Light years from Earth, a vast human spaceship hangs in orbit over a cloudy alien planet. The crew have been travelling in cryosleep for many years, looking for a habitable world to settle, and have at last located one with potential.
However, they’re not the only people to have arrived in this place. The TARDIS has landed on the planet’s surface. The Doctor, Steven and Vicki explore and quickly find themselves separated.
But it isn’t merely the hostile environment and rogue terraforming drones they’ll have to deal with. Something else is living on this world. Something deadly and waiting to consume.
It’s an ideal world. But ideal for whom?
THE EARLY ADVENTURES: AN IDEAL WORLD
One thing I enjoy about the best Early Adventures is that they tell stories in the spirit of 1960s Doctor Who without necessarily being beholden to the storytelling conventions of the time. “An Ideal World” by Ian Potter is a slow-paced science fiction story in a classic style, but it’s still full of enough incident and character development that it never feels as though it’s treading water. Only a bizarre ending drags it down.
Exploration was a very important part of early Doctor Who, and that’s what we get for much of “An Ideal World:” the Doctor and Vicki exploring a strange new planet while Steven does the same on a spaceship in orbit. The date isn’t exactly known – it’s before either Vicki or Steven’s time – but we see a human colony ship searching for a habitable planet on which to settle. The ship’s captain is determined by popular vote, and the current officeholder is Traherne (Carolyn Pickles), a woman determined to make this planet their new home. Her actions are constrained by an ethicist, Kay (Angela McHale), tasked with ensuring the colonists’ actions do not exploit or harm intelligent indigenous life. Naturally, the TARDIS landing on the planet surface complicates matters, and soon the crew is caught in the usual web of intrigue, first accused of being saboteurs, then helping out as the true threat emerges.
This is a high-concept story, and Potter throws everything he possibly can at the script. Technology from different time periods coexists, with all the confusion that entails, all wrapped up in the idea of advancement in space travel. Vicki and Steven actually have their futuristic backgrounds put to use, while the Doctor’s alien physiology presents a problem to be solved. There’s a gestalt entity as well as giant cables anchoring the ship to the surface enabling the use of elevators. Potter uses the extended running time to dig into all of these ideas and more, fleshing them out and making the story creatively exciting. Furthermore, the characterization is first-rate: we really get a window into the relationship between the Doctor and his companions and how they think differently. We see the Doctor pushed to his breaking point, including a heartbreakingly wonderful scene where he tries to write down TARDIS instructions for Vicki when he thinks he’ll die. Steven spends much of the story separated from his friends, using his wit and intelligence to gain the trust of the spaceship crew. Despite the running time, nothing is here to pad out the length: every scene adds something to the story and it never feels as though it’s retreading old ground.
The ending, unfortunately, feels out of place. Traherne pursues a suicidal course of action, so Kay must stop her using a sedative drug. But Kay uses a lethal dose, killing Traherne, and says there was no other way – but while the story wants us to believe that, it doesn’t explain why a non-lethal dose would have been insufficient. Vicki and Steven then passionately defend Kay’s actions while the Doctor condemns them just as passionately, a conflict that arises seemingly from nowhere and feels inconsistent for all three characters. And while the Doctor condemning murder is in keeping with his character, his defense of the life forms on the planet is not – the “they’re just following their nature” argument can apply to any number of murderous Doctor Who villains that he doesn’t support. Then they turn on their heels and leave; while that sort of abrupt departure was not uncommon in the early years of the show, it feels disjointed after the slow, careful pace of the story.
Overall, though, “An Ideal World” is a fine story. Director Lisa Bowerman keeps the pace flowing through the long running time while the sound design from Toby Hrycek-Robinson is effective and convincing. The Early Adventures have finally settled into a groove – hopefully this run of high-quality stories will continue through the rest of this series and beyond.
Highly recommended.
8/10