The Doctor and his companion Greg are trapped in a labyrinth of underground tunnels. They discover a deadly foe which lurks in the darkest recesses. Can the Doctor defeat an unseen enemy that will strike at the very heart of his resolve?
The Doctor and his companion Greg are trapped in a labyrinth of underground tunnels. They discover a deadly foe which lurks in the darkest recesses. Can the Doctor defeat an unseen enemy that will strike at the very heart of his resolve?
Roll on, CLOUD OF FEAR.
Blurb The Doctor and his companion Greg are trapped in a labyrinth of underground tunnels. They discover a deadly foe which lurks in the darkest recesses. Can the Dcotor defeat an unseen enemy that will strike at the very heart of his resolve?
The story begins with a freaked out man being tormented by spooky voices saying that they’re hungry. The Doctor and Greg are chatting in the Tardis, pre-adventure. Greg has dyed a burgundy streak in his hair, to the Doctor’s amusement. They spot flashing lights in space, coming towards the Tardis, and decide to dematerialize on the planet below. I’m not quite sure what the planet’s name is, but it sounds like Armadillo 7. Upon arriving, they are noticed by the spooky voiced creatures that were being very menacing at the beginning. They talk to themselves for a couple of minutes, but I can’t really understand much of it. (I have a high quality version of the story, but the alien voice effect makes them pretty inaudible.) They mention something about being able to feast on a mind they hadn’t encountered before, presumably the Doctor, so I think we know where we stand with these fellas. Brain suckers, enough said.
The Doctor and Greg materialize in what appears to be a catacomb. Greg notices a foul smell in the air, and the Doctor says that it isn’t a physical smell, but a psychic odor of fear. Then a leprechaun jumps out at them. Yeah. A creature that likes to rhyme very dark and depressing things starts menacing them both. If you’re a fan of Mad TV, it’s difficult not to picture the Gap Troll. Greg chases after him (wouldn’t YOU want a Gap Troll?) but he escapes. Then he reappears and attacks the Doctor. A young woman comes out with a gun and demands to know who the Doctor and Greg are. They notice a dead man in the water, who turns out to be the woman’s father, Hugh Pritchard. The woman, Reannon, says that there are terrible creatures in the catacombs and asks that they bury her father. Greg notes that the man appears to have died of fear rather than having drowned.
They all go back to Reannon’s ship, where the 2nd in command (a giddy loon) is happy to hear that the commander has died. She says that an expedition of 6 had explored the catacombs, and that the only one to return had gone bonkers while away. Greg tries to make Reannon feel a little bit better about her father’s death by telling her how nice her dress is (MEN!). She apologizes for being such a dead-dad-crybaby, and says that it’s her best dress (wow, it worked!).
The Doctor says that the crew’s ship and the Tardis must have passed into another universe and that they can just return in the Tardis. He remarks to Greg that there aren’t any mirrors on the ship, which he thinks is strange considering that there are women onboard. HE SAID IT, NOT ME. Anyway, I wonder if this becomes important later on. It seems so extraneous for the time being……..
Meanwhile, the semi audible alien menaces chat about waiting for the Doctor and company to arrive. As they move out into the catacombs, the Doctor talks about the nature of fear, and how easily Time Lords overcome it with simple logic. Reannon says that he must be afraid of something, and starts rattling off common fears. After mentioning bees, Greg admits that that’s his biggest fear, having been hospitalized after a swarm attacked him when he was young. The group hears a strange noise, and then the Gap Troll reappears. After disappearing again, they come across what at first appears to be the Tardis. But when the Doctor tries the lock, the door falls off its hinges. The Tardis’ interior dimensions have been condensed. The Doctor says that when a Time Lord abandons his Tardis, its dimensions collapse and it scuttles itself.
The Doctor says that the only reason this could happen is because in the future he will die here. Then he babbles about the inevitability of death for awhile. Reannon discovers the Gap Troll. He is sitting on a sarcophagus with a hieroglyph that represents the Doctor’s name. He has discovered his own tomb (How Necrossian!) The Gap Troll runs off again. The Doctor decides that he’ll return to Gallifrey after this adventure, so as not to squander anymore precious life.
Greg and Reannon go off exploring, and Greg suddenly starts hearing bees. Reannon opens a door, and thousands of bees start swarming after them.
Meanwhile… the inaudible monsters chat with each other about torturing the Doctor a little more.
The Gap Troll continues to torment the Doctor about his death. I really sense a cliffhanger coming, don’t you?
Greg and Reannon come to a dead end with the bees approaching. The Doctor feels his mind being devoured.
CUE MUSIC
Greg bumps into the Doctor. The Doctor shows Greg that his tomb was a fake. He opened it up and found that it was empty. Empty, except for the glowing/flashy lights that they saw from the Tardis. The Doctor tells Greg that this is the work of the Scionovores, who are psychic parasites. Our inaudible villains have a name! The tomb, the bees and the decayed Tardis were all fake.
A monster comes across Greg and the Doctor, but they are able to will it back out of existence by denying that it was ever real. (How Deadly Assassiny). They come back across the Gap Troll, which, I regret to say, I didn’t realize was actually the crewman, Bates, who came back from his expedition completely insane. I still prefer to picture the Gap Troll, and suggest that you do too. Gap Troll/Bates creates the illusion of turning into a wall of bees to attack Greg, but the Doctor holds a mirror out and shows the Gap Troll himself, which kills him. (Mirror…. where have I heard about mirrors before….)
As the scionovore dies, the catacombs start collapsing. They come across Reannon, and they run for the Tardis. The crew escapes just before the catacombs collapse. All’s well that ends well…. Reannon wants to return home, and Greg considers going with her. The Doctor tells Reannon she’s got a spot on her nose, then turns on the Tardis scanner to show her herself. She begs for him not to, then dies at the sight of herself. D’oh! As Nyssa would say, “She was a Scionovore all along!” Greg tells the Doctor that he loved her. The Doctor says that the good thing about traveling with him is that it’s easier to move on.
Evaluation
To be honest, this is a 1 part story with a cliffhanger and music sting at the end of the first part of the tape. It’s another story where part 1 is about 40 minutes, and part 2 is about 18 minutes. The only reason for it to be in 2 parts is because they were running out of tape on side 1. So lets think of this as a 1 parter. And it’s really good. The story painted very vivid pictures in my mind, and was easy to follow. AND it had a twist. One that I admit I did not see coming. Again, seeing this as the 1-parter that it truly was, it felt right. The pacing was good, the story was easy to follow but not overly simplistic. The Scionovores (do you know a better way to spell Scionovores?) were effective, and were sadistic little buggers, weren’t they? I suppose they could have made it a little clearer that my oft mentioned Gap Troll was in fact a regular man who’d just gone insane. His vocal performance sure made him sound like a little imp to me. But it was all a good rompy fun time. The cast and crew really seem to have hit their stride after a couple of early bumps in the road.
Overall 9 out of 10
While Conglomerate felt rushed at the end, Cloud of Fear felt refreshingly well paced. Poor Greg’s sure been through a lot, hasn’t he?
Where have I heard this before?
The idea of catacombs, the Doctor finding his own burial site, and the fact that this story came out in 1985, make you wonder if Revelation of the Daleks was very very fresh in the author’s mind.
The Doctor tells Greg that the term sissy is derived from Narcissus. I didn’t know that.
Acknowledgments: I’d like to give myself a lot of credit for not referring to the crazy man/leprechaun/Gap Troll, whose actual name was Bates, as Master Bates. It took a lot of restraint.
NEXT TIME
The Doctor and Greg encounter the Robert Downey Jr. of Time Lords in SHADOW WORLD.