The Doctor, Greg and Nadia arrive on Earth in the 1990s. They soon discover an alien conspiracy to fundamentally alter the planet for colonization. The key to defeating the Rigellons lies in Earth’s orbit. The connection of 13 satellites could signal doom for humanity.
Before I get into the next story, I just want to say that if I get overly critical here, it’s not a condemnation of the AV’s as a whole. The early stories are hit and miss. The Time Ravagers was definitely a hit. The next story, at least in my opinion, is definitely a miss. I say this because I don’t want anyone to think that I’m writing these to slag off the AV’s. They are by and large terrific.
Blurb The Doctor, Greg and Nadia arrive on Earth in the 1990s. They discover an alien conspiracy to fundamentally alter the planet for colonization. The key to defeating the Rigellons lies in Earth’s orbit. The connection of 13 satellites could signal doom for humanity.
The story begins with an attack on some astronauts on a supply shuttle. The Doctor and company land on military grounds and are immediately captured. The Doctor verifies his credentials with some name dropping.
Britain plans on setting up 3 space stations. Meanwhile, a couple of devious scientists, by way of convenient exposition, discuss their deal with the evil alien Rigellons. It turns out that they are responsible for the recent mishaps up in space. Apparently the Rigellons have given them advanced technology in exchange for their help. Fair trade, really. The Doctor and pals investigate, and Nadia is bored. To be honest, it got a little muddled, but Rigellons decide to target the Doctor, and a robot attacks Greg and Nadia. You get the feeling that you’ve jumped from part 1 to part 3 of a 6 parter in the span of 15 minutes. Very muddled. It’s like watching The Invasion without the missing episodes. It’s so hard to follow that even the music cue forgets to go off when the cliffhanger to part 1 comes.
In part 2, The Doctor and pals escape. I’m not exactly sure what danger they were in or how they got out of it. The Doc decides the best course of action is to go into space. Why? I don’t know. I’m hanging on to the plot by my fingertips here. There are evil robots on the loose, and Rigellons are trying to cool the planet so that they can inhabit it themselves. The Doctor threatens to blow up a space station in order to break the sattellite connection, which is evidently important to the aliens. To break the circuit of satellites, Nadia electrocutes herself. Umm. I don’t know what to say about this. A companion that I dislike dies in a contrived way in a story I do not care for. I guess that’s ok. Earthshock must have been fresh in their minds. Anyway, Nadia is toast, and the Doctor and Greg decide it’s time for a vacation. Because whether you’ve mistakenly vaporized a planet or watched a travelling companion die a painful death, nothing does the trick like a vacation… There must be a lot of sociopaths on the Eye of Orion.
Evaluation
It’s not so much a story as it is a bunch of stuff that happens. There’s no real interconnection to put it together. It’s kind of like watching only the odd numbered tracks on a DVD. You can tell that things are happening, and you know who’s good and who’s bad, but there isn’t enough information for you to really know what’s going on. And not in the LOST kind of way, but the Ghostlight way. This story is not well served on audio. Nor is it done any justice with a running time of about 34 minutes. Yeah, that’s what Connection 13 is like. It’s like a 34 minute version of Ghostlight, on audio. Like The Space Wail, there are some intriguing concepts involved, but they are never fleshed out into anything coherant. There’s no rising tension. It goes from introduction to climax.
Overall 2 out of 10
It’s worse than The Space Wail. The Space Wail had a plot of sorts. This is a cross between stream of consciousness and a punch to the windpipe. 2 points for it being recited in English.
Continuity: Name dropping Autons, Axons, Silurians, Sea Devils, Lethbridge Stewart, Sir Reginald Styles, The Daleks and Omega. And they say John Nathan-Turner liked continuity!
Dopplegangers: Peter Thomas, the astronaut who dies at the beginning of the story, is clearly Nicholas Briggs. I’m sure they didn’t have access to a lot of people, but they should have pulled someone off the street and asked them to die into a microphone.
NEXT TIME
The Doctor and Greg have their first encounter with the evil CONGLOMERATE! It also happens to be one of my favorites.