The Mystery of the Rings

The very last story in Journey through TIME is The Mystery of the Rings, which has a good but very posed picture of Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri. Also helping to capture the feeling of the TV era of the time, it begins with a scene of them arguing in the Tardis.

"This machine, Doctor," she said loudly. "It's done nothing but malfunction ever since I came aboard."

This transitions gradually into a step towards the plot as the Doctor tries to fix things.

"We'll have to take her down for a while so that I can spend some time on this. That'll be nice for you, won't it? You can have a wander round instead of having to watch me fiddle about, can't you?"

Naughty Doctor. The Tardis lands on

"Earth," said the Doctor, with satisfaction. "Strange, how this primitive planet draws one back again and again, isn't it? And almost your own modern times, too," he added, glancing out at the landscape. "At a rough guess, I'd say late seventies, wouldn't you?"
Peri sighed.

There's no need for the Doctor to call attention to the frequency of Earth visits, this was already obvious. The Doctor needs to go to the shops to buy a "small screwdriver" (sonic level unspecified). The manny who sells him a screwdriver acts suspicious of them.

"He doesn't seem at all friendly, does he?"
The Doctor grinned. "It's the old English custom of never accepting strangers," he said. "It happens everywhere; until you've lived somewhere for over thirty years, you're a newcomer and not particularly welcome."
"Well, thank goodness that doesn't happen in the States," said Peri with a snort. "We're civilised over there."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he said, dryly.

I notice that the writer makes Peri talk with British English spelling of words like "civilised".

I am confused as to what the point of this digression is, but it takes us almost a third of the way into the story and we have still not struck the plot yet. It is also immediately reversed when the manny comes back and is friendly to them giving them the exposition they need to get involved.

"Sorry to be a bit - well, stand-offish, you know - but we've been having a lot of strange folk round these parts lately."

To cut a long string of expositional dialogue short: strange folk = strange goings on = "The Rings" = a stone circle.

"You can count them three times or more, and never get the same answer twice."

That often happens to us cats; it is because we are not very good at counting. Having been brought up to speed on events, the Doctor can't wait to get cracking.

The Doctor nodded. "Well, how much do I owe you. Come on, Peri, we'd better get cracking."

This sudden haste may be due to the Doctor realising that they are already on page three of a six-page story. The Doctor and Peri go to the hill where the stone circle is. The Doctor decides that they can save time if he already knows what's going on.

"Well, what is it?" demanded Peri. "Space creatures or some-thing?"
"That's one way of putting it," said the Doctor grimly. "Aliens, if you want to be more accurate. I can't be precise as to their origin until I've seen them, but I would hazard a guess and say they're from Valiark, a small planet I've visited before."

Naturally their aim will be to invade, or "colonise", the Earth. For some reason Peri finds this hard to believe.

"Colonise the earth!" repeated Peri, laughing.
"That's the trouble with you young people today," exploded the Doctor. "You don't accept the truth for what it is even when it's staring you in the face!"

I can't decide if this story has terrible characterisation for the Doctor, or spot on characterisation for the Doctor as he was circa season 22. Sadly I must conclude it may be both.

At the standing stones there are mannys standing around, they have been hypno-eyesed. Inside the circle of stones are the aliens.

About a dozen forms were moving about inside the ring of stones. They were much, much larger than humans were, and their bodies were totally unlike anything she had ever seen before. They had no shape, no rigid lines - instead they were fluid, liquid almost, and they glowed with a silvery light. They were beautiful, so beautiful that they were almost repellent, and Peri felt her eyes drawn to them against her will.

This is a decent descriptive paragraph, but as an attempt to build an atmosphere it is too little and too late on in the story - we are already over halfway through. The Doctor saves Peri from being hypno-eyesed by slapping her on the hand to distract her.

Seeing them has confirmed to the Doctor that the aliens are from Valiark, although they have not yet adopted their final forms, and then they run away to hide from them. The aliens don't come out of the circle, and the Doctor deduces they have to stay within the boundary because of the magnetic field there. He plans to lure them out of the circle, hoping that breaking the magnetic field will destroy them. Hoping...

That will break the forcefield, and destroy the aliens. At least, it should do . . ."
"You mean you're not sure?"
"Well - almost sure. It's bound to do something, though, isn't it?"

The Doctor and Peri shout taunts at the aliens, confusing them and causing one of them to break their field. This frees the hypno-eyesed mannys and forces the aliens to adopt their true appearances.

Twisting her-self, she saw the aliens, their silver loveliness vanished as if it had never been. They were hideous, their faces grimacing and leering evilly, their bodies hunched and bent, the colour of putty. Then, even as she looked, they began to fade away, to dissolve into the air as though they were dreams.

The Doctor's plan worked, so all that remains before the Doctor and Peri return to the Tardis and leave is for there to be a joke about domestic violence.

"There's no point in staying to be thanked - they'll none of them have any idea what happened. Hypnosis works like that sometimes - especially if the subjects are weak enough. You were nearly under their influence yourself, weren't you?"

Peri glared at him. The Doctor laughed. "It's a good thing I was there to slap you out of it!" he said, and skipped neatly out of the way of her raised hand.

The Mystery of the Rings has an original idea for its alien invaders, conveyed quite well in a couple of places, but they are squandered in a poor story that is so thin it could have been half as long, or else spent its first half on building up atmosphere instead of on Tardis squabbling or whatever it was that was going on with the unfriendly-friendly manny in the village.

In its portrayal of the Doctor and Peri, as well as in its inability to live up to its premise in execution, The Mystery of the Rings is a typical example of mid-1980s Doctor Who. Likewise as the final story in Journey through TIME it is an average example of the standard of the stories I have read which, with a handful of notable exceptions, have been less good than they could have been.

Stay tuned for my concluding thoughts on the Doctor Who Books Project.