Terrance Dicks - Inferno

[kooshmeister]

Inferno by Terrance Dicks.

A pretty great cover! Very iconic and instantly recognizable to anyone who's seen the serial. That fellow is named Bromley and he's got a bad case of, well...

It's complicated.

The novel starts with the Doctor driving to a scientific facility in Eastchester and humming opera. He waves to a technician on a bike, whose viewpoint we then switch over to as we learn his name is Harry Slocum. On his way in he follows the Doctor's example of stopping to say hi to anyone he runs across by shooting the breeze with scientist John Bromley who's on his way to the power station before heading inside what the people who work there have rather ominously dubbed "the inferno."

A bunch of scientists are using a big honkin' drill to try and bore through the Earth's crust in search of gases which they think are an untapped alternative fuel source. Right away we're aware of some problems. There's two types. Firstly, the kind Harry has been called in to fix, of the technical or mechanical variety. Something is wrong with one of the drill's pipes and Sir Keith Gold, the bowtie-wearing executive director of the facility, wants Harry to fix it.

The other problems the project is dealing with all emanate from one man, the acerbic Professor Eric Stahlman, a German scientist and the drill's designer. Or rather, Stahlman is the problem. The man is a walking, talking problem. Sir Keith is executive director in name only; somehow, Stahlman has total authority of the facility and everything that goes on in it. He's impatient, arrogant, uncooperative, and worst of all, reckless... and he has absolute power over a science experiment to drill into the Earth's core. Great. Earth is doomed.

When he's introduced, he's complaining that Keith discovered a problem and is having it fixed. Stahlman is the sort of guy who would prefer problems of any sort didn't exist so badly he chooses to ignore them, and gets mad at anyone who fixes them, making him look like a fool. Of course, this could easily be solved by Stahlman himself handling the issues, but he's too busy being, like, smart and stuff, and telling everyone around him what lesser mortals they are. And forever doodling in his little notebook. His assistant Dr. Petra Williams generally acts as a go-between for him so he doesn't have to actually, like, talk to people if he can help it.

And where is our pal the Doctor in all this? Well, he's attached to the project in a sort of by-the-way manner. His mathetical computations are what helped Stahlman and his colleagues progress as far as they have, and in return, he's been given leeway to come and go as he pleases (although Stahlman hates his guts). He's got the control console for the TARDIS in an outbuilding located near the main facility, guarded by a UNIT soldier (UNIT seems to be providing security for the overall project in fact), where he is attempting to get it functioning again. The TARDIS being the TARDIS, though, it isn't cooperating much. Liz Shaw is assisting him in his thus far fruitless endeavors.

Meanwhile, whilst fixing the pipe, Harry Slocum finds some kind of green slime stuff leaking from inside of it. He decides to give a little poke and it burns his finger. Afterward, he starts to feel a little... odd. Still, holding his wrench, he exits the building and encounters one of the scientists outside. And this time, he isn't stopping for a chat, as the unfortunate man learns too late as Harry promptly uses his wrench to bludgeon him to death...

[kooshmeister]

So the killing has everyone at the Inferno in a tizzy. Everyone except Professor Stahlman. The amount he cares about the murdered scientist is exactly zero. 'Cause he's a titanic douche. The murderer hasn't been caught, and could still be roaming the facility, waiting to strike again (which he is). For this reason, the Brigadier wants to postpone the project until Harry is caught. Stahlman nips that suggestion in the bud, insisting the murder and murderer are a "security matter" unconnected to his project, so it's UNIT's problem not his. More and more we see Stahlman is the kind of guy who'll ignore a problem until it blows up in his face. Seriously, there's a killer on the loose and he doesn't think this jeopardizes his work? What if Harry disrupts the project (which he will)? What then, huh, Professor?

So anyway, the Brigadier calls the Doctor into his office. After the Doctor sees an old photo of him from before he grew his mustache and makes fun of him for it (he thinks the Brigadier looks better with it), talk turns to the killing, which was motiveless. Nobody can account for why such an all-around nice guy like Harry would just go bananas and kill someone. Weirder still is the murder weapon, Harry's wrench. It's still warm, and the Brigadier even claims that when found it was glowing red-hot like it had just been taken out of a blacksmith's furnace! Man, I know the ladies said Harry was hot, but this is ridiculous.

Sir Keith tries to rein Stahlman in by bringing in a drilling expert named Greg Sutton, who has experience in capping wells when something goes awry. Even this tentative nod towards safety Stahlman won't hear of, refusing to even entertain the idea that his precious drill could snitch up and cause a problem. He's also ignoring a computer which is monitoring the drilling, and warning that (duh) they're drilling too deep too fast. Stahlman says the computer is "over-sensitive." Greg clashes with Stahlman's assistant Petra, who is of course a severe ice maiden. Naturally this means they'll be in love before the story is over.

Leaving the Brigadier to find and apprehend Harry, and leaving Stahlman to just continue making a titanic ass of himself, the Doctor returns to his workshop and resumes monkeying with the TARDIS' control console. He's powering it by leeching off of the Inferno's nuclear reactor without Stahlman's knowledge, apparently as a great big fuck-you to the entitled douchebag Professor. Right as he's activating it, Harry, now sporting green skin and considerably hairier hands (Harry, what did your mother tell you about masturbating too much?) enters the power station where John Bromley is on duty, and attacks him.

Harry cranks the reactor's power to maximum, which overloads the TARDIS controls. The Doctor (and the TARDIS console) vanish before Liz's eyes, and the Doctor finds himself and his machine spinning through a big nightmarish void, until Liz switches off the feed, causing him to reappear, shaken but okay. He muses that he seemed to have somehow slipped sideways in time or something.

The overload also causes the drill to shoot into overdrive and threaten to shake itself to pieces. "Expert" scientist Stahlman's response to this is to just basically shout a lot. He ignores Greg and Sir Keith's pleas to stop the drill, forcing Greg to tend to the issue himself. The Brigadier and trusty Sgt. Benton head over to the power station. The Doctor also heads there, and Private Wyatt, the soldier who was guarding his workshop, comes with him.

When the four of them arrive, hairy green Harry attacks...! Wyatt shoots him several times, but this only makes him mad, and he attacks the soldier. Finally the Doctor turns the reactor's output back down to normal (which isn't easy; the handle is burning hot!), and Harry suddenly drops dead. Apparently, the decrease in temperature made Harry succumb to the bullet wounds.

In the Inferno, Greg manages to avert a crisis and get the drill stable again, earning a grumpy kinda-sorta thank-you from Stahlman. Who of course immediately orders the project to recommence. Agh!

[kooshmeister]

Well with Harry dead it seems like the problem is over, right? Hardly. Bromley and Private Wyatt are alive and seemingly unhurt, but acting really weird. Leaving Benton to watch them, the Doctor and the Brigadier go outside to discuss these recent developments. The Doctor mentions he's seen something similar to this when Krakatoa erupted. He worries it may be happening again.

Benton comes running up to tell them that Bromley and Wyatt have disappeared. Benton, you're a sucky guard. He and the Brigadier head off to look for them, but it's the Doctor who spies Wyatt on a catwalk nearby. He runs away when the Doctor calls over to him, and, of course, rather than go and get the Brigadier and Benton who can't be far away, he decides to run after the possibly crazed soldier on his own.

And crazed he is. For when the Doctor climbs up onto the walkway and confronts him, Wyatt has the same green skin and hairy hands that Harry did. He attacks the Time Lord, but the Doctor ducks and Wyatt overbalances and falls off the walkway. Splat. As the Doctor departs, Bromley is revealed to ominously be watching him, and he too has green skin now...

Inside the Inferno, the technicians found and collected the green slime that was leaking from the pipe and put it into a jar. They show it to Stahlman, who basically brushes it off as being of no consequence. The super-hot goo begins to cause the jar to crack and the contents to start leaking out. But Stahlman saves the day by... grabbing the jar with his bare hand and sticking into a heat-resistant container. This despite the fact that the guy who brought it to him was standing right there wearing protective gloves. Stahlman, you idiot! Of course, in so doing, Stahlman gets some of the slime that was leaking through the cracked glass on his fingers. He just casually wipes it off, but we, of course, know that it isn't that easy.

Needless to say, Stahlman begins feeling a little strange. He feels compelled to put on gloves to hide the fact that his skin is turning green where the slime touched him, and then he goes and removes an important circuit from the computer. The one that's warning them they're drilling too quickly, remember? He goes into the Brigadier's office with it and is about to use a ruler to smash it when the Doctor comes in and catches him. He pockets the circuit and then attempts to hit the Doctor with the ruler, but the Time Lord uses Venusian Aikido to temporarily paralyze him.

After recovering, he accuses the Doctor of trying to sabotage the project and denies having taken the circuit. Short of holding him upside-down and shaking him until all of the contents of his pockets fall out, the Doctor can't prove he took it, and, a bit too uncharacteristically brusquely for my tastes, essentially washes his hands of the issue. When nobody is looking, Stahlman drops the circuit onto the floor and smushes it under his foot.

The Doctor returns to his workshop to resume his own work with Liz. Apparently the still missing and potentially dangerous Bromley, Stahlman's obvious attempts to sabotage the safety precautions, and, overall, the fact these people are basically drilling themselves to their doom doesn't concern him. No, what really matters is repeating the results of his earlier experiment. He wants to know more about that mysterious void he was in for a few moments.

Liz advises against it, saying it's too dangerous. The Doctor pretends to agree with her, then sends her on a false errand to the main facility. By the time she realizes she's been had and returns to the workshop with the Brigadier in tow, they're in time to witness the Doctor fire up the TARDIS' control console again and disappear, along with the console itself and Bessie the yellow convertible. Right as he does so, Stahlman suddenly notices that the Doctor has been leeching power and angrily orders the feed to the Doctor's building cut. This time, though, the Doctor doesn't reappear. Instead, he goes hurtling off into the unknown...

[kooshmeister]

The Doctor awakens to find himself lying on the floor inside of his workshop. He initially thinks he has failed in his endeavor, since the TARDIS console and Bessie are there, but something is a bit off. His equipment has been removed and there's a poster on the wall showing a picture of a very stern-looking man with the slogan "Strength Through Unity." There's a symbol on the poster showing three arrows radiating out from a central point. The Doctor exits to find that everything outside seems normal, if a little deserted. Then he sees, on the door, is the same arrow symbol there was on the poster.

Suddenly a shot rings out. An armed soldier is firing at him, and he isn't in a UNIT uniform! The Doctor has no idea what is happening, but he knows enough to beat feet when someone's shooting at you, so he jumps into Bessie and speeds off. The soldiers give chase. In a bid to ditch them, he parks Bessie, then gets out and hides. When they find the car, they search elsewhere. The Doctor climbs up to the same series of catwalks where he encountered the transformed Private Wyatt earlier, only to run smack dab into the transformed Bromley, who still has the whole green monster man thing going on. With noting else to hand, he grabs a fire extinguisher and sprays the deranged scientist in the face with it. This seems to work, as, when it comes to the transformed-people, cold is the enemy.

But no sooner has he dealt with Bromley than he is attacked by... Wyatt?! Looking surprisingly spry for a guy who tumbled off of a third story walkway and turned into street pizza only an hour or so ago. And in the same uniform as the men who are hunting the Doctor. And he's still got the green skin, etc. like Bromley. There's a brief tussle, before the soldiers converge on the structure below and one of them shoots Wyatt in the back. Losing his balance, Wyatt (again!) falls off to his bone-shattering death.

The Doctor gets down and continues dodging the hunters until he encounters none other than Liz Shaw. Except she's in a snappy military uniform and with short brown hair instead of long blonde hair! Apparently not getting it yet, the Doctor approaches her and asks what's going on, whereupon Liz pulls her sidearm on him and alerts her fellow soldiers. The Time Lord is quickly taken into custody.

He's taken inside the Inferno where he is brought before Eric Stahlman and Petra Williams. Stahlman (who had a beard before) is clean-shaven and wearing sunglasses indoors, and both he and Petra are in weird futuristic-looking lab coats. Liz calls Stahlman "Director Stahlman," and he has her take their prisoner to the "Brigade Leader," and so Liz and the troopers take the Doctor into the Brigadier's office, where we meet the Brigade Leader... who it turns out is the Brigadier without his mustache and wearing an eyepatch.

By this time, the Doctor has figured out he's in a parallel universe. Some things are different and some things are the same. England is now the Republic of Great Britain, with the royal family having been executed after World War II went quite a bit differently. UNIT was never formed because there's no United Nations, and those who joined it are members of Britain's fascist military, the Republican Security Forces. The kindly but rule-abiding Brigadier is a harsh, sadistic, jackbooted thug, and Liz isn't a scientist. She's "Section Leader" Elizabeth Shaw. Benton is different too. He's basically a mindless drone who follows orders without question.

As for the civilians, ice queen Petra is quieter and more submissive, and while Stahlman is slightly more reasonable and less acerbic than his counterpart, he is already under the influence of the green slime as evidenced by his gloves, and becoming increasingly more and more like the other Stahlman - i.e. a huge jerk. Sir Keith is dead, having died in a car crash. Only Greg Sutton is essentially the same, except here, he's always been part of the project instead of having been brought in recently. Besides him, the only things that seem to be the same are the fact there is a project headed by Stahlman to drill through the Earth's crust, and it's brought up some mysterious green glop that is turning people into rabid green monster men.

Anyway, the Brigade Leader thinks the Doctor is a spy because of how much he knows about the project, such as the fact the computer isn't working, and the whole business with Harry Slocum going bonkers and the slime turning people into monsters. Liz thinks he's too eccentrically dressed to be a spy, and reasons he must be from some demonstration group protesting the project. The Doctor denies being any of these things, and the fascists are flummoxed when no one answering to his physical description can be found in their database.

A sudden incident involving the drill has Liz and the Brigade Leader running out into the main room to see what the matter is, leaving Benton to guard the prisoner. Alternate universe Benton proves to be just as sucky of a guard as the other one when the Doctor basically goes "hey look at this" and then disables him with Venusian Karate and escapes.

Rather than attempting to leave, though, he focuses on finding the missing circuit from the computer. Oh, sure, now he cares. Fortunately for him, this universe's Stahlman didn't destroy it, he just hid it inside a toolbox. The Doctor finds it and replaces it, which allows the computer to function once more. Greg fixes the problem (again), and (again) earns a grudging thanks from Stahlman. The Doctor is caught, and Liz and a recovered Benton take him to some holding cells.

Here, he sees that his fellow prisoner in an adjoining cell is none other than the transformed Bromley, who is asleep on his bed. The soldier on guard duty explains they hit him with a tranquilizer and captured him, then he stuffs the Doctor into his own cell. Liz tries playing good-cop by sending Benton and the soldier out of the room and talking to the Doctor privately, but he still insists he is from an alternate universe. She leaves in a huff. The imprisoned Time Lord decides to catch a few winks and lies down, unaware that Bromley is beginning to wake up in the next cell. The tranquilizer is wearing off...

[kooshmeister]

Back in the original universe, the increasingly unstable Stahlman is being such a titantic tit that Sir Keith finally says the heck with it and decides to go and see whatever idiot gave the okay for this whole dunderheaded project. Liz and the Brigadier wonder where the Doctor is, blah, blah, blah. In the alternate universe, the Doctor's nap is rudely interrupted by Bromley awakening. A guard comes in to see what the matter is, and, for some unfathomable reason, he enters Bromley's cell where he's promptly strangled to death (I guess he wasn't there when they had to tranquilize the guy).

Rather than leave now that his cell door is wide open, Bromley decides he wants to murder the Doctor too. He's probably still pissed about getting a face full of fire extinguisher foam earlier. So he bends the bars separating their cells and steps from his to the Doctor's, where our pal the plucky Time Lord has to play keep-away with Bromley, ultimately managing to get around him, go through the bent bars and into Bromley's cell and get the keys off of the dead guard. He then exits, shutting and locking the door behind him. He thinks he's mighty clever, but Bromley just bends the bars again and resumes coming after him. (This is in direct contrast to the serial, where Bromley apparently forgets he can bend metal, and acts stymied by the bars.)

After managing to lose his pursuer, the Doctor rushes outside. They're reaching penetration-zero. He sees some scientists putting on full body protective suits complete with hooded masks, so he swipes one, and manages to pass for muster as he files back inside the Inferno with the rest of them. Between the piss-poor performance of the guard in the holding cells, and the guards here not noticing they have an extra scientist coming in, the big bad RSF isn't impressing me much. Anyway, once inside, it takes the Brigade Leader to notice the mysterious, extra scientist, and his demands that the stranger account for himself result in the Doctor whipping off the hood, then running and standing in the middle of the room and shouting at the top of his lungs to stop the drilling. Too late. The drill pierces the crust, and the entire building is rocked by the impact.

Everyone - except for the principal characters, that is - wisely runs the hell outta there. The Brigade Leader screams at Benton go and bring them all back. He only manages to round up a few soldiers, though, and is told to guard the front entrance. Director Stahlman goes into the chamber housing the main drill head without a protective suit, prompting Greg to remind him he kind of needs one of those, so he reluctantly dons one. Greg also throws one on, and Stahlman even more reluctantly allows Greg to accompany him inside. Greg intends to cap the bore, despite being told repeatedly that this is one emergency he can't fix. Have to admire Mr. Sutton's self-assurance, bravery and enthusiasm. Besides hopefully capping the bore, he also wants to rescue the scientists who were in there when the tremors hit. They're all knocked unconscious.

Stahlman has no intention of letting Greg succeed at either task, as he bops him with a pipe. In rushes the Doctor, though, and after a tussle he manages to hand Stahlman his ass, and drag Greg out to safety, before the heat shield closes, trapping Stahlman inside with the knocked-out scientists. Now well into his transformation (it's about time!), he one by one exposes the scientists to the green slime that is now spurting copiously from the outlet pipes of the drill that just penetrated the Earth's crust (there's a metaphor there...). They begin to change...

Somewhere in here, we get a cutaway to the Doctor's home universe. Sir Keith has been to London and seen the idiot who gave the okay for the dunderheaded project, and told them of Stahlman's behavior. The chief idiot told Keith to cancel the project. Alas, on the way back, we learn that Stahlman thought ahead and bribed Keith's chauffeur to take him somewhere else instead of back to the Inferno. Then they get in a wreck because Keith has such a shitty chauffeur. Uh-oh.

[kooshmeister]

Back in the Land of Opposite Day, things at the Inferno have certainly gone all tits-up. The higher-ups have sent word to the Brigade Leader that the research team is to hold their posts, but everyone in the vicinity of Manchester is to vamoose. Sutton cynically takes this to mean that the government has no intention of fixing the problem, especially as, besides telling them to remain where they are, and everyone else to escape, they've given no further orders.

Almost all of the guards, scientists and technicians have flown the coop. Had, in fact, since the initial penetration rocked the facility. Sutton comments that perhaps they were the smart ones. The Doctor grimly replies that it won't help them in the long run. Everyone finally asks what the Doctor means by that, and he tells them that the forces the drill has unleashes from beneath the Earth's crust will cause the planet to dissolve in a massive explosion of expanding gases and fiery doom and destruction, returning to the way it was in prehistoric times and effectively wiping out all life on the surface. Everyone is, needless to say, morbidly disturbed.

An argument breaks out between Sutton and the Brigade Leader. The latter insists on following orders and remaining at the Inferno, whilst the former thinks that if they're all going to die he wants to spend his last few days as far away from this place as possible. The Brigade Leader begins shrieking about treason when suddenly Bromley reappears, a little further along in his transformation but still recognizable as Bromley. This sudden intrusion stops the argument and everyone backs away. The Brigade Leader pulls his gun and shoots the mutated scientist a few times and it doesn't do anything. Remembering how he took him out last time, the Doctor grabs a handy fire extinguisher and gives Bromley a good spritz with it. He then collapses to the floor. A tentative check reveals he's dead.

The Brigade Leader becomes boastful about how he slew the creature, but the Doctor tells him it wasn't entirely his bullets. Apparently, as with Harry Slocum in the other world before him, Bromley being suddenly turned cold by the spray from the extinguisher made him finally succumb to the bullet wounds. The Doctor explains at great length how the people underground retro-something-or-other mutation from exposure to the green slime, derived strength and near invulnerability from extreme heat. Even if you shoot them, they won't die unless their body temperature suddenly drops.

Benton appears during this little lecture to report that he managed to round up a few of the RSF guards. The Brigade Leader snidely tells him and his men to guard all the entrances and exits to the Inferno, so nobody gets in, and, more importantly, nobody gets out. Not without his permission anyway. As Benton heads off to do as instructed, they all go into the Brigade Leader's office and listen to a news reporter of the disaster, but static from all the heat and atmospheric disturbances causes it to fizzle out, but that's all for the best anyway. The reporter guy wasn't giving anything even resembling helpful information. Liz bemoans the death of the planet, but the Doctor explains that they can to save the alternate universe he comes from. Liz points out that if the other universe runs parallel to theirs, then they must already be in exactly the same jam.

However, the Doctor insists that his universe's Inferno project isn't as advanced as theirs; therefore, there's a chance to get back and warn them. While everyone agrees this is a fine idea, if possible, the main question on their minds is how is he gonna do it? Why, using the TARDIS console, of course! This is the first we've heard of thing since the Doctor got here, and we find out that the RSF had found it during a search, but considered it "junk" and left it where it was. So the Doctor takes Liz and the Brigade Leader to go and see it, while Sutton and Petra continue futzing with the equipment in the control room, mostly just to keep themselves busy. Sutton also takes the time to drag off and dispose of Bromley's corpse - hopefully not with his bare hands!

At the workshop, the Brigade Leader is unimpressed with the console until the Doctor uses the energy left in it to travel forwards a few seconds into the future, startling the two RSF officers. He explains that the demonstration used up the last of its power. In order to fully charge it up so he can travel back to his own universe, he'll need them to help him connect the workshop to the Inferno's power plant. They agree to this, but the Brigade Leader, beginning to show some genuine vulnerability, asks if the Doctor can take anyone with him, and the Doctor realizes why - the Brigade Leader is hoping he can take him, Liz, Petra and Sutton back with him, using the TARDIS as an inter-dimensional life boat. The Time Lord replies that such a thing is impossible. Since they all already have counterparts where he's going, it'd create a dimensional paradox, which is very bad. .... But he would if he could, by God, he would. Liz accepts this. But she still wants to help save the other world, while the increasingly more and more nervous Brigade Leader confides in her that he thinks the Doctor is just being selfish, and will find a way to force him to take them.

They return to central control to find Sutton and Petra in a state. The garbled voice of Director Stahlman is coming over the intercom from the drill head room. The one where he trapped himself and all of the other scientists. There's a lot of bleating about how that's impossible, with Sutton leading the charge by pointing out that at the superheated temperatures inside there, they must all be baked by now! But that's Stahlman's voice nonetheless, and he pleads with Petra to open the shield so he and the others can come out. The Doctor, realizing what this means, doesn't think it's a good idea, but loyal Petra opens the door anyway, and out comes Stahlman, still in his heat suit. He takes off the mask and hood to reveal that he is now all green and monstrous like the others before him, but the heat inside the drilling room has caused his transformation to progress at a more rapid pace. He new resembles a green werewolf for all intents and purposes. And so do the scientists he slimed earlier, about five or six of them, who come out behind him and arrange themselves in preparation to attack...!

[kooshmeister]

Instead of immediately setting themselves upon the hapless humans, the devolved humans just sort of mingle around the entrance to the drill room. The Doctor theorizes it's because they're acclimatizing themselves, staying close to the heat for the moment, but they'll become bolder eventually. For the time being he decides it's wisest that they lock themselves in the Brigade Leader's office until they can think of a plan.

Suddenly, Benton walks in, and a warning yelled by the Brigade Leader comes too late. He's seized by the mutated technicians and Stahlman rubs his (Benton's) face, whereupon the unfortunate Platoon Under Leader collapses and begins writing around fitfully. Everyone runs for the office except Greg Sutton, who wants to stay and help Benton, but he's dragged away by the Doctor who tells him there's nothing he can do: Benton is turning into one of them, and if Sutton touches him, he will to! As they run for the Brigade Leader's office, the Doctor pauses to flip some switches on a control panel, causing the heat shield to lower over the entrance to the drill room, cutting the mutants off from their source of heat. They begin feeling sluggish and slowly start drooping to the floor.

Trapped in the office, the characters discuss their options, which are limited. Even the Doctor seems stuck. The existence of the TARDIS comes up again, but it's rightly pointed out that with no power running to the building where it's kept, it's no good to anyone. They don't even know if the power is still on. However, after ascertaining that the air conditioning is still working, the Doctor hatches a plan to reconnect the power to the hut the TARDIS console is in, then crank the reactor up to maximum. Everyone agrees. By now, the monsters have grown accustomed to the temperature beyond the sealed-off drill, and so the plucky little group needs to use fire extinguishers as well as the feed to the drill's coolant system to fend the beasties off. A particularly strong blast of cold air seems to spell the end for Stahlman, but no sooner has everyone else run outside, then he begins stirring again...

Outside, the sky is red and everything shimmers with the heat, and the ground occasionally rumbles. It is a landscape from hell. Nevertheless, everyone hops into Bessie and drives to the power station. All the tremors have damaged the electronics, and so Petra remains there with Liz and the Brigade Leader to see if she can fix it, whilst the Doctor and Greg Sutton take a really, really long spool of cable and drive it in Bessie to the hut, where the Doctor starts hooking things up. Sutton wonders if the Doctor can persuade anyone in his world to listen to him. The Doctor isn't exactly hopeful, but he remains cautiously optimistic, especially if Sir Keith Gold is still alive (he's unaware of the car crash).

At the power station, Petra has everything connected and fires it up, only it doesn't work. The Brigade Leader yells at her, and she yells back, and there's a lot of pointless arguing when suddenly the mutated Stahlman appears. The Brigade Leader guns him down, and then the three of them run to the hut, where they report their failure. The Doctor sadly tells them they tried, and nobody can ask anything more of them, but then Petra decides to slip off by herself for another try. Greg Sutton follows her, and good thing, too, 'cause although she managed to get things running this time (likely because she didn't have the Brigade Leader breathing down her neck this time), Stahlman gets back up again and attacks her! The timely arrival of Sutton and a good dousing from another fire extinguisher put the mutated scientist down for good this time.

The two run back to the hut, where they give the Doctor the good news and wish him the best of luck. I feel so bad for these people. Even the jerkass Brigade Leader, who pulls his gun here and threatens to shoot the Doctor if he doesn't take them with him. He insists that because they helped him, they have a right to go. And the heartwrenching thing is he's right. They do. And yet the Doctor can't because the aforementioned dimensional paradox thingie. The Brigade Leader decides that if they can't go, then neither can the Doctor, and so he prepares to blow him away, when Liz pulls her own sidearm and shoots her superior in the back, saving the Doctor's life just as fire begins erupting out of the very ground itself. He fires up the TARDIS, and then he, it, and Bessie disappear, but as he's in the midst of fading across the dimensional gap, he has the dubious honor of watching Liz, Petra, Greg Sutton, the dead Brigade Leader and the little building they're in be consumed by a huge wave of lava...

[kooshmeister]

The Doctor returns to his own universe, and, fortunately, they haven't reached penetration zero just yet. However, to draw things out further, he's unconscious for a while. Apparently all this back and forth between alternate realities takes a lot out of him. Everyone is glad he's back, of course. Except Stahlman, who is now well underway to becoming one of the green mutant men but still managing to retain enough of his faculties to boss everyone around (something to do with his superior intellect I imagine). Of course, since he behaves exactly the same as he did before he touched the slime, nobody's noticed much of a change in his attitude except that he's even more of an asshole than usual.

Speaking of mutants, the Doctor inquires after this universe's still missing Bromley, and is told he still hasn't been captured. Man, UNIT can't even find one mutated scientist. Whatever would they do without the Doctor?

Oh, and it turns out Sir Keith survived the car crash with just a broken arm. And of course, Stahlman denies having paid off the chauffeur. And even though the aforementioned idiot in London who gave the okay for this whole dunderheaded project gave Keith explicit instructions to cancel the project, he apparently also didn't give him any authority to enforce the order - for whatever stupid reason, the order to halt the drilling has to come from Professor Stahlman... even though his questionable actions are what got the cancellation order given. This is simply the single most inefficiently run scientific undertaking in history!

The Doctor isn't one to wait around for this bureaucratic gobbledygook. These poor fools are drilling themselves to their doom and nobody will lift a finger because they're such slaves to proper procedure. Well, not this Time Lord! Unfortunately, how he goes about attempting to stop the project is... questionable at best, but, in his defense, he's still emotionally shaken from witnessing the alternate Earth get destroyed. He grabs a wrench and starts randomly smashing equipment in central control until the Brigadier has him forcibly removed from the premises. Stahlman then goes into the room where the drill is, orders all the other scientists out, and seals himself inside. Green slime is leaking from the output pipe, and he promptly grabs a handful and smears it all over his face.

Outside, the Doctor overpowers the two stalwart UNIT soldiers the Brigadier sent to babysit him using some Venusian Aikido, then flees up to the network of catwalks again where he encounters this universe's Bromley, who has apparently just been wandering around doing nothing all this time. He attacks the Doctor, who subdues him with (yet another) handy dandy fire extinguisher. Leaving him there, he continues evading UNIT until he makes it back inside the Inferno, where he's just in time to witness the heat shield of the drill room open and a fully transformed Stahlman to emerge, all growly and snarly. He hits the Doctor with a chair and is plugged several times by the Brigadier to no effect, until the Doctor recovers, grabs (another!) extinguisher and hoses the crazed Professor down.

Like all the other mutants who've been shot so far, the sudden cold causes Stahlman to finally realize he has bullets inside of him, and he drops dead. Sir Keith is finally able to take over on account of the project director dying, and orders the drill shut down, saving the day! Yay! Orders are given to seal off the great wonkin' hole the drill dug and the Inferno is shut down for good. The Doctor argues with the Brigadier before attempting to teleport away using the (apparently) repaired TARDIS console - only to end up teleporting into a garbage dump a short distance away. He returns with (metaphorical, I hope) egg on his face to meekly request the Brigadier lend him some guys to help drag the stupid thing back to the hut.

The End.

No word on the fate of Bromley. Since he wasn't shot, one assumes he's still alive. Hopefully UNIT can bag him. Torchwood would certainly be interested in a live specimen of a heat mutant.

[ripper]

I read this one about a year ago. Despite being a big Jon Pertwee as The Doctor fan, I couldn't remember having seen the television serial. I quite enjoyed the book, though it wasn't my favourite of the JP era adventures I have read. I was rather surprised by the fate of the alternate Earth and kept thinking that it would be saved at the last moment. It was a more complex story than many of the same era I have read, and I wonder how it went down with audiences of the time.

[kooshmeister]

It's definitely my favorite Pertwee-era story, and in my top five favorite classic Doctor Who stories. As to what audiences thought of the Doctor's failure to save the alternate Earth, I'm unsure, but it must've been quite shocking.

One thing about Terrance Dicks' novelization that irks me is that he doesn't include the deleted scene of Harry Slocum attacking and killing a UNIT soldier. In both the serial and its novel, the Brigadier mentions that one of his men was found dead shortly after the first murder (of the anonymous scientist). Well, according to the DVD, there was a scene filmed of Harry killing the soldier. They even showed some still frames from the filmed scene of actor Walter Randall creeping up on some poor schmoe in a UNIT uniform and apparently breaking his neck. The character was even named although I forget what the DVD gave his name as - perhaps it was David Simeon's Private Latimer, who disappears halfway through the story (bar a very brief appearance as an RSF trooper in the alternate reality)? His role as the soldier guarding the Doctor's workshop is taken by Wyatt in the book. Anyway, for whatever reason, the scene was cut, just as the scene with the radio was cut (because it was decided it was too obviously Pertwee as the announcer).

But while Dicks' novelization includes the extraneous bit with the radio, it doesn't include the scene of Harry killing the soldier. It still only mentions the death. Disappointing, Mr. Dicks!