Dragonfire Episode 1

Season24@30. Its very easy with thirty years hindsight to be picky about old Doctor Who but you do wonder exactly why this episode already has a great cliffhanger yet chooses to follow it with an incomprehensible one. Was this not obvious back then? Ace and Mel’s shadowy encounter with the monster is classic Who stuff and would have made for a perfect conclusion to matters. Instead the image of the Doctor dangling from his umbrella is left in the minds of the public for a week. These two opposing scenarios do sum up the episode rather well though. While there are a lot of interesting ideas drawing on all fantasy genres the staging is not the best and after the gusto of `Delta and the Bannermen` this seems like a step backwards though at the time longer term fans preferred it; I should know, I was one of them!

It is definitely a more traditional story of a quest, mythical creatures and a ruthless ruler with a gimmicky way of killing people. Multiple iterations of this format prevail not just in Doctor Who but across the telefantasy spectrum. The trick is to add something different to the mix, some USP that will make it stand out from the crowd and in the case of `Dragonifre` it’s the ice. Now the problem with icy settings inside a studio is that they just don’t look cold and even now I doubt if the production team could afford the time or money to add in breath in post production. Yet watching the episode it struck me that there is no reason at all for the whole planet to be (an) Iceworld. The cold bit could be confined to Kane’s lair; the rest of the place could be more normal; a space station like affair. It is rare for an old story of Eighties vintage to fail to convince quite as much as the attempt to be icy does here. Even on the most cursory scrutiny Iceworld looks more like a nightclub than a chilly alien world. Furthermore none of the actors makes any attempt to look cold though Sylvester McCoy has a go at sliding on `ice` even if Glitz doesn’t bother.

She wasn't impressed by his magic trick

More positively the story, though a tad over wordy, does offer up some character in the forms of the returning Glitz, villain Kane and the forthcoming companion Ace. Ace seems gauche now but you have to remember how mould breaking she was back then. She was the first companion you might call street wise; her attitude a contrast to almost all who’d gone before her. You only have to compare Sophie Aldred and Bonnie Langford together in this episode to see that. I think’s Ace’s lack of self-consciousness and bolshie demeanour really suits the character while her origins mentioned here are intriguing. Like the way too that Mel just accepts the idea of a time storm as if it’s perfectly normal.

Both Kane and Glitz are very much second generation descendants of greater characters from the Seventies but luckily the respective actors have a lot to bring to the party. Edward Peel is the only convincingly cold aspect of the episode with an intense performance while Tony Selby has a laugh as a sort of gone to seed Jack Sparrow. Overall this seems to be an episode that is alright but nothing special though there are touches of strangeness that bode better for the remainder of the story.