Doctor Who: Daughter of the Gods

Although this is part of the partially narrated “Early Adventures” series, it has the unusual feature of being a multi-Doctor story. Featuring both the First and Second Doctors, the narration is provided by Wendy Padbury and Peter Purves, with each taking over as the relevant Doctor takes centre stage.

The background plot for this - a planet facing evacuation in the face of a hostile invasion - is almost irrelevant, although it does provide for action scenes and an appropriate threat to be overcome. More important, however, is the time paradox that allows the events to unfold as they do, one enhanced by the fact, from the First Doctor's perspective, this takes place between two stories that explicitly don't have a gap between them. Which is where the title character comes in.

The shortest-lived companion in the classic series is Katarina, who is barely introduced in The Myth Makers before being killed off less than a third of the way through the following story. Here, however, her role is pivotal, in an adventure that, from what we saw on TV could not have happened. Played here by Ajjaz Awad (Adrienne Hill having died in 1997) we not only get a strong portrayal of her personality, but she also has the chance to do rather more, allowing us to see an alternate history where she still has a future.

The strength of the story is partly in allowing characters to team up who never met in the TV show, but still work well together - Steven and Zoe on the one hand, and Jamie and Katarina on the other. But it's also in that poignancy of knowing Katarina's fate, where the strength of her innocent faith will eventually lead her, and the Doctor facing the moral dilemma of only being able to save her at the expense of changing his own history.

The story isn't perfect: the narrative sections can take away from the immediacy, and, as is often the case when they have so many lines to deliver, Hines and Purves are sometimes too identifiable as themselves when playing the Doctor. But, as a character study, both of the regulars and of one companion who had all too brief a tenure, it is high quality indeed.