Doctor Who and the Pescatons by: Victor Pemberton and directed by: Don Norman

 

Doctor Who and the Pescatons stars Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith with Bill Mitchell as the Pescatons.  It was written by: Victor Pemberton, directed by: Don Norman, and was released by Argo Records in July 1976.

 

Doctor Who and the Pescatons is an oddity.  It is one of the earliest examples of performed Doctor Who released to the home media market after a vinyl release of “The Planet of Decision”, the sixth episode of The Chase.  Other television stories obviously would have been novelized at this point, plus there were original short stories in comic strips in TV Action or Countdown and in the annuals.  Technically there was Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space as the first original novel, and there were two stageplays at various points in The Curse of the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Seven Keys to Doomsday.  But Doctor Who and the Pescatons is something entirely different, it is an original Doctor Who story featuring the cast of the show at the time reprising their roles.  Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen recorded this in the gap between Season 13 and 14’s production, then releasing it between those season’s broadcast.  It’s a monumental opportunity to launch Doctor Who on audio and yet it didn’t.  There would be scant audio releases after this: the follow-up would arguably be Exploration Earth: The Time Machine which was an educational program with Baker and Sladen.  Baker would return to audio in 1979 to narrate a cutdown version of Genesis of the Daleks.  1986 would see another attempt with Slipback while the mid-1990s would pave the way for Big Finish Productions with the BBC Radio dramas The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space both staring Sladen and Jon Pertwee.  And yet, despite it being an oddity Doctor Who and the Pescatons has had several releases since it’s original vinyl: modern repressings as well as cassette, CD, and digital releases (plus featuring on the Season 14 Blu-ray release), it’s a story that never really faded into obscurity.

 

As a story Doctor Who and the Pescatons is nothing special.  Victor Pemberton was tapped to write the script, and you can tell that he is drawing on Fury from the Deep for the premise as several scenes recall that earlier story from discovering seaweed aliens on a beach to the conclusion involving the use of sound to defeat the monsters.  What it lacks is the horrific, claustrophobic atmosphere and the many layered characters to make up the tale leaving Doctor Who and the Pescaton’s plot strictly lacking.  Half of the production is narrated by Tom Baker in character as the Doctor between more dramatic scenes between the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.  It’s clear that the budget for this story only extended to three actors, Bill Mitchell playing all the Pescatons through mostly vocal effects if they aren’t the leader Zor.  It’s presented as two episodes, each about the length of a shorter television installment to fit on one side of a vinyl record.  Structurally this should work, it conforms to the television series after all, but it struggles to balance events being narrated and being dramatically presented.  Pemberton’s story being fairly derivative is a problem, but it’s exacerbated by how flimsy the Pescatons are as a threat.  Sure, this is a story marketed as a younger audience, but so is Doctor Who on television and that’s allowed to present alien races as complex.  Doctor Who and the Pescatons has the Doctor with the authority of the hero, claim the Pescatons are inherently an evil race of aliens and deserve to die.  The second episode’s climax involves the Doctor tricking Zor into traveling back to Pesca, destroying himself and his planet with a sonic wave.  This is a genocide and unlike say The Seeds of Death where the Ice Warrior fleet is thrown into the sun, the Doctor does this with joy because the Pescatons are evil.  It’s particularly out of character for the Doctor who also plays the flute in Doctor Who and the Pescatons because Pemberton remembers Patrick Troughton playing the recorder.  The climax also just kind of happens, the narration mentions other characters being involved but they cannot appear because there is only enough budget for three actors.  The sound design is also particularly primitive.  It’s likely director Don Norman responsible for the sound design, the score feels like discount Paddy Kingsland or Roger Limb and it’s fine enough, just unremarkable.

 

Overall, at its best Doctor Who and the Pescatons is unremarkable.  Victor Pemberton knows how to write good drama and good characters, but his script reads like a writer held back by the format of only two episodes on a single vinyl record.  What tips it into the realm of a bad Doctor Who story is that the Doctor is out of character and poor Sarah Jane Smith is given no character, just generic receiver of the Doctor’s dialogue.  4/10.