Inferno

Dear Gary—

“Without the TARDIS I feel rather lost; a stranger in a foreign land; a shipwrecked mariner.”

Not only is the Doctor adapting to a new persona, he is also struggling with these unfamiliar emotions of alienation and isolation. No wonder he has been a touch acerbic lately. Inferno is just the medicine he needs.

“Trouble seems to follow you, doesn’t it Doctor?” That’s what he needs, a little bit of trouble. Something that is familiar (“I’ve got a friend that specializes in trouble;” “If there’s trouble to be found the Doctor and Jamie can’t miss it;” trouble—the “spice of life” to the Doctor).

“Miss Shaw may have the misfortune to work for you, Brigadier; I am a free agent.” Still a bit prickly but toned down.

“Don’t you start asking me questions; just keep your eyes open and follow me.” Shades of Doctors past.

Slowly the Doctor is shaking off the sharp and bitter shackles that have been plaguing him and settling down into this fresh yet familiar character.

And what better way to do this than to run up against the thoroughly unlikeable Professor Stahlman. Anything the Doctor says or does is almost genial when compared to Stahlman; and we can’t help but wish to see Stahlman bested by the Doctor. Stahlman is over the top unpleasant; it kind of makes me wonder how he ever got government backing for his scheme of drilling down past the Earth’s crust for some hoped for but unproven new energy source.

The Doctor is not only reining in his condescension, but he is tempering his habitual dislike of computers: “Mind you, I’m not wild about computers myself, but they are a tool and if you have a tool it’s stupid not to use it.”

Trouble; Stahlman; these are the counterpoints the Doctor needs to play against to restore his balance.

Liz: “Supposing it doesn’t work?”

Doctor: “I’ll think of something . . . I hope.”

Smug arrogance is starting to melt away into more typical self confidence . . . with a dash of hesitancy.

And then, Gary . . . what genius. In tinkering with the TARDIS console to get it working again the Doctor slips “sideways in time” into a parallel space time continuum. Now he not only has the disagreeable Stahlman, but in this alternate universe he is face to face with a gun wielding Liz Shaw, a Mussolini like Brigadier (Brigade Leader), and a sadistic Benton. Just the right slap in the face the Doctor needs to finally snap him out of his foul temper.

He is no longer merely a shipwrecked mariner; he is marooned in a fascist nightmare without the comfort of TARDIS or friends and with no identity of his own.

“I don’t exist in your world,” he tells the Brigade Leader.

“Then you won’t feel the bullets when we shoot you.”

How cleverly cruel of the Brigade Leader. And I want to take this opportunity, Gary, to say how inspired this parallel world is. The actors are clearly having fun playing their evil twins; none more so than Nicholas Courtney. This blowhard braggart with flashes of temper and broad streaks of cowardice that Nicholas Courtney has created is brilliant; and then we see nuggets of the Brigadier shine through in the simple sly wit of, “Then you won’t feel the bullets when we shoot you.” This is the same man as the Brigadier after all, merely shaped by contrasting worlds and contrasting choices.

And the Doctor is the same Doctor, merely shaped by contrasting facades.

When the Doctor finally does return to his own reality he is comforted with the thought that free will exists after all; that there are infinity of worlds with infinity of choices. The TARDISless world into which he has been exiled is the direct result of his own choices. I hope, Gary, that this realization will put an end once and for all to the disturbing callousness I have noticed in the third Doctor.

That is not to say that the Doctor needs be always kind and gentle and understanding. He never has been just that and I hope never will. There has always been a touch of arrogance, of impertinence, of brusqueness to him regardless the generation; regardless the universe, alternate or otherwise.

And so when he says of the TARDIS console, “What did you expect—some kind of space rocket with batman at the controls?” I breathe a sigh of relief. And when he calls the Brigadier a “pompous, self opinionated idiot,” I can laugh along with the Brigadier and say, “The man’s so infernally touchy.” And when the Doctor’s hurried exit in a huff lands him in a garbage dump I know that the Doctor truly is the Doctor.

I’m sorry, Gary, that I haven’t said more about the story of Inferno itself.  As the Brigadier says, “Professor Stahlman seems determined to blow us all to kingdom come; the Doctor has vanished into thin air; and I have a number of unsolved murders on my hands; I promise you Miss Shaw I’m worried.” This neatly sums up the plot, but there are so many embellishments along the way and I’m worried that I’m running out of time and space to mention them all.

I can’t go, however, without mentioning the Doctor’s first use of Venusian karate (or aikido) in this story. He also mentions that his pulse is normal at 170. And finally we get the mention of the fact that a person cannot cross from one universe into his own parallel universe without causing a dimensional paradox resulting in a cosmic disaster.

The Doctor was able to get around this cosmic disaster because the alternate world he entered was not one in which he had any part (he didn’t exist in that world). But he could not bring alternate Liz or alternate Brigadier, or alternate Petra, or alternate Greg Sutton back with him to his own reality. He had to leave them to die as that world exploded around them. He could only go back to save his own world (and in the nick of time, too).

And so I take my leave, Gary, here in my own reality. I wonder if any reply will ever echo back from you own . . .