By Roy Mathur, on 2026-03-23, at 11:59:59 to 13:03:09 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Notable Cast: Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy, Companion: Ace: Sophie Aldred, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Nicholas Courtney, Brigadier Winifred Bambera: Angela Bruce; female Lister in Red Dwarf, Dayna Mellanby (orig. Josette Simone) in BBC Radio's Blake's 7: The Syndeton Experiment (seq. to The Sevenfold Crown), Morgaine: Jean Marsh; DW The Crusade, UFO, The Daleks' Master Plan (Sara Kingdom), Queen Bavmorda in Willow (1988), An Adventure in Space and Time, Peter Warmsly (dig supervisor): James Ellis; N. Ireland, Brit. TV regular, Nightingales, Sergeant Zbrigniev: Robert Jezek and Flight Lieutenant Lavel: Dorota Rae, bother polish backgrounds, the latter incredible sexpot, Shou Yuing: Ling Tai; also The Leisure Hive and Warriors of the Deep, Destroyer: Marek Anton; also Vershinin in The Curse of Fenric
Director: Michael Kerrigan; 4 episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures
Writer: Ben Aaronovitch; Remembrance of the Daleks
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Location: "In 1989, the Tardis landed at Rutland Water, filming around the village of Upper Hambleton, which doubled as the fictional town of Carbury" (Beeb), Bucks, Leic, Linc, BBC Television Centre (Studio 3), Shepherd's Bush 1989
Broadcast: Story 152, serial 1, season 26 (premier), following The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (pods 605--606), 4 x c. 25 min, 6--27 Sep 1989
Media: Target novelization by Marc Platt (Ghost Light, Virgin New Adv. Big Finish) in 1991, VHS 1998, DVD 2008, 2011, Blu-ray 2020, BBC iPlayer since 1 Nov 2023
The UK no. 1 single was bang up-to-date house hit, Black Box's Ride on Time. Wait, it's "Ride", not "Right"?
A momentus year between the Tiananmen Sq. massacre in June and the fall of the Berlin wall in November.
The retired Brigadier is bored at a garden centre with his wife.
Current UNIT Brigadier Bambera and her soldiers are tracking a electrical disturbance at Lake Vortigern.
In the Tardis, the Doctor follows a distress signal "sideways in time" (like Hawkwind's Silver Machine!) and arrives at the lake a short time in Ace's future.
Bambera's driver drives past them on the road trying to hitch a lift. Instead, Peter Warmsly, "site manager for the Carbury Trust Conservation Area" (a battlefield), picks them up as something crashes nearby. They travel with him briefly, then exit as the Doctor continues to track the signal. More crashes as knights fall to earth.
The Doctor gives a puzzled Ace Elizabeth Shaw's UNIT pass (see Trivia). He tries to engage with Bambera, but flashing the IDs and dropping the line "Yeti, Autons, Daleks. Cybermen and Silurians!" have no effect. One of the knights, Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai, Knight General of the Britons, after a sexually charged tussle with Bambera (who wins), becomes an ally, while the opposition are Morgaine's men, including her son, Mordred.
Retiring to the nearby Gore Crow hotel, Ace befriends a young woman called Shou Yuing and is prevented from buying booze by the Doctor. The Doctor examines a scabbard; Doc and Warmsly: "For the scabbard's worth ten of the sword." (Excalibur!) Ancelyn, and Mordred who arrives then leaves, both believe the puzzled Doctor to be Merlin and so does Morgaine when she arrives via Modred's sorcerous ritual.
Warmsly shows the Doctor the dig site and Ace uses Nitro-9 to reveal a passageway under the lake to a wrecked starship containing the body of King Arthur and Excalibur. Ace grabs the sword and almost drowns, until she is expelled to the surface like a very ungraceful, drenched and aggravated Lady of the Lake, much to Warmsly's displeasure.
Morgaine summons a demon, but fails to retrieve Excalibur, while UNIT defeat her men. Lethbridge-Stewart kills the demon with silver bullets. The Doctor tries waking King Arthur with Excalibur, but he is "freeze-dried." A letter signed by the Doctor falls out of his helmet. It says, "Dear Doctor. King died in final battle. Everything else propaganda."
In a final desperate attempt to win, Morgaine and Mordred threaten to use UNIT's nuclear missile unless she faces Arthur in single combat. The Doctor tells her that her half-brother is dead and she relents. The Doctor later renders Modred unconscious, thereby saving Ancelyn.
On The Lethbridge-Stewarts' driveway, Ace, Shou, Bambera, and Doris bundle into Bessie, ditch the Doctor, Brigadier, and Ancelyn, and blast off on a girl's night out.
The nuke hating Doctor would be in CND; he recognises UNIT's "nuclear missile convoy" by its "graveyard stench." I also enjoyed his Merlin arc closing the time loop. It makes sense for an ancient time, space, and dimension hopper to have such a convoluted path though time, so much so that he himself doesn't know he's Merlin in his future, but in time past, and even has to write notes to himself. I like the mystery of self.
The Brigadier flits about interminably in a helicopter before joining the action. Though when he does, it's with a bang after a dramatic crash, then he's immediately ready for the "blood and thunder" he missed in his boring retirement.
Bambera is a really good update to the Brigadier. She's just as commanding, in spite of the unfortunately juvenile dialogue written for her, even more aggressive and willing to fight, and we see she is a lot less dry in the sexually charged mutual attraction between her and Ancelyn.
"Shame" was youth slang back then, but not the way Bambera overuses it. She is using it to replace "shit" and it's weird hearing an adult say it. Interestingly, later both Ancelyn and Bambera use the word "vexed", but in a context appropriate to their respective time periods. Ace's favourite word, "wicked" is also used by Ace, Shou, and even Doris (as she gets with the kids) at the end.
Jean Marsh as Morgaine is very much cast and playing to type, as the similar Queen Bavmorda in Willow a year earlier. The moment Morgaine appears as a time-travelling sorceress, I was also immediately reminded of C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine series of novels from the 70s, featuring a Morgaine who also travels in time and space looking for a fight. The chivalry aspect (in reality made-up bullshit that only favoured nobility) adds a surprising touch of honour to the villain. Morgaine, though utterly ruthless, respects our war dead, cure a blind woman as payment, and will engage in single combat.
Ace is dressed older (e.g. elegant dangly earrings) maybe to reflect the actress's real age, but the in the script she is still apparently not old enough to join Shou for a vodka and coke. She also has a racist moment, slurring Shou that, while true to a realistic script, has no place in a children's programme. As someone who used to work on and off in archaeology, I found the instant archaeology of Nitro-9 refreshing, disburbing, and very funny as she almost blows themselves to bits with a malfunctioning timer.
I thought I'd missed some dialogue, but apparently likeable, breezy Shou is just a local. She obviously has an unused backstory (covered in the novel?) because she understands the chemistry of explosives.
The demon design was similar, but very much better than Hammer House of Horror's demon from Guardian of the Abyss (pod 548). Its appearance made me pang after Bok the prancing gargoyle from The Daemons (pod 250, if you want more of me enjoying Bok, and the Master declaring, "...so mote it be!").
There is much comedy. The pub suddenly plunged into darkness, followed by assorted screams, is very funny. Ace pops up out of the water like a really bad tempered, chavvy Lady of the Lake (can you imagine Nimue or Viviane...), quenching the romantic notions of Arthurian enthusiast Warmsly, a man who likes to quote Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur.
Several months later, the new season of DW starts with a bang. With Morgaine, Merlin, Modred, Excalibur, and Arthur, as an Arthurian nut, this one was made for me. They are historical characters from another time, space, and dimension, i.e. it's the full DW "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space", with myth/historicity, experience. It is sad that the stories are getting better in the run down to the cancellation. With New Who thoroughly buggered by RTD, the Beeb, and Disney, replaying the end of Old Who is hardly pleasant.
When Ace is shocked by the price of drinks, the Doctor says, "Remember, we are in the future", then pays with a GBP 5 coin (not issued until 1990), at the appropriately named Gore Crow Hotel.
Concrete was in use at least from 1000 BCE, so Ace and the Doctor are wrong about there being no concrete in the eighth century CE.
Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai is Sir Gawaine's son!
The script combines Morgaine, like Boorman's Morgan le Fay in Excalibur (Gorlois and Igraine's daughter and Arthur's half-sister), as she who trapped Merlin, instead of Viviane.
I first talk about Liz Shaw in Doctor Who and the Silurians (pod 182), but her first appearance is in Spearhead from Space (pod 177); both broadcasted in 1970. She's a brilliant UNIT scientific advisor from the University of Cambridge, who later becomes the Doctor's Companion.
In Howe, Walker, and Stammer's Handbook: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Production of Doctor Who, on p. 713, Sylvester McCoy says he greatly enjoyed working with Marsh, Ellis, and particularly Courtney. He says, "I'd always been a great fan of the Brigadier, ever since I'd watched it when Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee were in it."
I think it fair, given a "freeze dried" space King Arthur and a myth that's merely "propaganda" to end on a note that would make both Peter Warmsly and me happy, as fellow Arthur nuts, with this poetry:
"...But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest---if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--- To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."---Excerpt from Morte D'Arthur (1833) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, later published as The Passing of Arthur in the Idylls of the King
So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away.