Doctor Who Countdown: "The Nameless City" and "The Spear of Destiny"

Since I never got around to reviewing the Second Doctor estory, and just read the Third Doctor one, I figure I'll review them together.

In February's story, written by Michael Scott, the TARDIS has broken down on Earth, and Two has sent Jamie out to buy mercury and Zyton-7 for the fluid links. On his way back, Jamie saves an old man from being mugged, and receives an old book as a present. The best thing about the beginning of this story is that it's one big inside joke for people familiar with the Classics: the old man calls himself Professor Thascalos.

The book turns out to be the Necronomicon, and it allows the TARDIS to be stolen by the Archons, eldritch abominations with remarkably good taste in music. And this good taste proves to be their downfall, since--no, I've said too much already.

The one thing that bothered me about this story was its depiction of the Doctor and Jamie's relationship. There's an expository passage that says Jamie wondered at first whether he was a demon, but since has "accepted the Doctor as his new clan chief" or something like that. To my ears, this makes Jamie sound primitive--more like K9 than even Leela. That was unnecessary. To explain their relationship to the uninitiated, all you have to do is write in some clinging--which Scott did not do. Not once in the text of this story do the Doctor and Jamie ever touch each other. I was perfectly fine imagining the clinging for myself, but it would be nice if it were official.

In this month's story, by Marcus Sedgwick, Three and Jo have been asked by UNIT to find the source of a temporal distortion. It turns out to be Gungnir, the spear owned by the Norse god Odin, which might also have been the Spear of Longinus. (I like that Sedgwick isn't afraid to play with Christian mythology right along side the Norse kind.) But guess who else wants the spear. I'll give you a minute. Consider that this is set between "The Three Doctors" and "The Green Death."

I'm going to assume you guessed right and move on. The early part of the story is full of jokes about the Doctor's clothing choices and his inability to pilot the TARDIS; but once he lands in Sweden, it's a nice comfortable Three story, with a couple of clever twists--though one of them is temporal grace, and I'm not sure what to think about that.

The scene where the Master (yep) pilots the Doctor's TARDIS stuck in my head for some reason. I want to know whether the TARDIS really does like the Master, or just accepted his control for this one trip because she knew it would take her to the Doctor. The weird thing was, this was no more descriptive than the rest of the piece, and yet it's more vivid to me than the running gag about the Doctor's cape. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go sit down and thing about this.