Dragonfire Part One

The one where the Doctor goes on a treasure hunt...

That refrigeration room set is massive! Well done to designer John Asbridge for coming up with an impressively large set which must have taken up a substantial amount of studio space. There's also plenty of dry ice to give the impression it's cold - very cold - and Asbridge uses plenty of whites, blues and greens to make it feel chilly (complemented also by Don Babbage's lighting, especially in the scenes set beneath Iceworld).

We are introduced to the villain of the story, Kane, played with icy steel by Edward Peel. Kane is a cool customer who is cold to the core, and sleeps in some kind of hyperbaric chamber to reduce his body temperature to 193 degrees Celsius, like an Arctic Michael Jackson. Peel does a grand job of playing the villain, and comes across as genuinely threatening and dangerous. He's also pretty callous, putting a bunch of men into cryogenic chambers to use as mindless mercenaries when they are revived.

We are in Iceworld, a trading colony based on the planet Svartos, and somewhere the Doctor has been itching to visit for some time. He's been picking up a faint tracking signal there for a while, and has also heard rumours of a dragon that stalks the catacombs beneath Iceworld. The Doctor's sense of adventure has got the better of him again, and his plucky companion Mel is up for it too. She's less impressed when they materialise in a freezer centre ("How boring!"), which sells free range phoenix eggs and crab nebula pasties!

There's an underlying level of humour to this story which makes me smile, such as the wares sold by the freezer centre, and the increasingly low-level panicked announcements issued over the tannoy: "Would the emergency services please report to the docking bay to deal with an ice jam. Thank you!", then "If there's anyone in the emergency control room, would you please answer the phone. Thank you!", and finally "If anyone sees any member of the emergency services, will you please ask them to pop along to the upper docking bay when they've a moment to spare. Thank you!" Whatever's happened to the emergency services?

While Asbridge's sets do the job admirably, they also have an element of cheapness about them which makes the story feel quite low-rent. There's a fakeness to the corridors beneath Iceworld, with their stretched polythene walls and polystyrene snow, which cheapens everything, while at the same time meeting the production's needs perfectly well. I seem to remember some of the sets or costumes from Dragonfire were reused in the CBBC creative writing series What's Your Story? (hosted by Sylvester McCoy in 1988 and 1990), or maybe they were just reminiscent of it.

The Doctor and Mel head to Iceworld's restaurant, where they order two strawberry milkshakes and he settles down to read The Doctor's Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw. The restaurant set is another example of Asbridge meeting the needs of the script, but managing to make it look cheap. It's great to see so many weird and wonderful aliens milling about (including an Argolin and a purple-wigged woman straight out of Gerry Anderson's UFO). It's the kind of world-building that didn't happen often in the classic series, but placing the Doctor's adventures in a very discernible universe where there are other creatures and life-forms going about their business is lovely. In fact, it's a very comic strip thing to do, which is one of the hallmarks of the McCoy era.

Also relaxing in the restaurant is the Doctor's old "friend" Glitz, who's on Iceworld wheeling and dealing, and selling his entire crew to Kane (who's going to turn them into mindless mercenaries). I'm not the greatest fan of Glitz, he's more of a one-hit wonder for me, and I'd rather see Dibber back to be honest. It's nice to have that continuity from the previous season I suppose. Glitz owes Kane some money - money which he doesn't have - and so teams up with the Doctor to search for the mythical treasure that's reportedly to be found beneath Iceworld. It's lovely to see how enthused the Doctor gets when faced with the prospect of a treasure hunt, exploring the Singing Trees, the Ice Garden and the Lake of Oblivion. What the Doctor and Glitz don't know is that the treasure map is a fake, created by Kane with a tracking device in the seal.

Another new recruit is restaurant waitress Ace, a teenager with an attitude towards authority and a volatile nature. She dislikes being a waitress, and takes particular umbrage when a snooty customer demands to have the ice cream lumps removed from her milkshake. "This milkshake isn't adequately shaken," she complains, to which Ace rather wonderfully replies: "That's how they come, missus!" When the woman asks Ace to "shake it some more", Ace retorts: "Shake it yourself!" and promptly pours the drink all over her!

It's a marvellous introduction for a character who shows a lot of potential, and is played with oodles of charisma by Sophie Aldred. Ace is supposed to represent the young female viewers of the day, the stroppy 80s teenager, and although Aldred is a little too affected to completely convince, it's the first time Doctor Who has tried to put the target audience on screen for many years. It's unfortunate that some of the lingo she comes out with is embarrassingly mangled (calling people bilge bag, birdbath and a "grade A 100% div"), the sort of dialogue given to a teenage character by a writer who doesn't have a clue about teenagers (Ian Briggs was only 28 when he wrote Dragonfire, but there's a definite middle-aged disconnect in the way he's writing Ace).

Glitz bans the girls from going on the treasure hunt, so Ace takes Mel back to her quarters, which is a typical teenager's messy bedroom. Amusingly, the prim Mel tries to tidy up the scattered clothes, but Ace is having none of it ("Just sit on top of them like everyone else does!"), and there's a nice sisterly relationship developing between them, where there's as much friction as there is fondness. Ace reveals she's actually from Earth, after being mysteriously whisked away from her own time and place in a time storm. This is an unexpected origin story to say the least, and one I hope will get explored rather than glossed over.

Ace - who is being written so three-dimensionally that poor Mel is dwarfed in her shadow - reveals she's also an amateur expert in explosives, concocting her own deodorant cans full of nitro-glycerin (with added oomph). It's quite an eye-opener to suddenly have an argumentative stroppy teenager with a baggy, tomboy dress sense and a sideline in terrorism front and centre in Doctor Who, after all those years of busty babes, strait-laced do-gooders and sarcastic Aussies. Suddenly, Doctor Who has someone who vaguely resembles what kids of the time were like, someone who sticks up for herself, speaks her mind, gets involved, but also has a vulnerable side. What a marvellous renaissance!

Ace is obviously searching for a direction in her life. After the excitement of being plucked out of her own time and plonked on an alien world, all alone and left to fend for herself, she needs to know what's next. She is, after all, only 16 (although she'll tell you she's 18) and is itching for adventure. That's why she's so keen to go on the treasure hunt, and why she is very nearly tempted by Kane's offer of adventures in outer space: "Think about it," he proffers. "Travelling the twelve galaxies, the diamond sparkle of meteorite showers, the rainbow flashes of an ion storm..."

This is the sort of language the Doctor uses to impress new companions, and Ace is obviously tempted by Kane's wondrous offer, but thankfully she's shaken out of her thoughts by Mel, who knows that what the icy villain is offering is probably a far cry from what she has with the Doctor.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Glitz are wandering the cheapo corridors beneath Iceworld, calling in on the Singing Trees, which are actually a manufactured crystalline structure made up of opto-electronic circuits. The two get split up - Sylvester McCoy employing a slapstick approach to moving across the set - until the Doctor randomly decides to climb over the edge of an ice ridge and lower himself into oblivion. This is an infamously ridiculed cliffhanger, because there doesn't seem to be any good reason why the Doctor gets himself into this predicament, and although I don't find it as bad as others do, it is still pretty stupid (not helped by McCoy's Harold Lloyd-esque gurning as he slips down the brolly). The graphics look great though, and of course were employed again 26 years later in The Name of the Doctor.

Overall, Dragonfire part 1 is a cheap and cheerful romp which shows some potential, particularly for its villain and new character Ace. It feels rather inconsequential at times, as if it's been made by the BBC's children's department rather than drama department, but it's still in keeping with Season 24's quest to cast Doctor Who in a new light: fresh and fun.

First broadcast: November 23rd, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The introduction of stroppy teenager Ace is a welcome move towards serving the target audience, rather than just moany fans.
The Bad: John Asbridge's cheap-looking set design.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 3 - and nobody's picked her up on it yet.

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Dragonfire is available on BBC DVD as part of the Ace Adventures box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Adventures-Dragonfire-Happiness/dp/B0074GPGN4