By Roy Mathur, on 2025-11-08, at 23:57:35 to 02:06:05 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Sorry for the late revisit. I have been beset by a lot and, by the time I finished the notes earlier today, I could barely read my own handwritten notes from weeks ago.
Notable Cast: Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy, Companion Mel Bush: Bonnie Langford, Ace: Sophie Aldred; born in Greenwich, privately educated at Blackheath High School, Drama at Uni. Manchester, singer, theatre and children's' TV (pod 99), Sabalom Glitz: Tony Selby; The Mysterious Planet, The Ultimate Foe, Cpl Marsh in Get Some In!, Clive Mitchell (Uncle) in EastEnders, Kane: Edward Peel; hard men and martinets, Belazs: Patricia Quinn; Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, delightfully batty Lucinda Jessop in Hammer House of Horror: Witching Time (pod 507), Kracauer: Tony Osoba; Destiny of the Daleks (pod 426), Kill the Moon, Porridge's Jim 'Jock' McLaren, The Creature (dragon): Leslie Meadows; Navrino Adlon in Delta and the Bannermen, Cheetah Person in Survival
Director: Chris Clough; DW creds.: Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe, Dragonfire, The Happiness Patrol, Silver Nemesis
Writer: Ian Briggs, also The Curse of Fenric, Short Trips: Defining Patterns: The Celestial Harmony Engine 2008
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: BBC Television Centre, Shepherd's Bush, 1987
Broadcast: Story 147, serial 4, season 24 (finale), following Delta and the Bannermen (pods 595--596), 3 x c. 25 min, 23 Nov--7 Dec 1987
Media: Target novelization by Ian Briggs 1989, VHS 1994, DVD 2012, 2013, Blu-ray 2021, BBC iPlayer since 1 Nov 2023
The UK no. 1 single was T'Pau's romantic (also saccharine and overplayed) China in Your Hands.
Doctor Who's slot was still between Wogan and Brush Strokes on BBC1 on Monday at 19:35.
In a cold room, white clad officers of Kane induct new press-ganged mercenaries. One escapes. Distracted by a man chipping away at an ice sculpture, he loses his weapon in an icy trough. Kane fishes it out, hands it back, then kills him with his icy touch.
The Doctor and Mel arrive at Iceworld, where they meet Sabalom Glitz. Kane, the ruler, has given him a map to find a dragon-guarded treasure in return for his ship, Nosferatu. The Doctor and Glitz begin the quest, whilst Mel and Ace, a waitress transported to Iceworld in a time storm after an accidental explosion of Nitro-9, eventually they go after the Doctor.
The Doctor and Glitz discover that the fearsome laser-eyed dragon is a biomechanoid. The dragon helps Mel and Ace fend off Kane's zombie-like mercenaries. It then takes all four to a control room, where an ancient recording reveal Kane's criminal past and exile to Iceworld, which is really a spacecraft powered by the crystalline treasure hidden inside the dragon.
Kane listens in on the conversation from the bugged map and dispatches his troops after them, while simultaneously driving the residents to the Nosferatu, which launches and then is destroyed. Kane's officers decapitate the dragon, the head opens and the crystal surges with power killing them.
Kane commands the Doctor to bring the head. Kane uses it to launch Iceworld, intent on vengeance on his home world, Proamon. However, this is impossible because, the Doctor says, it's sun went nova thousands of years ago. In a despair, Kane opens the shutter, exposing himeself to starlight and melts horribly.
Glitz renames Iceworld Nosferatu II and Mel decides to leave with him, while the Doctor takes Ace. He says, "...or the scenic route? Well? Do you fancy a quick trip round the twelve galaxies and then back to Perivale in time for tea?"
Kane is a DC's Mr. Freeze-type villain, longing for his long dead wife and killing the sculptor who makes a sculpture of Xana because, "The whole of eternity has held its breath for this moment. But no one must ever see your work. It exists, that is enough. No one can ever look upon your work and live. Gaze on it and die fulfilled." Kane has a very Tardis-style crystalline console, like a big wedding cake, something I assume was built because it looked cool and the set designers had experience of building similar objects. I also enjoyed his hypnotic power over underlings and even stubborn Ace, with whom he goes all Bela Lugosi. His Raiders of the Lost Ark/Sunlight-style head disintegration suicide is disturbing and a properly traditional Doctor Who sci-fi horror for kids gorish demise.
Glitz is actively evil, selling his crew to Kane and a fate of living death. He is actually worse than the most evil space pirate I have ever come across in sci-fi, Angus Thermopyle of Stephen R. Donaldson's incredibly gritty space opera, The Gap Cycle novels. While Angus captures a ship and sells its crew to aliens and a fate worse than death, Sabolom sells his own crew. And then Mel goes off with him!
Nosferatu with it's furry dice, boomerang, and leopard skin is as tacky as and idiosyncratic as Glitz. The UK crown jewels suggests Glitz has robbed the Tower. Iceworld, the Nosferatu II, is a fitting and massive upgrade for the old pirate. I loved the ships designs; the first's cosy kitsch and the second's beautiful grandeur.
Twenty-five year old Aldred at the time (slightly older than me in real life) plays sixteen-year old Ace. Sophie's attempt at a working class London accent, chock-full of double negatives, is as wobbly as my RP (who am I kidding?) occasionally veers. You see, Sophie went to the posh school, down the hill from my own posh school that I went to a few years later.
Sophie's written Ace Jacket: The Inside Story about her iconic patch and badge festooned jacket. Without referring to the 25--30 quid charity tome, this article by Danny Fullbrook for BBC News, Hertfordshire on 17 June 2025 explains, "Back in 1987, the then 24-year-old had suggested the jacket to the show's costume designer after seeing teenagers, like Ace, wearing similar ones in clubs." I remember that period, didn't Run-D.M.C. wear those? Didn't you also see people wearing them with the Acid House smiley on the back? Do you also remember Sophie receiving a Blue Peter badge and then said badge ending up on her jacket? I wonder if her jacket is the reason I've had several similar, though undecorated, black MA-1 clones since the 80s. One was really great because it was a custom made gift from my uncle's garment factory in Paris. I wish I still had it.
Incidentally, Steed, Gene Kelly, and Sylvester McCoy are the reason I carried an expensive, and highly unfashionable for someone of my ages, umbrella for many many years.
The Doctor has a Buster Keaton moment, as Sylvester shows off his physical comedy skills, dangling from a precipice by said brolly.
The laser-eyed dragonbot reminded me of the Alien design, with it's jutting spine plates, and Star Trek Beyond's Ensign Syl, with her hollow head used as a hiding place. I really enjoyed the dragon robot. The physical design was great and so was the character design; deadly to Kane's zombie mercs, but sweet in helping the Doctor's friends and Stellar.
The little girl, the mysterious Stellar, is spared and assisted by the dragon, but never explained, nor returns to Who.
The Doctor distracting the unexpectedly intellectual guard, who is more than a match for him, in a surprisingly long exchange of dialogue is hilarious and very HHGTTG in comedic tone. The guard says:
...most educated people regard mythical convictions as fundamentally animistic... Personally, I find most experiences border on the existential... a concept can be philosophically valid even if theologically meaningless... Oh, you've no idea what a relief it is for me to have such a stimulating philosophical discussion. There are so few intellectuals about these days. Tell me, what do you think of the assertion that the semiotic thickness of a performed text varies according to the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes?
The Doctor allies himself with an evil space pirate to fight a military madman who massacres civilians, Mel saunters off with the evil space pirate, and the Doctor gets a new, refreshingly spiky and non-scream queen companion (and one of my personal favourites). Exciting, great effects, a good introduction to Ace and farewell to Mel, though the ethics of Doctor Who are muddled, or complex if we're charitable.
Mel's abrupt departure had to do with Bonnie Langford's theatrical commitments. In Howe, Walker, and Stammer's Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy speaking to Joe Nazzaro, for TV Zone Special # 11, says "It seemed terribly curt to just say goodbye."
That is, of course, it for Mel until New Who. Thanks to The Giggle (2023), we know from Mel that Glitz died happy tripping over a whisky bottle aged 101.
In the expanded universe of Who, Ace's first, er... fling is with Glitz on Iceworld. The origin of this is Love and War by Paul Cornell, confirmed by Ian Briggs, and understandably vehemently contested by Sophie (apparently). I have absolutely no solid research to back this up, other than what I've fleetingly gleaned from the 'net. Still, urgh!
Ace origin story by Sophie Aldred from the Origin Stories anthology from 2022.
For years, I have confused Perivale, W. London above the Thames, with Perry Vale; a stone's throw from where I used to live in S. London. Now I feel disappointed that Ace isn't from the same part of London as me.
The Royal Navy is developing an anti-missile laser directed-energy weapon called DragonFire, due for deployment in 2027. (Wiki, gov.uk)