Start to Finish: 1.03 - The Blue Tooth

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Episode 3, and it's the turn of the Third Doctor's era, through the eyes of his first companion, Dr Liz Shaw, a highly-accomplished scientist who left UNIT - and the series - because she felt that all the Doctor needed was someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was.

In The Blue Tooth, by Nigel Fairs, the older Liz is recounting the story of how she came to choose to leave UNIT, or rather to leave the Doctor, which goes beyond merely resenting the apparent redundancy of her skills and knowledge. It's a highly personal tale, as Liz returns to her university stomping grounds in Cambridge to discover that her best friend has disappeared in uncanny circumstances. This combination - the personal history, the build up to her departure - means that the melancholy notes present in the previous releases is almost overwhelming.

Liz's resentment of the Brigadier's dismissive attitude and the breakdown of her relationship with the Doctor make for a bittersweet note to accompany the unalloyed body horror of combining the Cybermen and dentistry. The result is quite powerful, and rather uncomfortable in parts. It explores the idea of the companion as someone inevitably alienated by the Doctor's more-than-human genius, as much as comforted by his competence. It also focuses on the issue - now much explored by the new series - of the bizarrely charmed life which the Doctor leads in the midst of terrible death.

Caroline John is a good reader, although her Brigadier is better than her Third Doctor, who once again plays a somewhat tangential role, with Liz Shaw as the principle. So it goes; it is, after all, the Companion Chronicles, and it makes for a subtly different style of stories. She injects a suitable pace and urgency into the script, as well as considerable sorrow when called for.

The Blue Tooth is a cut above the previous stories, but it's a grim little tale that wouldn't be for everyone, and the body-invading cybermats are squicky as hell.

Next up, we finish series 1 with the Fourth Doctor adventure The Beautiful People, with Lala Ward as Romana II, and Marcia Ashton as Karna.