Doctor Who and the Pescatons

2 episodes. Approx. 46 minutes. Written by: Victor Pemberton. Directed by: Don Norman. Produced by: Don Norman. Performed by: Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen, Bill Mitchell.


THE PLOT

An underwater expedition vanishes while searching for a meteorite that fell into the sea near the River Thames estuary. The Doctor descends into the depths to investigate, and discovers a vast underwater tunnel, now home to the skeletal remains of the missing crew. As he moves deeper in, he makes a further discovery - a crashed spacecraft belongong to a scout for the Pescatons!

The Pescatons are shark-like creatures, humanoid but aquatic. They come from the dying world of Pesca, and are searching for a new home. Their leader, Zor (Bill Mitchell), has determined the Earth to be a suitable replacement. As another wave of meteors strike, this time all around the globe, the Doctor realizes that he may already be too late. The Pescaton invasion has begun!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though Tom Baker gives a spirited reading of the story, the Fourth Doctor's characterization is quite weak. The Doctor is frozen with terror on a regular basis. This seems out of character for any Doctor, let alone the indomitable Fourth. Victor Pemberton's background in writing for Patrick Troughton shows itself when we learn that the Doctor always plays the piccolo when nervous... which doesn't at all fit the Fourth Doctor, but would be perfect for the Second. Overall, there's just not enough sense of the proactive Fourth Doctor here, as he's really more an observer than anything else until the story's final minutes.

Sarah Jane Smith: If the Doctor is reduced to a spectator, then Sarah Jane is reduced to being a spectator of a spectator. Elisabeth Sladen pops up for a few short scenes to give the Doctor someone to feed exposition to in dialogue form (as opposed to the rest of the story, when he's just narrating the exposition straight to us), but very little of Sarah Jane's character comes across.


THOUGHTS

The Pescatons has an important place in Doctor Who history. It was the first original audio adventure - and it was the first audio adventure produced not for radio broadcast, but instead for sale as an LP. This makes it, if not the grandfather of Big Finish, then at least the godfather. Its format even resembles that of Big Finish's Companion Chronicles: A first person-narrated audio book, with a range of music and sound effects and key scenes that are fully dramatized. It is a noteworthy story, one that paved the way for an enormous audio Who legacy.

While I'll accept that opinions differ on this, it is also a story that I find quite poor.

It's very obvious while listening that this was dashed off in a hurry. One scene doesn't lead into the next; the whole thing is just a collection of set pieces. For example, the Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive and are immediately menaced by a Pescaton... a scene which does nothing for the story, as the Doctor's trip into the depths is prompted by Professor Emmison's details about the missing expedition. Similarly, there is no link between the Doctor's dive and the lone Pescaton's journey onto the land at the end of Episode One, nor any link drawn between that scene and the invasion of Episode Two. They are all disconnected bits, almost any of which could be removed entirely without affecting the surrounding material.

The narrative has noticeable gaps. The character of Professor Emmison has a significant (if unvoiced) supporting role, but he receives no introduction whatever. One moment, the Doctor and Sarah Jane are running from a Pescaton, the next they are receiving exposition from the professor. Couldn't a quick sentence or two have been thrown in there to show the Professor stopping to pick them up in his car or something? 

Later, The Doctor recalls a previous encounter with the villainous Zor. I do think showing this scene as a flashback undercuts its immediacy; it would have been relatively little effort to work the same scene into the present-day narrative, perhaps just before the cliffhanger. Still, it's a strong scene, one of the story's few genuinely gripping moments... which is then undercut when the Doctor goes from being at Zor's mercy to having escaped, with almost no explanation at all as to how this happened.

That's my issue with The Pescatons in a nutshell. There are several effective individual scenes, moments, and descriptions, showing that writer Victor Pemberton hasn't forgotten how to write since scripting the outstanding Patrick Troughton serial Fury from the Deep. But Pemberton obviously didn't have enough time to stitch these scenes together into a satisfying whole. An eerie description is followed by a slapdash bit that reduces it to nonsense (such as the deserted London streets suddenly being full of people just in time for them to be cut down during an attack). A dramatic confrontation is resolved offscreen. Things happen, but they don't necessarily lead to the next thing that happens. 

In short, Dr. Who and the Pescatons is a mess. It's reasonably well-produced, and Tom does a much better job with the material than it frankly deserves. But despite being a genuinely important piece of the series' history, it's of more value as a curiosity than as an entertainment.


Overall Rating: 2/10.


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