Dragonfire Part Three

The one where Mel leaves and Ace joins...

Kane's circular control desk looks like a TARDIS console, with its operating panel surrounding a central column, which rises and falls. Seen for just three episodes in 1987, it's still much more convincing than the awful TARDIS console in the Jodie Whittaker era.

The Doctor goes off with the Creature to look at the star charts in the Ice Garden, leaving Glitz, Mel and Ace to wait behind and play I Spy (I love Ace's disgusted face when Mel suggests the game!). However, the three of them quickly get bored, and Glitz decides to return to the Nosferatu to pick up some commercial explosives, and for a second time insists the girls stay behind. Glitz's misogyny is extremely old-fashioned, but in this slightly more enlightened era you'd have thought his sexism would be included in order to be punctured. Sadly, his misogyny is given free rein because Mel and Ace let him leave them behind, and so they are weakly complicit. Writer Ian Briggs missed a trick there, because I'd much rather see Mel and Ace stick up for themselves and ignore him.

While the Doctor investigates what became of Kane's homeworld of Proamon, Kane dispatches two assassins to locate and destroy the Creature. "Bring me back its head," he commands, knowing that within the head is the precious Dragonfire crystal. The assassins are McLuhan and Bazin, the former a gutsy female played by Stephanie Feyerman, the latter a nervous rookie played by Stuart Organ (who, from 1988-2003, would be immortalised forever as Mr Robson in CBBC school soap Grange Hill).

It makes a nice change for there to be a male/ female coupling as the trained hunters, and for the female to be the experienced hard-nose and the male the anxious beginner. Bazin has never been on an ANT hunt before (aggressive non-terrestrial), and McLuhan does little to allay his anxieties by describing their quarry as a two-metre tall scorpion. They are a short-lived duo, sadly with little chemistry, but they're a nice couple of cameos all the same, and it is kinda sad when they're killed by the Dragonfire's defence system. Mind you, it's also kinda sad when the Creature gets its head lasered off.

Armed with the Dragonfire (the power source for Kane's ship), and the knowledge that Proamon was destroyed when its sun went supernova 2,000 years ago, the Doctor and his crew confront Kane, who has Ace hostage. The face-off between the Doctor and Kane is nicely played, and yet again Sylvester McCoy shows how good he is at conveying understated anger, his face becoming a dark, brooding reflection of the Doctor's disgust. McCoy would always face down his opponents with steel, whether it be Gavrok, the Black Dalek, Morgaine, Fenric or, most celebrated of all, Helen A.

When Kane discovers his homeworld is gone, and he can no longer have his revenge, he simply gives up and opens the window, letting in a flood of searing sunlight which he knows will kill him. And kill him it does - horribly! Bravo to the special effects team who give Doctor Who one of the most graphic death scenes in its 60 year history as Kane's face begins to melt, his skin peeling away and his eyeballs turning to mush. It's very like the similar effect used for Toht's icky death in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was given a PG certificate in the UK, but did have to endure edits to avoid an R rating in the US. Here, Doctor Who sticks Kane's liquefying face on at 7.55pm on a Monday night, without any warning at all. It's a magnificent, stunning effect - undoubtedly too strong for younger viewers - but it gives Dragonfire that memorable edge.

Minor thoughts:

• Ace's repeated use of "bilge bag" to refer to Glitz is embarrassing. I admire Ian Briggs' skill at portraying the inner thoughts and attitudes of a teenage girl such as Ace, but the supposedly streetwise lingo he puts in her mouth is way off.
• The revelation that the Iceworld colony is actually a spaceship is a corker, and the model work stands side by side with the melting face as a supreme example of how far Doctor Who had come in its final few years.
• The mercenaries half-heartedly empty Iceworld and force everybody aboard the Nosferatu for evacuation, but Kane decides to blow it up in one final heartless twist. There's a lot of people murdered in that big bang (similar in effect to, but bigger than, the destruction of the Navarino bus in Delta and the Bannermen), and I love Tony Selby's horrified face lit by the explosion. The shot where he curses Kane's name is slightly ambiguous though, because it's not clear whether he's angry that all those people died, or that he's lost his spaceship. Knowing the character, it could quite easily be the latter.
• What is the point of Stellar? This cutesy Shirley Temple cypher wanders around with her teddy bear, separated from her mother, who somehow escapes the mercenaries' terror. She serves no active purpose other than to make the Creature seem "sweet" when he rescues her, and ends up zipping off into space aboard the Nosferatu II with Mel, Glitz and her mother (aren't they in for a surprise!).
• Love Ace's excitement at seeing inside either the Doctor or Glitz's spaceships, and her disappointment at seeing the TARDIS is just a blue cabinet. "Squeeze up then!" she says as she enters, only to find the gleaming expanse within. The Doctor, and his TARDIS, is the answer to all her dreams.

The final few minutes are wisely dedicated to endings and beginnings, with Mel rather unexpectedly deciding that it's time for her and the Doctor to part ways. It is out of the blue somewhat, there's been no build-up at all, and it is a shame that so much time has been given to developing Ace and virtually nothing at all to incumbent companion Mel. The Doctor is plainly taken aback by Mel's sudden decision, and at first tries to disguise his disappointment with bluster, but it's clear he is too fond of Mel to let her go without a hug.

Their final words are playful and clever, riffing on the concept of time, the peripatetic nature of the Doctor's life ("his days like crazy paving"), and rather wonderfully the fact the Doctor and Mel have never actually met (referring to the massive continuity error created in The Trial of a Time Lord when Mel, from the Doctor's future, joins a Doctor from her past on his journeys). There's a cute little nose-nudge from the Doctor (something he'd carry through to Ace too) and a genuinely touching farewell.

Mel's departure comes about simply because Bonnie Langford wanted to leave, and there's no organic reason within the show for it to happen. Mel seemed perfectly happy and content travelling the universe with the Doctor, and I just don't buy her favouring doing the same with intergalactic rogue Sabalom Glitz aboard the Nosferatu II. Melanie Bush has to be one of the most poorly-served companions in the series ever, enjoying next to no character development at all, which is a shame because Langford's unguarded enthusiasm was refreshing after all those years of Moaning Myrtles (Peri, Turlough, Tegan). Langford may not have been the most adept actor in the world, but she did her best, she meant well and gave it her all, and it's a shame she wasn't given more to do, or be.

The end of the series sees the Doctor adopt a new stray in the form of teenager Ace, a character who's been yearning for salvation since we first met her in that restaurant. Ace has been destined to join the "Professor" aboard the TARDIS all along, and her arrival heralds a fresh start for Doctor Who as it heads into its 25th year. Ace is a very special character, probably the most developed character in the classic series after the Doctor himself. Her journey has only just begun, and already we know more about her than we ever learnt about companions such as Dodo, Liz or Mel.

The Doctor lays down three rules for their adventures together: first, he's in charge; second, he's the Doctor, not Professor; and third... he'll think of that before they get back to Perivale. Do we ever learn what that third rule is when we reach Perivale? Time will tell...

Dragonfire was the most popular of a generally unloved bunch of stories at the time Season 24 was shown, but over the decades it's clear that Paradise Towers is the best story, and that Dragonfire is a bit too generic and old school. But it's fun, bright and breezy like its contemporaries, and actually much better than I remember it being when I last watched it 10 years ago.

Some people detest Season 24, but I love it, because while it is rather fluffy and throwaway, it recalibrated Doctor Who's DNA ready for one last reimagining in its final years. Making Doctor Who fun again was essential to wiping the slate clean, after years of Saward-fuelled continuity-heavy misery. I reckon that if you can't enjoy Season 24 for what it is, then you're struggling to see the joy. Don't hate Season 24 for what it's not; love it for what it is!

First broadcast: December 7th, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The effect of Kane's melting face.
The Bad: Mel's departure feels tacked on and meaningless.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 7 out of 10)

Ace says "Professor": 11 - It's telling that Ace screams "Doctor!" when she's scared, not "Professor".

NEXT TIME: Remembrance of the Daleks...

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

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