Customer Reviews

Doctor Who - Dragonfire [VHS]

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Dragonfire is Ace's debut story and Melanie's farewell story, and the contrast between the two is striking. Although both are expressive, Ace is more the action type, hating laziness and inefficiency, as she demonstrates when she destroys an icefall with three cans of nitro-9. Nitro-9 is "like ordinary nitroglycerine, except it's got a bit more wallop." As she tells the guards trying to shift the ice, "last one back's a gooey mess!"

The plot involves the search for a treasure guarded by a dragon. At a bar on Iceworld, (clearly influenced by the Star Wars cantina), the Doctor and Mel are reunited with Sabalom Glitz, one of the seekers of the treasure, guarded by a fierce dragon. With the help of a waitress, Ace, they go out in search for the treasure in the lower depths of Iceworld, with places like the Singing Trees, Ice Gardens, and the Land Of Oblivion.

Another party interested in the treasure is Kane. He is the ruthless villain ruling Svartos, a world that has a perpetual dark side. That's an advantage, but even Svartos is too warm for him, as he perpetually needs to lie in his cryo-cabin to achieve a body temperature of 193 below zero. Glitz says of him, "if he were a mortician, the corpses would keep their eyes open." and "cut him open and you won't find a heart, just a block of ice."

As for the dragon, it's more of "a semiorganic vertebrate with a highly developed cerebral cortex."

The best part involves a philosophical discussion between the Doctor and a seemingly stupid-looking guard, who despite appearances, is pretty much an intellectual.

Guest stars: Tony Selby expands the character of Glitz as a dodgy wheeler dealer. Another Tony, Tony Osoba (Kracauer), played Lann the Movellan in Destiny Of The Daleks. Patricia Quinn (Belasz), had a bit part in Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life as the wife of the instructor who teaches the sex ed. class.

Mel's departure seems improvised and totally out of character--apart from keeping an eye on Glitz, something tells me she's not the adventurous type compared to Ace. Those who want to know the full answer can, if one can find it, the New Adventure novel Head Games.

Another flaw is Glitz's offer to take Ace back to Perivale. Trial of a Timelord took place around 2,000,000 AD. Ace, who is from the 20th century, clearly tells Mel a time storm transported her to Iceworld. Glitz was going to take Ace back to Perivale, but what would be the point of taking her back home two million years in the future? The only other explanation is that he could time travel, but that doesn't seem likely.

Also, see if you can see a white curtain, serving as an icy wall, billow out as Mel pitches nitro-9 at Pudovkin.

And the Doctor's regeneration must be making him wonky in his climbing over the guard rail and down the cliff, using only his brolly for support. And the clumsy way in which he clambers all over Glitz who has to rescue him! How awkward!

Sophie Aldred makes Ace a believable and likeable character, tough and full of spirit like Leela, but with a vulnerable side (she's ashamed of her real name). She hits the ground running in her debut in this little bit flawed but good story.

The Doctor and Mel land on Iceworld, where they inadvertently meet up with Glitz, looking for a treasure guarded by a fire breathing dragon! Apart from some ridiculous dialogue, a silly looking monster, and an uneven awkward script, "Dragonfire" can be very enjoyable to the undiscriminating Who fan. Tony Selby's return as Glitz is great. He and the Doctor make a great double-play. It's also a great story for Ace, even if she does have some of goofiest lines in the story. And Kane is a wonderful vilian, not totally OTT. It's a shame he commits suicide. Great soundtrac and design, some fun humor, and Mel gets a nice emotional send off. An enjoyable McCoy runaround.

One of the best of McCoy's first season, this story has him and companion arriving in Iceworld where he meets up with Glitz, a memorable space-age Del-boy, and going in search of a legendary dragon. A well-paced, imaginative story with some great dialogue, and the parodies with the Loch Ness Monster mystery certainly add to it. Kane is one of the most memorable humanoid enemies the Doctor has ever faced, and comes across as a real person rather than a moustache-twirling villain. The only problem I have with this adventure is Ace. Though she went on to become Dr Who's most interesting and grittily realistic companion to date, in this story she often becomes irritating. Who thinks that streetwise teenagers go around shouting 'brill', 'ace' and 'male chauvenist bilge-bag'? And the 'cliff-hanger' at the end of Part 1 is just ludicrous. Surely the creature advancing on Ace and Mel would have been a more than adequate ending to the first episode. Minor gripes aside, however, this is top-quality sci-fi.

When I recieved my lastest (and rather large) order of Dr. Who videos, "Dragonfire" was the first one I pulled out; in part becuase it had been so long since I had seen anything from Season 24 apart from the awful "Time and the Rani" and also because I remember liking "Dragonfire". My memory served me well.The story is well written, and we see the return of Tony Selby as the nefarious Sabalom Glitz, one of the few bright spots from the preveous season's "Trial of a Timelord". It also features Patrica Quinn, best known to cult fanatics as Magenta from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".The special effects are well done, particuarly by Dr. Who standards and we see the departure of that annoying Mel creature at the end. A very good effort from an otherwise fairly disapointing season of Dr. Who.

The only bright spot in this adventure is that after this, there's nowhere to go but up---and Mel leaves too, thank goodness. Dragonfire is an unorganized mess from start to finish and it's just a poorly conceived story with one of the most ridiculous cliffhangers ever in the history of the series, ironically hanging off a cliff needlessly. It does not get any worse than this and I'm even including the horrific Trial of a time lord in there as well. Again, thankfully, things do a 180 when the new season would start the following year with Remembrance of the Daleks.

In the same season as the missed opportunity that was 'Paradise Towers' and the terrible 'Time and the Rani' (the latter being possibly the nadir of the entire 26 years of the Dr Who series), 'Dragonfire' comes as a dramatic and very welcome return to the darker, more sinister Dr Who of old.

The plot involves buried treasure, a colony of ice and a legendary firebreathing dragon stalking the corridors of the lower levels. The story contains a genuinely chilling villain, and one who comes across as not unsympathetic at times and is therefore a believable character. There is also the welcome return of dodgy-dealing Glitz, the music is suitable atmospheric and the sets are well-designed. Especially gripping are the scenes involving two guards are sent after the dragon in a marvellous 'Alien'-style sequence.

Ace, the Doctor's soon-to-be companion, proves to be a strong character from the outset, outshining Mel at every turn, despite the odd duff line - i.e. "male-chauvenist bilge-bag". But overall, a positive step in the right direction for the series and a taste of what was soon to come.

One of the first things I noticed about "Dragonfire" this time around is that the central console in Kane's lair looks extraordinarily like the central console in the Doctor's TARDIS. Then I started thinking about other similarities between Kane and the Doctor. Both have a penchant for young girls. Kane, for instance, tries to buy Ace by tempting her with whispered speeches about "the twelve Galaxies". The Doctor successfully wins Ace as a companion later on by using the same line.

Fittingly, both Kane and the Doctor also "drop" older female companions who've worn out their welcome. This is the episode that wrote out Bonnie Langord (Mel), the companion who never had anything to do, the companion who never seemed to be acting on the same show as Sylvester McCoy. At the same time, Kane kills his aging female companion, Belasz, who wears out her welcome after nearly 20 years at his side -- by trying to mastermind his death, to be fair to Kane. Similarly, one could be forgiven for believing that Mel was trying to mastermind the Doctor's incipient deafness.

"Dragonfire" is also about revealing the person behind the person. It's been said that Ace's innocence was supposed to have been taken by that galactic rogue, Sabalon Glitz. That's never explicitly stated on screen, but there are a couple of oblique hints in Ian Briggs' own novelization. And, on this, my fourth viewing of the story, that explanation made more sense: why else would Ace harbor such bitterness for the guy? Yes, she's only using lame epithets like "bilge bag", but that was the best the BBC could give us in 1987. Clearly she meant some other kind of "bag". Even the fact that Ace is blatantly borrowed and updated from "The Wizard of Oz" seems like a neat idea, and it's not her fault that a faction of the subseuqent DW novel writers insisted on pinning her with the surname "Gale".

My favorite complex character is the Neanderthal-looking security guard that McCoy tries to hoodwink in Part Two. The diminutive Doctor can't figure out how to trick this behemoth away from his post, so he tries to baffle him with doubletalk about the "imperial critical belief that experience is at the root of all phenomena". Only in this story, though, could that security guard turn out to be an armchair existentialist who banters back, polysyllable for polysyllable. With scenes like that, "Dragonfire" gets away with some of the most complex humor in all of "Doctor Who". And, of course, with names like McLuhan and Kane and Nosferatu (and, in the novelization, Eisenstein), the subtext appropriately becomes the text.

Even the story's faults are relatively benign. The sets have been criticized for looking cheap and overly bright, but I quite like the opening shot: a dozen extras in uniform march away from the camera into a multi-level set shrouded in dry ice. Kane (Edward Peel) is hardly "Doctor Who"'s most demonstrative villain: he's given to reciting lengthy speeches, and even his Part Two cliffhanger rant is hardly worth the electronic scream. But, in a season where the other lead villains were serial overactors (Kate O'Mara, Richard Briers and Don Henderson), Peel merely reminds one of a more sensible Bond villain, like Julian Glover in "For Your Eyes Only", or the Telly Savalas Blofeld. Not memorable, but competent enough for the production at hand.

In the end, "Dragonfire" was eventually consumed by its own subtext. On TV, Mel was given a charming, extended departure scene. McCoy beeps her on the nose and they both hug. They both get interesting nonlinear dialogue, and for the first time since "Terror of the Vervoids", Bonnie Langford really seemed like a companion who belongs on the show. Even her pairing up with Glitz would have made a great spinoff. Instead, however, the later novel writers decided that Mel didn't deserve a proper depature, so they retroactively tinkered with the Doctor's motives: what really happened is he mind-controlled her out of the TARDIS, into such a bad situation that she wound up miserable and destitute (and, several dozen novels later, dead).

Somehow, I don't believe Ian Briggs' experience was at the root of that particular phenomenon.

The Doctor and Mel land on Iceworld. The travellers meet their old friend Glitz. The travellers get into a treasure hunt. Mel finally leaves the Doctor and gets a new companion Ace! Mel leaves the Doctor to have adventures with Glitz!