

U.N.I.T. soldiers may always use lethal force on aliens.

They may detain any humans for any reason (using their batonsor hand cuffs if the human resists arrest) but may only use lethal force on a human (or something that looks human and that has not been identified as an alien) if the person is using a lethal weapon on themselves, their colleagues or civilians.

CO19

EPISODES

World War Three

ROLE

CO19 are London’s armed police. Regional police forces have similar units.

CO19 consists of Specialist Firearms Officers (SFOs) who are used in pre-planned operations or who would be deployed to key sites event of a national emergency, and Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) which are available at all times for emergencies.

In 2005 SFOs were deployed to 10 Downing Street during the ’Massive Weapons of Destruction’ scare, whilst ARVs were first to the scene after the ‘Plastics Dolls Deaths’ when terrorists dressed as shop dummies attacked shoppers with concealed weapons.

ORGANISATION

SFOs normally deploy in teams of 15.
ARVs have crews of three.

WEAPONS

SFOs will carry a variety of weapons appropriate to their role. Most will have assault rifles, a couple may have sniper rifles and some may have Tasers. If they need to enter a locked building one may have a shotgun to use on the door. If responding to a riot some may have Baton guns.

Each occupant of an ARV will carry a pistol. Two assault rifles are locked in the boot and can only be removed with permission from higher authority.

Range/Hit STR Notes
Pistol/8”/4+/3/+1 at short range
Carbine/15”/4+/3/autofire (2 shots)
Shotgun/8”/3+/3
Sniper rifle/24”/3+/3/can only fire aimed shots
Taser/2”/4+/4/stuns
Baton gun/6”/4+/4/stuns

EQUIPMENT

Body armour - usual rules apply

Radio - all personal can remain in radio contact, but can be jammed.

Hand cuffs - STR 7. To put them on a resisting opponent requres a successful Brawl. Once cuffed the detained person cannot run or use their arms.

OPTIONAL RULE

Modern soldiers run around a lot more than those in the 1970s. Possibly its because there's more guns about now, or possibly it's because we're all a lot less laid back than we were then.

To reflect this, if shooting at a target whose movement rate (maximum move, not actual distance moved) exceeds 10" is at -1.

Elite troops, like U.N.I.T. and CO19 should at all times be either in cover, lying prone or running to make themselves harder targets.

Air Strike!

2011-12-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

(Picture by Daryl Joyce)

Air strikes are pretty devastating and should be able to remove most alien threats short of a Time War Dalek Army. By far the easiest way to play them is to have the objective of the game to rescue a heroic character from the monsters and then to get clear before the bombs destroy the baddies.

However if you want to play the whole thing out you can use these rules.

Basic Rules

For a 1970s style air strike using ordinary ‘iron bombs’, like the one that destroyed the Krynoid in Seeds of Doom, use these rules. (The type of aircraft is not important. In The Hand of Fear for example the aircraft were scripted as Tornadoes but where shown as Harriers on their approach and Buccaneers afterwards!)

If aircraft are available they need to be called in by the senior UNIT officer on the heroic side (‘Greyhound Leader’). To make contact with the aircraft a dice roll is required:

5 or 6 if using a radio in a backpack or Land Rover
4, 5 or 6 if using the UNIT mobile HQ (‘Trap One’)

Keep rolling until radio contact is made. Once radio contact is made it can be lost again due to interference, bad weather or alien related meteorological phenomena. Roll a dice every turn and on a 6 contact is lost and you need to roll again to re-establish it.

If the aircraft are circling nearby waiting to be called in, they arrive the turn after they are called. They must then try to find the target. Roll a dice and on a 5 or 6 low cloud or poor visibility has prevented this and they will need to circle round and try again in 2 turns. The aircraft will not bomb if there are friendly forces or civilians within 20 inches of the designated target.

Aircraft will carry between 2 and 8 bombs. They will drop them in pairs but can make several passes. Only one aircraft a turn can bomb.

Bombs are powerful, but relatively inaccurate. Each bomb dropped will miss the target by (d6 - 1) x 3 inches. Determine the direction it misses by by spinning a pencil. Bombs have a blast radius of 6 inches. Within 1 inch they cause d6 hits and within 1 inch these are at STR 6 decreasing to STR 2 at 6 inches. (e.g. if you roll a ‘2’ for the miss distance the bomb inflicts d6 STR 4 hits).

Figures may get a ‘saving throw’ from these hits. They save on a 5 or 6 if lying down, 4, 5 or 6 if hiding in ‘soft cover’ (e.g. in a building) and on a 3,4,5 or 6 if in ‘hard cover’ (e.g. a trench). If in some sort of bunker then the bomb damage is inflicted on the bunker instead and if destroyed then the figures inside are hit. An ordinary concrete bunker is DEF 6. A state-of-the-art steel bunker or alien spaceship may be DEF 8.

Rockets

More accurate, but less powerful than bombs are air to ground rockets such as the one fired from a helicopter that destroyed the first Viperox battle droid in Dreamland.

They hit on a 5 or a 6 (hovering helicopters can 'aim') are STR 6 and have 4" blast radius. Rockets that miss land 1d6" inches away in a random direction. They are usually fired from pods containing 24 rockets.

Maximum range is 100" and minimum range 24".

Modern Rules

Military technology has moved on in the last 30 years and air forces now use guided weapons. Bombs still go ‘boom’ like they used to, but are more accurate and can be delivered by guided missiles as well as aircraft, such as the Harpoon missile which destroyed Downing Street in World War Three (the V1 which appeared in The Time Monster is an unguided missile and ‘misses’ like an iron bomb).

The miss distance for guided weapons is d6 -1 inches. Attacks can be ordered by radio still, but also by computer link including by hacking. Guided missiles can’t orbit waiting to be called in like aircraft and so there will always be a delay before one arrives. If the roll for the miss distance is ‘6’ then the missile has malfunctioned and does not arrive at all.

Shooting at aircraft

This can only be done by weapons that can fire bursts (but only roll once) and is done at a range of 25 inches. Shooting is at -1. Aircraft are DEF 5 and have 2 hits, but damaged aircraft will return to base rather than continuing to attack.

Anti-aircraft guns, like the 40mm Bofurs seen in The Sea Devils, have a range of 50 inches, hit on a 4+ (at ground targets), fire bursts and are STR 4. Similar weapons are fitted to some armoured cars (such as the Fox seen briefly in Aliens of London) but these can’t shoot at aircraft. Most armoured vehicles have a HMG instead to defend against air attack.

Surface to Air Missiles

Slightly more effective are Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) as used by UNIT in Planet of the Dead. There are two stages to shooting down an aerial target with a missile: first the target must be tracked by the SAM's radar, then the missile must intercept (hit) it. 1970s missiles such as the RAF Bloodhound (used in Mind of Evil as the Thunderbolt missile) can only attack targets that are at high altitude, but modern missiles can attack any target on the table.

Tracking is normally achieved on a roll of 2+ with -1 for targets that are low, fast or small. If the target knows that it is being tracked it may try to jam the radar signal on a 4+ if it has suitable technology. If successfully tracked a missile may be fired, but the tracking must continue if the missile is to hit. The track can be broken by the further jamming, the target moving out of sight (even if only briefly) or the radar being destroyed.

Twenty First century UNIT have Stinger shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles (although they are only seen using them against ground targets). These track on a 4+ but as they are heat-seeking can only be fired at things which have an engine.

If a missile has a nuclear warhead (such as in Claws of Axos) the missile will automatically destroy the target. For missiles with conventional warheads the target gets a saving throw of less than or equal to their AGI. For aircraft count a slow moving transport plane as AGI 1, a light aircraft as AGI 2 and a jet fighter as AGI 3. If being attacked by a 1970s missile subtract 2 from the dice roll. The warhead of the missile is STR 6.

SAMs may be used against alien spacecraft, such as the missiles, possibly fired from a Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyer, used against the Vinvocci slavage ship in The End of Time. Alien warships will probably be able to jam the missile's radar, but if not the size of a spaceship will make tracking automatic. To ensure destruction of large targets missiles will probably need to be fired in salvos. The Type 45 can fired 16 missiles simultaneously and carries 48. It's 1970s equivalent, the Type 42, can only fire two at a time.

Aircraft may also fire missiles at aerial target, the process being very similar. If an aircraft is on the targets tail following it then tracking is automatic. If the target tries to shake the attacking aircraft off a dogfight develops: roll AGI versus AGI to see who wins.

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Eighties

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The eighties, now this is when I started reading sci-fi, so there are going to be some real favourites here. And it was a pretty good decade to get the sci-fi bug really. As well as new books we also had new sub-genres, which is a sure sign of rude health.

Firstly the graphic novel really came of age during this decade. Perhaps they should have their own category, but personally I'd rate Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (1982-5), The Ballad of Halo Jones (1984-6) and Watchmen (1986-7), and Neil Gaiman's Sandman (1989-96) as up their with the best novels.

Given how visual the graphic novel is it's a bit of a surprise that the film versions have only been mediocre, but I suspect perhaps that's because people underestimate the subtlety of a good graphic novel. They may have pictures, but they still require you to have an imagination, whereas cinema doesn't.

A genuine new sub-genre was Steampunk. It's difficult to say when this began, but the novel that brought it to my attention was The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. A menagerie of weird and wacky ideas including sinister stilt walking clowns and an attempt to catch a body-swapping werewolf by opening a hair removal clinic. It really has to be read to be experienced.

Then there was Cyberpunk. I suppose an unbiased list would give this decades award to the book that begins "The sky was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." Not really my genre but still, great book. And those of us who've grown up with the Information Revolution sometimes forget how new ideas like this are. When I were a lad sci-fi computers were, at best, avatars of HAL from 2001. The one in the original Star Trek seems little better than a Sinclair Spectrum. Arthur C Clarke may have said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but it took William Gibson to show us how close we were to that point. This may not have been the first cyberpunk novel, that may have been Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad, serialised in New Worlds in 1969, but it in the book that popularised the genre.

Another novelty was in Bob Shaw's The Ragged Astronauts , about a binary planet with shared atmosphere, hence interplanetary travel could be accomplished in a balloon.

Rather more complex was Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer. Set in a future where the galaxy has been colonised but the earth has slipped back into medieval barbarism, the titular hero is a Journeyman of the Guild of the Seeker After Truth And Penitence. The layers of deception laid down by the author are Byzantine in their complexity and nobody is as they seem.

Another almost winner is a novel in an unlikely location for a science fiction story; a wood in Kent. This is Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock,a place that is it not only bigger on the inside than the outside, but also a place where myths take physical form.

I read the book whilst living in the woods of Newbury during a record cold winter, which probably increased its effect on me a touch, but it is a magnificent and thoughtful book. Alas I have to admit that although you could make an attempt at explaining all this by means of Relativity and Jungian archetypes, I have to ultimately classify Mythago Wood as fantasy and not sci-fi.

Gosh that's a lot of worthy winners, and I haven't had time to mention Carl Sagan's Contact, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaiden's Tale, Greg Bear's Eon, Frank Herbert's Dune and many others.

Instead I'll skip straight to the winner; Consider Phlegas by Iain M Banks, the first of his Culture novels.

It is difficult to describe how much I love these books. Firstly here is top notch space opera, lasers, battles, robots, The Works. Secondly we also have something that has largely disappeared from the silver screen - an optimistic, liberal future.

Banks's Culture is a strange beast. It is not only Post-Scarcity, it's also post-human. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been ditched in place of the Dictatorship of the Artificial Mind. It clearly works, because Banks says it does, but does beg some interesting questions. Do the controlling Minds really have the best interests of human being at heart?

And what do those humans (and not quite humans) actually do? Banks describes their spaceships in details. Communist from the inside and Anarchist from the outside, they skip merrily about his stories. However as we only ever get to hear about how the Culture interacts with other civilisations we don't learn alot about the daily lives of its less adventurous denizens. Oodles of sex and drugs are clearly on the menu, but its not clear how they avoid the pointless debauchery of Brave New World.

But most of these questions are for the future for in Consider Phlegas we are catapulted into the middle of the best space war since Bob Heinlein passed on as the Culture takes on the Idirans, a bunch of space faring warriors who make the Klingons look like a bunch of boy scouts.

We have not yet seen a film version of any of these books, which is probably fortunate, but thanks to his non-sci-fi output Banks has at least received the critical acclaim he deserves, and which previous writers have been denied. As a book of the decade Consider Phelgas could well mark the high point of the genre.

Winner: Consider Phlegas by Iain M Banks (1987)

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Seventies

2011-10-29T06:07:00.002-07:00

In the sixties the sci-fi novel had managed the quantum leap to serious literary style, but still nobody took them seriously. Still it was a strong decade for the genre.

In 1970 Larry Niven gave us Ringworld, an artificial habitat the size of three million earths. Unfortunately it's an idea bigger than his imagination and instead of a thriving civilisation of several trillion people we land in an almost abandoned desert, which is a bit of a disappointment.

Another big concept novel is Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke, a welcome return to top form by the British master. Once again though the idea is bigger than novel and once it's all over we are not much wiser about Rama or its designers.

One writer who could take the Big Concept and run with it though was Philip José Farmer, who in 1971 gave us To You Scattered Bodies Go, the first of his Riverworld series. Here we had everyone who had ever lived brought back to life and youth for some unknown reason on a specially made planet whose surface is a 20 million mile long version of the Mississippi.

Eventually pretty much everyone would turn up in Riverworld, from Herman Goering to Jesus. Framer himself even has a cameo under pseudonym. The series would run to five books and an anthology of short stories and although such high concept stuff often disappoints in the final real, Farmer does a pretty good job of bringing it to a conclusion. Basically the Buddhists were right.

Meanwhile back in Blighty John Brunner had two more classics left in him. Sheep Look Up gives us a vision of environmental apocalypse with corrupt corporations, a compliant legal system and a President chosen because the "public obviously wanted a figurehead who'd look good and make comforting noises."

Then he wrote Shockwave Rider, which looked at the social effects of technology. A natural disaster reveals the truth, quickly suppressed by the authorities, that people are actually happier with less gadgets. The hero then sets out to destroy the corrupt system by means of a computer program that reproduces itself - the first computer virus in sci-fi. I'd dearly love to give Brunner an award, but I will once again have to pass him over.

Another writer from the sixties still knocking them out was Philip K Dick, and this decade he produced A Scanner Darkly and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said. The latter is set in a future police state in which a television star wakes up an finds he no longer exists. Boy, aren't there a few people I'd like that to happen to in real life.

Another author I feel guilty about not manging to give a winners medal to is Ursula Le Guin. Having started strongly in the sixties, in the seventies she gave us The World for World is Forest, which is Avatar for grown ups. She also wrote The Lathe of Heaven , a moral tale about being careful what you wish for, and Eye of the Heron, a feminist view of both men who oppress by violence and those who choose to get themselves beaten up by opposing them.

Best of all she wrote The Dispossessed, a political novel that compares a planet split between capitalism, with the anarchists who live on its moon. It's clear where the author affections lie, but fair play to her she gives her opponents a fair hearing and her capitalists are environmentally friendly whilst the authoritarians do seem to actually be trying to be a Dictatorship of the Proletarian. However its the anarchists who are the interesting ones. Two hundred years into their experiment centripetal forces are threatening to create hierarchies and everyone is still dirt poor.

But my winner is neither a grim prediction of the future or a meditation on political realities, but something completely differnet. Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is really a radio show, but it turns into a decent book (or decent pair of books really as it makes very little sense without The Restaurent at the End of the Universe.

I started my review of the decade by discussing authors who went for the Big Concept, and you don't get many bigger questions than the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. You also don't get many better answers than 42.

Winner: The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams(1979)

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Sixties

2011-10-29T06:07:00.001-07:00

Now its getting really hard. Heinlein, Clark and Asimov were still busy, the former writing his best stuff. But there were new kids on the block, and a very new style of writing.

At the heart of this revolution was a British magazine called New World's, especially after Michael Moorcock took over editorship in 1964. It never made any money, and was funded by the success of the Elric books (and apparently by the regular sale of dirty jokes to Playboy magazine written by Christopher Priest), but it helped launch a whole galaxy of sci-fi greats; J G Ballard, Brian Aldis, Harlan Ellison, George R R Martin, Norman Spinrad, John Brunner and Philip Jose Farmer. However when it comes to the best book of the decade I'm torn between three Yanks and a Brit.

Firstly there's Kurt Vonnegut, maybe not Slaughterhouse 5, but the rather better Cat's Cradle. Having survived the fire bombing of Dresden whilst a POW and then been sent to search for survivors using candles made from victims of the death camps, Vonnegut has a certain view on life. However he leavens his grim stories with ironic humour. He also introduced us to the world's best science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout, but unfortunately he's fictional so can't win.

Then there's Ursula Le Guin. Best know for Earthsea, her science fiction books are at least as good. Her debut novel, Rocannon's World, gave us Lord of the Rings in space, and The Left Hand of Darkness, and everyday tale of life on a planet of gender-shifting humans in which the king gets pregnant.

The final American is Philip K Dick. Drug addled and by the end of his life arguably clinically insane, his books resemble the decade as a whole: brilliant and revolutionary, confusing and conservative all at the same time. Unlike some of the space operas and nuts-and-bolts sci-fi stories his tales of warped realities and fractured identities have aged well and are as unsettling and believable today as when they were written. His stand out stories of the decade include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the book that became Blade Runner, and The Man in the High Castle, an outstanding alternative history (or is it an alternative reality?) story.

The token Brit is the scandalously underrated John Brunner. He wrote a lot of mediocre storied for money, but he also wrote four absolute classics and in the sixties these were Jagged Orbitt and Stand on Zanzibar . The first gave us a twenty-first century America where arms manufacturers and racial tensions had stoked an arms race in personal weaponry, whilst the second gave a grim vision of the world in the year 2010. This is a planet straining under the weight of 7 billion people, a place characterised by random spree killings, anti-technological eco-terrorists, an obsession with cosmetic beauty treatments and powerful corporations.

Picking a winning out of these is going to be tough.

Whilst I was planning this blog I was sure Stand on Zanzibar would be the winner. If sci-fi is about predicting the future then the winner has to be Brunner.

However he is typical of the decade only in so far as he represents that strand of the New Left who still clung on to rationality whilst everyone else went to discover themselves by meditating in an Ashram in California.

But if sci-fi really reflects contemporary themes then it's got to be Philip K Dick. Picking his best book is difficult, but my personal favourite is The Man in the High Castle. Alternative history, life in fascist state, five overlapping sub-plots, a book-within-the-book and a meditation on the nature of reality, Philip K Dick shows us why this was the decade that the sci-fi book grew up and became serious literature.

It was also massively ahead of it time. Psychedelia, opposition to the Vietnam War and the whole counter-culture thing were years in the future in 1962. So Dick isn't just a product of his time, he is, as much as Jack Kerouac and the Beatniks, a foretaste of the wackiness and rebellion that was to come. And it was to be quite a trip.

Winner: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick (1962)

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Fifties

2011-10-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

Now it's getting hard.

The fifties was when sci-fi really took off. The age of the Atom Bomb and the Space Race people were split into believing we were on the verge of curing all the world's ills, or else that we would blow ourselves to oblivion. In the end we did neither, but we did write a lot of good books.

This was the decade that defined sci-fi, and for me four authors stand out.

Firstly there was Bob Heinlein, an all American right wing individualist nut job, but a first rate writer. Starship Troopers is scarily fascistic, but pretty much gave us the well known Star Trek future of minimal states with massive navies as well as Avatar-style power armour.

Then there was Ray Bradbury, who this decade wrote The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury though was more of a stylist than an ideas man, so he only gets the bronze medal.

So this leaves the two giants of the fifties to battle it out: Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke. It's a tough choice, in no small part because both have written an awful lot of guff over the years.

Asimov gave us the big picture, the fall and rise of space empires in the Foundation Trilogy , time travel in The End of Eternity, space opera whodunnits in The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun and robots by the bucket load.

Clarke, the man who invented the communications satellite, eventually became the master of the 'nuts and bolts' style of realistic near-future stories. However in the 50s he was writing about broader topics and his great books of this decade are The City and the Stars, Childhood's End and the short story The Sentinel - which eventually turned into 2001 A Space Odyssey.

It's a close call, and I'm tempted to give the award to Asimov's Foundation for the breadth of its vision. However the sheer 1950ishness of a space empire with atomic powered spaceships and a filing system based on microfilm lets it down and, to be honest, it's not that well written.

So maybe it's just patriotism, but I'm going to give the award to the Englishman for Childhood's End. Clarke not have predicted the future of space travel, but he did predict the future of sci-fi as he gave us giant alien spaceships hovering over our cities and the world's children being rounded up to give to the aliens fifty years before District 9 and Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Winner: : Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke (1953)

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Fourties

2011-10-29T06:04:00.001-07:00

Funnily enough there weren't all that many great sci-fi books written in the 1940s.

Partly his was because H G Wells died in 1946, a year after the war he predicted had been brought to an end in a flash of heat rather similar to a Martian death ray.

The winner then is rather obvious. It is of course George Orwell's 1948 taster of what life might be like during the Cold War - Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A sombre book made even darker by the fact that Orwell died just after finishing it. It appears to be his last will testament, a pessimistic look back at his life's futile struggle against totalitarianisms from Barcelona to the Blitz.

But of course he didn't mean to die when he did. "Don't let it happen" was his motto, and he certainly didn't want anyone who read his book to give up and let Big Brother take over. Optimists have even seen hope in the essay on Newspeak at the back of the book. It's written in the past tense, so does that mean it was written after the time of Big Brother?

Neither was he sure that English Socialism would mutate into IngSoc. His near contemporary essay The Lion and the Unicorn sets out a curious vision of a post-war England after the Revolution in which the judges still wear wigs and the pubs still serve warm beer.

Compared to Huxley's globalised world of trivial hedonism and slick advertising, the world of Big Brother seems rather old fashioned. Doublespeak is mere crude propaganda compared to the delights of the Feelies. But Orwell still packs his punch.

Maybe the future of 1984 came crashing down with the Berlin Wall, but maybe not.

We are still Airstrip One, 'Compassionate Conservatism' and 'Blue Labour' show Doublespeak is alive and well but today called Triangultion. Rupert Murdoch does a good line in Prolefeed and despite the Credit Crunch the Ministry of Plenty is still trying to convince us we've never had it so good. Perhaps today we call the Ministry of Truth Fox News, Room 101 Guantanamo Bay, and as for English Socialism? Well, it has clearly been to see O'Brien and now thinks two plus two equals five.

Winner: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1948)

Seven Decades of Science Fiction Books: The Thirties

2011-10-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Sci-Fi is primarily a literary medium as frankly the pictures are better, so having done Sci-Fi films I thought I'd have a look at books. I've started 20 years earlier as literary sci-fi is at least a decade or two ahead of the cinema.

Had a started this list earlier the thirties would have been the first decade since the 1880s not to be won by H.G. Wells, but it would be a close call. Wells published The Shape of Things to Come in 1933, his last great book, in which he predicted a devastating world war beginning in January 1940, and ending with the world run from an air base in Basra. Hmmm.

There was also Olaf Stapledon who in 1930 published Last and First Men, a history of the entire future of the human race over the next two billion years and which included in its predictions the prominent death of a British Princess in Paris. He followed that in 1937 with Star Maker, a history of the entire universe. He didn't exactly do kitchen sink drama, and his books aren't exactly easy to read either, but they are dizzying in their perspective.

A slightly left field choice would be pulp horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's Shadow Out of Time. Loecraft may have been possibly insane, potentially a Nazi and certainly a bit of a weirdo, but he could write. Most of his work is clearly fantasy or horror, but this book, whilst set in the Cthulhu Mythos universe, can count as sci-fi as its the one about the body swaping, time travelling Great Race of Yith. The final scene where the hero, now back in his own body, discovers an ancient manuscript in his handwriting would make a pretty good Doctor Who scene.

However despite the stiff competition I will, rather predictably, give the prize to Aldrous Huxley's Brave New World. The idea of a future that is trivial, uniform and soulless must have seemed pretty boring compared to the grand adventures of Wells and Stapledon. But lets face it - this is what we've got.

Huxley was a strange chap, and although always described as a dystopia, I suspect he was rather ambivalent about the future he created, at least when it comes to the sex and drugs. His later utopia, The Island, quite a lot of both as well.

But that's not the main point of the book. Instead Huxley looked at how industrialisation had changed the workplace, and imagined those forces being set to work on society. He realised that the best best way to hide the truth was not to ban books, but to deluge us with trivia.

Huxley released that the prison we need to really fear does not have walls made of the things we hate and fear, but bars forged from the things we crave and desire. The book is hilariously funny in places, but also unrelentingly grim as Huxley describes a world that is shockingly familiar to us. When the hero finally hangs himself, you can see why.

Winner: Brave New World by Aldrous Huxley (1932)

Six Decades of Sci-Fi Films

2011-10-29T05:32:00.006-07:00

Nothing dates like the future, as you can see by this trawl through the best of sixty years of science fiction films.

We were going to travel to the stars, be devoured by aliens, replace ourselves with replicants, disappear into cyberspace or be landed with a ship load of space refugees.

Instead the shuttle has been paid off, the aliens are silent, the clones don't work, cyberspace crashes if you move too far from the base station and if we don't do something about Climate Change the refugees will be us.

But lets ignore grim reality and look to back at the future as presented on the silver screen.

The Fifties: The Forbidden Planet(1956)

Well you know you're in the the fifties when you watch Forbidden Planet. Spaceships that look like flying saucers, computers the size of tower blocks, and women relegated to housework.

But what a great film this is. Having grown up int he seventies watching corny CSO special effects on Doctor Who, I couldn't believe a film that looked this good could be made so long ago. As a prediction of the future it is probably pants, but as a vision of how we hoped the future would turn out, it's fantastic. Great style doesn't date, and neither does the look of this film.

As a take on Shakespeare its interesting too, with the Krell's supersized superscience replacing magic and a bit of Freud creeping in for good measure to impress pseudo-intellectuals like me.

And yes, that is a young Leslie Nielson of Police Squad! as the romantic lead.

The Sixties: 2001 A Space Odyssey (1969)

The first time I watched this film I couldn't make head nor tail of it. I then read Arthur C Clark's novelisation and realised it was obvious. I then watched the film again and thought, hang on a minute.

And that's what's fantastic about Kubrick's film. He took Clark's nuts and bolts sci-fi story of heroic space exploration and benevolent aliens and turned it inside out. Now the aliens teach the ape-men to make clubs that turn into orbiting nuclear bombs, and the shiny future is full of charmless, corporate yes-men who lie to the public and miss their daughter's birthday.

And then there's Freud again. I mean, look at the Discovery One, swimming towards the black hole and then giving us the Star Child.

True, you need to be on pot to really want to watch a film this pretentious, this long and this slow, but then this is the sixties and most of the audience apparently were.

The Seventies: Alien (1979)

If you were expecting Star Wars then you're reading the wrong blog. Alien is the genre defining film of this decade.

Now you could argue that the genre concerned is the slasher movie, but it is a sci-fi movie really. Here we have space not as mysterious and exciting, but as the boring, everyday workplace of a bunch of interstellar truck drivers.

Apparently J.G.Ballard was approached to write the novelisation of Alien, but he looked at the monosyllabic dialogue and turned the offer down, only to realise his mistake when he saw the film. You can see where he went wrong though. The script is okay, but it's Ridley Scott's direction and H.R.Giger's designs that make it a classic.

And of course Freud is there in bucket loads too, as this alien doesn't just eat you, it impregnates you and you give birth to its off spring. Yuck.

The Eighties: Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner almost gets my vote as best movie of all time.

Almost, but not quite, and the reason is a rather annoying one.

Everyone knows the debate about whether Decker is a replicant. It seems fairly clear director Scott intended him to be, and every time they retouch the film and release a new version this becomes clearer. But, and its a very big but, no matter how they tweak it they can't get round the fact that Harrison Ford was clearly not trying to play a replicant. It's not a bad performance by Ford, but that' part of the problem. His Blade Runner is too human.

But Ford isn't the star of th show. That is clearly Rutger Hauer. This is Mr Guinness's finest moment. He is handsome, noble and menacing throughout the film, in the way that only Robert Shaw could equal. He murders his father (Freud again, need I say) bumps off the nice J.F. Sebastian, is really mean to Decker, and then ends the film with one of the best soliloquys in cinema.

Ultimately Blade Runner may not amount to a hill of beans, but so well made, well acted and well designed is this dystopian classic that you'll come away thinking it was more profound than Proust.

The Nineties: The Matrix (1999)

In the nineties computerised special effects arrived and the only limit to what could be shown on screen was human imagination. Unfortunately that turned out to be a fairly serious limitation, and mostly we just got superhero stories, but we did get the Matrix.

Okay, so the sequels have reduced the concept to utter silliness, and the idea (and the name) were both nicked from a Tom Baker Dr Who story (1976's The Deadly Assassin), but it was still a jaw dropping film when it came out.

Not that it's an optimistic film, along with the runner up for this decade, Terminator II, it shows a pretty grim future. Alien and Blade Runner may have shown that the future doesn't hold much for those at the bottom of the social ladder, but these films suggest that the only things that can look forward with optimism are our PCs.

The Noughties: District 9 (2009)

The special effects continued to get better, but whilst this has revitalised the fantasy genre and TV sci-fi, in the movies it was largely the same backward looking stuff, as epitomised by that vapid rubbish Avatar, which re fought the Vietnam war with ten foot high smurfs three and half decades after everyone else moved on.

There were a few exceptions though, and chief amongst them was District 9, a stunningly original South African film. The hero who becomes more humane as he becomes less human, and the alien racism analogy had been done before, although possibly not done better. However the invasion by crap aliens was new. Previously First Contact was either a Very Bad Thing or a Very Good Thing. Here it's just a hassle, another problem for the UN, another opportunity for the evil corporations.

Summary

So what have we learnt in sixty years of sci-fi films? Well, if this list is anything to go by the optimism has certainly gone.

In the fifties and sixties we looked forward to boldly going in search of adventure and excitement, admittedly in the service of some sort of quasi-fascistic state.

In the seventies and eighties it became apparent that this Brave New World wasn't for everyone, and that there'd be a lower strata of workers either to be used as alien-fodder for the corporations or abandoned on a dying earth whilst the elite moved to Mars.

Then in the nineties the future was given over to the machines, and any aliens we met were in a worse state than.

All said, I think I wish I was back in the fifties.

The Best of Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor

2011-10-25T02:40:00.002-07:00

Well this should be easy. Paul McGann, the Doctor for one night only. What's his best story then?

Well, I could cheat and consider media other than TV, in which case I'd go for the animated version of the Douglas Adams story Shada that he voiced.

But no, I'll have to play fair and nominate the story known only as Doctor Who The TV Movie. This was an attempt to revive the series by setting it in the USA, something it notably failed to do.

It's not so much that the story is actively bad, it just has a complete absence of anything good in it. This is Doctor Who by numbers with lines such as "Would you like a jelly baby?" (groan), "Don't mind him he's English" (cringe) and "I'm half human" (roll around on floor going 'nooooooooo!').

Eric Roberts makes a passable villain, although he's clearly not The Master, and Daphne Ashbrook makes a passable companion.

There's certainly been worse stories on US television, but is it Doctor Who? Only just. Yes there's a blue box, but where is the multi-layered plot, the monsters who turn out to have hearts of gold, the moral dilemmas etc etc.

But enough of the plot, what about McGann? Well, before I answer that lest have a quick recap of the debut stories of the various Doctors. William Hartnell was of course perfect from the word go, Patrick Troughton's first outing is, alas, lost forever whilst Jon Pertwee spent most of his first story out cold in a hospital bed. Tom Baker left us for a while in the TARDIS leaving Sarah Jane to carry the story whilst Peter Davidson spent most of his debut in a box. The less said about the intial appearances of Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy the better.

So you'd have to say McGann's debut performance was probably the best since The First Doctor's thirty three years earlier. He was The Doctor straight out of the box. Debonair and romantic, he could have been the best of Doctor Who. Instead he will remain a one hit wonder.

The Best of Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor

2011-10-25T02:40:00.001-07:00

If any actor who played the Doctor has grounds for asking for his money back its Sylvester McCoy.

Originally recruited to clown around with Bonnie Langford in a series of embarrassingly bad episodes, it seems he'd been taken on by an out-of-touch production team to see out the twilight of the series in some pre-CBBC slot for adolescents who haven't the energy to change channels. It was so bad you really did want to hide behind the sofa.

But then Andrew Cartmell took over as script editor. He couldn't save the write off that was McCoy's first series, but for the show's 25th anniversary series he got to work on his Master Plan. Out went the comedy Time Lord and Bonnie Langford, and in came a darker Doctor and a companion with a back story.

Now you can argue that if you were going to do this you wouldn't really want to do it with actors of such limited range as McCoy and Sophie Aldred, but that's what happened and, to be fair to the two leads, they did their best and, if nothing else, their genuine affection for each other did show through.

McCoy's second season began with a bang with Ben Aaronovitch's Remembrance of the Daleks, which took us back to Foreman's Scrap Yard in 1963, gave us duelling Dalek factions in league with the National Front and introduced us to UNIT's forerunner The Intrusions Counter-Measures Group.

The series then went off the rails a bit before coming back strongly with the pointless, baffling but wonderfully surreal Greatest Show in the Galaxy. Don't ask me what it's about, but menacing kites and a killer bus conductor work for me.

McCoy's third series though was his best. Four top notch stories and not a bad episode amongst them. The show had been throwing up at least one utterly cringe worthy script a year since Tom Baker hung up his scarf, so this was the best series since the Key to Time.

First there was Battlefield, a welcome return for UNIT and the Brigadier as they fight an honourable foe in the form of Jean Marsh's Morgaine and her dimension shifting knights. Fortunately UNIT are all tooled up with their new ass-kicking female Brigadier and a range of bullets for all eventualities.

Then there was Ghost Light, which was very much in Sapphire and Steel territory being set in a Victorian mansion populated by strange characters and evolutionary throwbacks.

Next we had The Curse of Fenric, set in Northumbria in World War II and featuring code breakers, a Viking curse, Russian commandos, vampires, Nicholas Parsons as a consience troubled vicar, and lots of hints that the Doctor is now 'more than just a Time Lord'.

Finally there was Survival, in which Anthony Ainsley as The Master finally stops doing a poor impersonation of Roger Delgado and becomes the feral predator I suspect he always wanted to play.

And that was that. Literally. The BBC canned the series and it was all over.

So what's the best Seventh Doctor story then? Well I'd have liked it to have been Battlefield, but the pacing is a little uneven thanks to it being stretched from three episodes to four episode and the knights look cheap (because they were). Still it was nice to see old Lethbridge-Stewart doing all right, married to the previously invisible Doris and living in a huge mansion. How he paid for it I've no idea. Maybe he pocketed a few of the gold bullets.

So the winner has to be The Curse of Fenric. Had it featured a more iconic Doctor and a more iconic monster it would be a contender for the best ever story, I'm sure. Watching it now I realise that thanks to Cartmell the jump from the old series to the new wasn't that great after all.

With a contemporary theme (pollution), the Doctor hovering in the background letting his companion do all the work and poor old Ace gets put through the emotional wringer, this could have been an RTD script. But whereas the new series likes to paint it characters in black and white, here we are in shades of grey again and there is no Ghost in the Machine ending, but instead a complicated denouement that I would explain to you if only I could remember it.

Shortly after broadcast Doctor Who was no more, but at least the old series went out on a high.

The Best of Doctor Who: The Sixth Doctor

2011-10-25T02:39:00.001-07:00

Colin Baker - he was the crap one right?

Wrong. He was the loud one, the fat one, the one worst served by the BBC in terms of stories and production values, but he was a pretty good Doctor. Egotistical, boastful, verbose, unpredictable and occasionally violent, he was a bit different from his predecessors.

Colin Baker got the role on the basis of a scenery chewing performance in Blake's 7 and a speech at a wedding. The costume is, admittedly, a disaster, but that was imposed on Baker by John Nathan-Turner, a producer who had really lost the plot by this stage.

So dressed like a wally Colin Baker had to navigate some of the worst Doctor Who stories ever written. Is there any point in watching?

Well yes, because of all the actors who flew the TARDIS, none could deliver a comic line better than Colin Baker, and given some of the guff he was asked to act in, you need a good laugh.

However if I want you to love Colin Baker there's no point in going over episodes like The Two Doctors, in which the welcome return of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines was ruined by a dull script, or Timelash in which Paul Darrow from Blake's 7 returns the favour to Baker by putting in an OTT performance, but looses the battle against risible sets and dire special effects.

Instead lets go straight to the highlight of Colin Baker's brief tenure; Revelation of the Daleks.

Like all the best Dalek episodes, the metal dustbins are kept in the background for most of the story, and instead we have a complex series of at least five overlapping subplots set around a cryogenic storage facility for the dead rich.

Davros is secretly making a new Dalek army from bits of dead humans (hmm, so that's where RTD got the idea from.........). Meanwhile we also have Orsini and Bostock, an errant knight and his squire on their way to assassinate Davros. Then we have the to rival Dalek faction out to get Davros too. Whilst all this is going on we have bodysnatchers, some dodgy food production, power struggles in management structure and a loopy DJ.

An idea of what we have in store is given when one of the characters comments on recently departed client "I hope we're on time, she's already beginning to froth." After that the killer lines come fast and furious. The founder of Alternative Comedy, Alexi Sale, plays the DJ, but it's a credit to the rest of the cast, who deliver the blackest of lines with deadly seriousness, that he isn't the funniest.

The best double act of all though is the Doctor and Peri. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant always sparkled when together. Take the fob watch scene - you have to see it to appreciate it - which shows how good they are at spinning out even the weakest of puns.

The only down side to putting Revelation forward as his best adventure is that he's barely in it. There's so much going on that he's periferal to most of the story, and in the end Davros's empire more or less falls apart under its own contradictions rather being brought low by some inexplicable special ability of the Doctor and/or the TARDIS. But that's another reason I like the story - it's realistic, that's how Dictatorships usually end.

If every Sixth Doctor story had been this good we'd all be singing the praise of Colin Baker as one of the great Doctors. Alas they weren't.

However the Sixth Doctor has gone on to a long and productive second lease of life in books and audio releases, and Colin Baker has had the pleasure of being voted the best audio Doctor of all. He has even, thanks to the animated webcast Real Time, obtained a costume worthy of his character. All of which must be some compensation for being so diabolically treated by the BBC.

The Best of Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor

2011-10-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

We're now in 1981, and properly into the John Nathan-Turner years.

Now before I go on I should saw that Doctor Who fans owe a considerable debt to the man who produced the series for the whole of the 1980s. Without him the show would probably have died a death shorty after Tom Baker hung up his scarf, and if that had happened it's hard to see the show eventually coming back in the way that it did.

However what Nathan-Turner actually did with the show was not good. By executive order he removed all elements of magic, myth and horror, banned his actors from humour or ad-libs, disintegrated the sonic screwdriver, reduced the Doctor to a rather helpless victim of events, and extracted the show from its regular Saturday teatime slot. So with everything that made the show good expunged, I switched off.

So Peter Davidson isn't my favourite Doctor then. A good actor, Davidson might have made a great Doctor had he been a little older, served with better scripts, and been allowed to play the character the way he wanted to. Choosing the best of the Fifth Doctor stories then isn't going to be too hard, as there are only really two I'll watch again.

I suppose in passing I should mention Kinda, very meaningful but don't ask me what it means, and The Black Orchid, very atmospheric but a bit ridiculous, but as I've not watched either in nearly thirty years I can't really say more.

I'm tempted to give the award to The Five Doctors. The plot isn't great. It couldn't be otherwise really as Terrance Dicks had to cram in so many Doctors and Companions that by the end the latter are reduced to doing nothing more than standing around and shaking hands with each other. But it does have a sparkling performance by Patrick Troughton, an enjoyable turn by Jon Pertwee and Richard Hurndall in the role-of-his-life as the First Doctor. It also has Tom Baker who, even in some out-of-context footage from the aborted Shada, easily out Doctors his successor.

The story can also claim what may be the best battle scene in the old series, when the Raston Warrior Robot obliterates a cyberman patrol - Doctor Who isn't usually remembered for squirting innards and severed limbs. The cyberman are otherwise total crap in this episode, as they are throughout the 1980s, but they do at least die spectacularly well.

However the standout story of the Davidson era is The Caves of Androzani. Robert Holmes again comes up with interesting characters and Peter Davidson acts his socks off.

He starts off in typically wimpish form with lines like; "What do we do now?" - "Surrender." and "How do we get out of this?" - "I really have no idea." And he has to be rescued from his own execution by a villain of all people. However by episode three he seems to have grown some balls and manages to eventually rescue Peri and save the day.

And best of all he then dies. Hurray!

The Best of Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor

2011-10-25T02:37:00.002-07:00

Ah, the Tom Baker years, and Doctor Who reaches heights never attained before or since.

And depths too, to be honest, but we'll forget about that.

The curly one started off with a few earth based stories left over from the Pertwee years, then blasted off into space for a series of Gothic horror film remakes that are amongst the best of the series. He then said good by to the earth and ditched his last human companion to search for the Key to Time.

Then things started to go a bit wobbly. They gave the job of script editor to a zany comedy writer - a very brave move. The seventies then came to an end, Douglas Adams left to become a demi-god, and a new script editor was appointed to vowed to end all the "late sixties hippie ideas derived form Third World cultures" which had infested the series. Arguably it was all downhill from there.

But back to the highlights, and what a lot there are.

There's Terror of the Zygons with its atmospheric Scottishness, although it does have a terrible CSO monster and the Brigadier in kilt. Not good.

Then there are the best of the horror remakes; The Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius, both of which also have the incomparable Sarah Jane.

Another near-perfect story is The Robots of Death. Agatha Christie in space with a claustrophobic setting and wonderfully scary Regency-style robots.

The Talons of Weng Chiang, a tribute to the best of Victorian noire is another near winner. A collection of cliches from swirling fogs to inscrutable Chinese, giant rats in the sewers and sneaky oriental assassins, it also has some of Robert Holmes's most sparkling dialogue, not just from the Doctor and Leila, but also from a great cast of supporting characters. Brilliant stuff.

The Key to Time was an interesting concept for the next series. Alas, it didn't produce any classic episodes, but Mary Tamm looked superb and easily gets the prize of best dressed companion. If her Ice Maiden costume doesn't tickle your fancy, then just look at her mock-Medieval outfit for The Androids of Tara. personally I think Tom Baker (and Richard Dawkins) married the wrong Romana.

The Douglas Adams years tend to divide fans, and I'm not completely in the camp that thinks he was the best thing that ever happened to Who, but The City of Death is very funny, very stylish thanks to being shot in Paris, and actually a very original idea.

Shada doesn't count as it was never broadcast, but I also suspect it wouldn't have been as great as many fans expect. I mean, it includes the Doctor on a bicycle being chased by a flying globe. How rubbish would that have been?

As I've said, Tom Baker's last season was a bit uneven, but there's he no doubt he went out on a high. Logopolis is an interesting story, as The Doctor comes up against his most deadly enemy to date, namely entropy. Baker acts his socks off here, and the final fall from Jodrell bank is a fittingly dramatic way for it all to end.

So what's the best of the Fourth Doctor then?

Well it was almost The Genesis of the Daleks. Here we have Doctor Who at its peak: Tom Baker, Liz Sladen, Ian Marter, a Terry Nation script, the Daleks, Davros, the camp chap from Allo Allo in a minor roll, they're all there.

Why doesn't it win? Partly I suppose I've watched it so many times it's lost some of its fizz, partly its a touch too long, partly I have my doubts about the point it's trying to make - is genocide really that bad when we're talking about the Daleks?

Mainly though its because I prefer dark humour to deep thought.

So my vote for the Best of the Fourth Doctor goes to The Deadly Assassin, Robert Holmes's deliciously satirical political thriller set on Gallifrey.

The Time Lords had been on the periphery of the Doctor Who universe for a while. We'd had sneaky peaks in The War Games and The Three Doctors, but now we were going to find out the whole truth. All seeing, all powerful and supposedly all good, they could have been stupefyingly boring, but not in Holmes's capable hands.

Instead of the vaguely Buddhist ascended masters hinted at before, here we had a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who can now barely work the technology they have inherited and who now care more for status and tradition that science and art. No wonder there are so many renegade Time Lords.

The set design is spectacular, the acting first rate and then there's The Matrix, an idea so good someone else had to make a film about it.

But most of all what makes it great is the script. With ideas nicked from The Manchurian Candidate and Porterhouse Blue, and contemporary references to Harold Wilson's resignation and the Kennedy assassination Holmes created a masterpiece leavened with his inimitable dialogue.

Then there's the ending. The Master is defeated, Gallifrey is saved, so what do the Time Lords do? The embark on a cover up of course. Delicious, simply delicious.

A classic episode from a classic Doctor.

The Best of Doctor Who: The Third Doctor

2011-10-25T02:37:00.001-07:00

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. It's 1970, Doctor Who goes colour and Jon Pertwee takes the reins and to cap it all I'm born! (Three days before the first episode of The Ambassador's of Death to be precise).

Its difficult to know what the BBC thought they were getting when they signed up Pertwee, a comedy actor who'd had bit parts in Carry On films? Probably not the dandy action man they actually got anyway.

As Pertwee is one favourite Whos, the honourable mentions are going to be quite long, so lets crank up Bessie, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and get on with it.

Firstly there's the debut story itself, Spearhead from Space, which gave us the Autons and the classic scene of the dummies gunning down hapless shoppers. UNIT get their colour debut to and whilst the Brigadier's gang often appear to have been reduced to little more than a flag party and have lost their sixties gizmo's, they do contribute to a significant amount of gun play and enjoyable mayhem for the rest of the Third Doctor's tenure.

The first season also ends with a cracker too in Inferno, which features the destruction of a parallel earth and a baddy Brigadier.

The next season saw the arrival of The Master, played by the late and great Roger Delgado. Horrendously overused, he started well with Terror of the Autons and the series also contains The Daemons, a story of witchcraft and devilry in an English village which scores ten out of ten for atmosphere, but loses all its points for a silly plot and a useless Doctor.

Once the Third Doctor actually gets to leave earth we have enjoyable romp in The Carnival of Monsters.

Another favourite of mine is The Day of the Daleks, the first story that actually uses time travel as plot device. Hard to believe it took them ten years to use time travel in a story about a time traveller isn't it? A tale of Freedom Fighters from the future trying to change history whilst being hunted by time travelling cyborgs, it does sound a little like a certain Arnie movie doesn't it?

Then there's The Three Doctors. Not much to write home about in many ways, but worth while to see Troughton and Pertwee playfully sending each other up and Hartnell's last TV appearance - filmed in his garage as he was too ill to get to the studio. Sad to think that all three are no no longer with us.

Another honourable mention must go to The Time Warrior, which introduced those root-vegetable clones, the Sontarans and the late Liz Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith in a passable medieval yarn.

A better Sarah Jane story though is The Dinosaur Invasion. Now mostly remembered for the lamentable condition of the titular sauropods, it is a good story with some well meaning, but very sinister, eco-utopians as the real villains. Never trust a hippy indeed.

So what the top Pertwee story then? Well it was almost The Curse of Peladon, the story of a primitive planet petitioning to join the swanky Galactic Federation, which by complete coincidence came out just as Heath was trying to get us into the Common Market. Here we have Jo Grant not being completely useless for a change and the plot twist of the Ice Warriors now being goodies.

However for the award of best-of-Pertwee we have to have an earth bound adventure. It also needs to be from his first series, as the Third Doctor, and the series generally, was never again so gritty and serious.

So my award goes to The Silurians, and not just because it's set in Derbyshire. The idea of aliens who have been here all along, and who probably have a better claim on the earth than we do, was a startlingly original one. It's also done really well.

Production values are pretty good and whilst the papermache Allosaurus is a bit of an embarrassment - they had a bit of a problem with dinosaurs in the Pertwee years - the underground base and the caves are greats sets and scenes of the epidemic outbreak at railway station are frighteningly realistic.

The Doctor's companions are on top form as well. The Brigadier is the ruthless killing machine he ought to be, as opposed to the cuddly Colonle Blimp he became, and the Doctor is for once paired up with a female companion with something betwen her ears. Women's Lib came slowly to Doctor who, and Liz Shaw, a Cambridge Graduate in a miniskirt was the first stab at a serious female character. She was ditched after one series and replaced with the vacous Jo Grant, but it was a start.

There are some familiar faces in the cast including Avon from Blake's Seven as a UNIT officer, Mackay from Porridge as a scientist and Geoffrey Palmer as an administrator.

The reason its the winner though is Malcolm Hulke's serious and layered script.

Both factions, the Silurians and the humans, are split into hawks and doves, but unlike in the New Series, they aren't caricatured as good and bad. Major Baker, the leading human hawk, turns out to be genuinely brave man whilst his opposite numbers in the reptile camp are eventually proved right when the Brigadier blows up their caves and wipes them all out.

Written whilst the National Front and the Black Panthers where in the news, this is remarkably even handed and grown up stuff, a million miles from the simplistic "Racism's bad, mckay?" approach of RTD in the New Series. Instead Hulke created a genuine moral dilemma, with no easy answers.

The arrival of the seventies then showed that Doctor Who was really was now a program for the grown ups as well as the kiddies, and was willing to tackle big issues. It now looked good as well - apart from the Allosaurus and the miniskirts - and this story really has worn well - apart from the Allosaurus and the miniskirts.

Hard to believe then that it was made so long ago, but then forty one isn't very old, is it?

The Best of Doctor Who: The Second Doctor

2011-10-25T02:36:00.001-07:00

Like Matt Smith, I do love Patrick Troughton's cosmic hobo, but oh dear oh dear, most of his actual stories are pretty rubbish.

The Second Doctor is at his best in the ensemble pieces The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, but these are properly Third and Fifth Doctor stories and can't count in this list.

Honourable mentions then are fairly few. There's The Web of Fear, which featured the unlikely combination of Yetis and the London Underground and introduced the redoubtable Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart.

Then there's The Invasion with its scenes of Cybermen marching past London landmarks being battled by, the now Brigadier, Lethbridge-Stewart and the newly formed UNIT, who here are all high-tech with an HQ in C-130 Hercules.

And then there's The Tomb of the Cybermen, a blatant rip off of The Mummy's Curse. When I was young this used to regularly win readers polls as the best episode ever, mainly voted for by people who'd never seen it as it was one of the famous Lost Episodes. Then a copy was found down the back of a filing cabinet and when people actually saw it they found it tedious, repetitive and pointless. It doesn't win any more.

But amongst all this dross there still has to be a winner, so I'm going to go for The War Games, his last story.

At ten episodes its not exactly a story you sit down and watch in one go. There is also a lot of pointless going over the same ground at a geological pace and the Doctor is rather less than dynamic too. It doesn't help that the story gets its own internal geography messed up too, but there is a lot of atmospheric war-is-hell stuff, which is actually rather exciting.

However the story really gets going once the aliens appear. With hindsight the Companions are a little slow to realise what the boxes that appear with a strange groaning noise, and which are bigger on the inside than on the outside, actually are.

Then there is the appearance of the Time Lords themselves. We'd met the Meddling Monk on William Hartnell's watch, but this was the first time the Doctor's own race had been name checked. And what an information dump we get about them! Of course, it's all old hat now, but back then it was all completely new. Who knew the Doctor had stolen his TARDIS, or that the Time Lords could be such killjoys?

So it may be longer than the Hundred Years War, but it gets there in the end and is a fine way to send off the Second Doctor.

The Best of Doctor Who: The First Doctor

2011-10-25T02:33:00.000-07:00

I've managed to keep my inner Nerd at bay on this blog for long enough, so here I go with a run down of my favourite Doctor Who episodes, choosing my favourite episode for each the venerable Time Lords eleven incarnations.

We start then with old grumpy himself, William Hartnell's First Doctor.

Before we come to the winner of the title of Best First Doctor story, honourable mention must be made of those that didn't quite make it.

The Tenth Planet must be a contender, with the first appearance of the Cybermen and the first regeneration scene. Alas the BBC in their wisdom wiped the tape of the last episode, which rather spoils it.

Flawed but canonically important is The War Machines, with its very sixties titular robots, and the first monsters-versus-soldiers battles. No UNIT yet, but the idea was there.

Then there's The Time Meddlar, staring the bloke from the Carry On films, which introduced the first of numerous renegade Time Lords and also started the trend for casting comedy actors as villains.

A very, very strong candidate is the Dalek Invasion of Earth, with its sinister scenes of a deserted London, which were a dry run for Terry Nation's seminal Survivors, and the metallic compost bins lording it over a conquered humanity aided by their black shirted Robomen.

But even this is trumped by the triumph of the first ever story, 100,000BC. Most of it's a load of rubbish about cave men, but the scene when Ian and Barbara leave behind the drab junkyard of 1963 and enter the TARDIS is fantastic, it's like watching the fifties turn into the sixties before your very eyes. But 100,000BC is not the winner, only the appetiser.

The best of William Hartnell's episodes is without doubt the one that turned the show from being an educational romp through history into a sci-fi phenomena. After three episodes of Ian teaching cave men to make fire we find ourselves in a futuristic city amidst a radioactive forest. Suddenly Barbara is menaced by a sink plunger on a stick - and then credits roll.

This is, of course, The Daleks.

The pepperpots have been done to death since, used and abused for good and ill, but these Dalek's are different. Yes they are cold, yes they are ruthless, they say 'Exterminate' (but not until episode four), but they are not the Nazi stand-ins they later became. Trapped in their Expressionist city amidst the fossilised remains of the world they have destroyed, they are to be pitied as well as feared and are perhaps more familiar than we would like to think.

Outside the city are the Thals, pacifist fashion victims who believe in live and let live until convinced of the virtues of violence by the TARDIS crew, who need to get into the Dalek city to refuel the TARDIS. Ian, at least, gets a twinge of conscience over this 'war for oil' (or mercury), but what is the Doctor's real motivation?

We are never quite sure, which is one of the reason's Hartnell's Doctor is so great.