Franchise Familiariser: Traveller

If you’re looking into tabletop roleplaying games and want to move beyond the obvious recommendation of Dungeons & Dragons, and maybe laser cannons are more your jam than wizards casting fireball, there is at least one other very long-running candidate out there to consider: Traveller. The roleplaying game of space adventure in the distant future. But where are you travelling to? We’re here to fill you in on the franchise.

The Basics

Traveller is a science fiction, space opera franchise co-created by Marc Miller. The primary medium of the franchise is the tabletop roleplaying game, which was first published in 1977 by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) out of Illinois, of which Miller was the co-founder and owner along with fellow designers Frank Chadwick, Rich Banner and Loren Wiseman. Traveller was primarily developed by Miller, Chadwick, Wiseman and John Harshman.

Traveller was a smash hit on release in July 1977, perhaps helped by the release of a certain movie just seven weeks earlier that saw an explosion in demand for anything with spaceships, lasers and robots. Traveller also tapped into the nascent roleplaying market, where D&D was by far the most dominant game but was already being criticised for somewhat clunky rules. Traveller was revolutionary in its approach which eschewed multiple dice types for just using six-sided dies (d6s) and not using levels for character development, instead creating a robust skill system. Traveller also pioneered what would later be called the “Lifepath” system, where players generate their characters’ backstories, skills, aptitudes and relationships before the campaign itself begins. This was usually done in a pre-campaign special session, what we would now call “Session 0.” Though prep sessions for D&D were not unknown, Traveller arguably codified them as an integral part of the campaign. Famously (though somewhat exaggerated), the career system in Traveller could theoretically kill characters during character creation, leading to the game being dubbed the most hardcore and deadly roleplaying game around, though subsequent editions rolled back on this approach.

Traveller quickly became a mainstay of the TTRPG industry and one of its best-known games and constant sellers, and possibly the first TTRPG after D&D to crack a million sales. Its initial rules were extremely well-received, with a simple core concept which allowed for a huge amount of complexity in the form of rolling 2 six-sided dice, adding positive modifiers from skills, and trying to beat a target number depending on difficulty. This simple core had a very large number of modules built onto it through expansions, allowing for starship and robot construction, military operations and exploration (a nod at creating scenarios similar to Star Wars and Star Trek), planet and sector creation and so on. This system inspired the rules of various other games, including the official Star Wars roleplaying game from West End Games that came out in 1987, which was similarly d6-based.

The original version of the game is known as Classic Traveller and is identifiable from its minimalist plain black books with striking red text in the Optima font. The first three books were released in a boxed set to form the core rules system. The main books have no other artwork on the covers, and it was only later in the early 1980s that adventures started adding artwork to their covers. Classic Traveller ran for ten years, with a large number of sourcebooks and adventures published. GDW also encouraged third-party contributions, with numerous other companies and fans (individually or in groups) writing adventures and sourcebooks, some accepted as official canon. Famed TTRPG company FASA started life publishing Traveller adventures, for example, before they developed their own BattleTech aka MechWarrior universe, partially inspired by Traveller (especially the starmaps). Games Workshop also reprinted Traveller rulebooks for the UK market and created a range of miniatures for it, some of which were later repurposed for their Warhammer 40,000 game.

Sales of Traveller began to fall off in the late 1980s and the game was replaced by a new edition called MegaTraveller (1987), in which the Emperor of the Third Imperium is assassinated, triggering a rebellion and civil war. This era saw the publication of the first (and, to date, only) Traveller video roleplaying games, MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients (1991), for the PC, Amiga and Atari ST.

MegaTraveller was supplanted by Traveller: The New Era in 1993, which adopted a full-on post-apocalyptic setting with a powerful computer virus ravaging human technology. It was controversial amongst fans and the fanbase fractured after its release, with many small groups developing third-party material ending their development of the franchise.

Game Designers’ Workshop collapsed during The New Era and the rights reverted to Marc Miller. Marc Miller developed Marc Miller’s Traveller, better known as Traveller 4^th Edition or T4, for release in 1996. The game’s setting is “Milieu 0,” set during the founding of the Third Imperium and avoiding awkward questions about canon.

Steve Jackson Games licensed the setting to release GURPS Traveller in 1998, using their GURPS (General Universal Role-Playing System) rules, which is set in a parallel timeline where the fall of the Third Imperium never happened. This was followed by Traveller 20 or T20 in 2002, an adaptation of the setting and rules to the Dungeons & Dragons, 3^rd Edition (or D20) rules system. In 2006 GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars was released, which chronicled the first contact between the Terran Confederation and the First Imperium. Comstar Games also released Traveller Hero, using their own Hero rules system, in 2006.

Marc Miller developed his own newer version of the game, called Traveller 5, for release in 2013, with a revised edition in 2019. This version of the game is incredibly deep, complex and simulationist, with less of a focus on the established setting in favour of allowing the Referee to create their own setting. The rules are broadly compatible with Traveller, T4 and Mongoose Traveller and can be used to enhance a campaign using those rules.

The current mainline development of Traveller was taken over by Britain’s Mongoose Publishing in 2008. Mongoose Traveller (an informal name, the official name is just Traveller) became the most successful line since the original edition. In 2016 Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition was released with hugely updated production values. In 2022 this was superseded by Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition Update, a minor revision of 2^nd Edition with new rulebooks. This has become one of the most prolific and best-selling modern tabletop roleplaying games, with many dozens of supplements, adventures and rulebooks released.

In 2025 Marc Miller sold all remaining IP rights to the Traveller game to Mongoose, confirming their status as the official producers of all Traveller materials. Mongoose continue to develop Traveller, including the Fifth Frontier War sub-line.

For a more detailed look at the publication history of Traveller, please check out This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller by Shannon Appelcline.

MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMP:

Doctor Who: Season 15

The Doctor and Leela continue to explore time and space, but, after a series of unsatisfying adventures, the Doctor decides to return to Gallifrey on a clandestine mission of his own.

Seasons 12 through 14 arguably represent the "imperial period" of Classic Doctor Who's popularity, where it delivered certified banger after banger and many of the show's most revered stories were created. The stories were written by some of its best writers and featured the magisterial Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, along with the ultra-popular Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, the franchise's most enduring companion. Producer-showrunner Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes presided over this period of high-quality output, but the BBC was also inundated with complaints about the show becoming too scary for kids and too adult-leaning. Hinchcliffe decided to leave at the end of Season 14 and new showrunner Graham Williams had a mandate to bring back the show's warmth and humour, and maybe reduce the number of stories about, say, cracking the Doctor's skull open to replace his brain with that of a genocidal madman.

Things kick off with Horror of Fang Rock, which feels like it's just a continuation of the preceding era. The Edwardian setting, the focus of the lighthouse crew being stalked by a shapeshifting monster, and the general "classic horror movie" feel all feel like Hinchliffe is still around. The script by veteran writer Terrance Dicks, with Holmes still on board as editor, is responsible for keeping things on track. Managing to get four episodes out of a small lighthouse setting is impressive, and ably achieved by introducing new elements, new characters (via a shipwreck) and new capabilities for the invading alien force as the story proceeds. Louise Jameson also feels like she's settling in better as companion Leela, even if the writers still seem to occasionally struggle with a companion who's first response to danger is to confront it rather than run away and hide. Overall, a winner.

The Invisible Enemy follows that up by being one of the most unhinged stories in Doctor Who's canon. The opening, where the Doctor is possessed by an alien force and engages in a terrifying game of cat and mouse with Leela, is memorably creepy. The Fantastic Voyage stuff with clones of the Doctor and Leela going into the Doctor's body to eliminate the alien force is also good fun. It's the stuff between, with the alien shambolically taking over the medical space station, that is total guff, and the ending with the giant alien germ being guided around by his minions, may be among the funniest, least-threatening scenes in Doctor Who's history. In the middle we have the introduction of robot dog K9, who makes an immediate impression by shooting a guy in the groin (he was bad, so it was okay, I guess) and being sarcastic and unimpressed by the Doctor. Overall, a story that's probably worth watching only to see how absolutely bonkers it can be.

Image of the Fendahl is another location-limited story, with the Doctor and Leela confronting an alien skull that takes a bunch of scientists over in a priory. Having just had two stories where aliens can appear as other people and taken over people, this feels a bit redundant. The execution is fine, Wanda Ventham is a solid guest actor, but the plot is overly drawn out. The whole story is set in a single house and its grounds and writer Chris Boucher struggles to make the limited setting work as well as Horror of Fang Rock did (he immediately leaves the show after this, moving over to be script editor on Blake's 7, where he thrives). There's some creepy direction, but the final episode does descend into lots of running about and the Doctor spouting nonsense until he fully-expectedly wins. It's okay, but it's a bit Doctor Who-by-the-numbers.

The Sun Makers, on the other hand, is gloriously bananas. The script was basically written by Robert Holmes in an absolute fury over his tax bill, and unrestrained Holmes in full anger is a marvel. The Doctor and Leela arrive on Pluto, where the human race has been forcibly resettled to work off a debt to an alien race. People are taxed to live, eat and even die. The Doctor gets roped in when he stops a worker from committing suicide over having to pay his father's death tax (!) and is soon so enraged by the tax-collecting corporation that he happily agrees to set up a full-blown revolution.

Holmes's script isn't quite The Ark in Space or Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it is constantly witty, bristling with an undercurrent of vitriol. The cast is all on good form (even if the Doctor's motivations here are a bit lacking), especially Richard Leech as Gatherer Hade who delivers his insane platitudes to his superiors with aplomb. In fact, if you want a dictionary definition of "aplomb," Leech's performance is it. He is almost upstaged by Henry Woolf as his superior, the Collector, who comes across as Davros-from-Wish but plays it to the hilt, with his utter obsession with profit forecasts and achieving maximum business synergies (or whatever) even at the cost of thousands of lives, being genuinely repulsive. Everyone else struggles to compete, though there is a good turn by Michael Keating, soon to be immortalised as Vila in Blake's 7. Not Holmes's finest or subtlest hour, but this is a very entertaining story.

Underworld has an interesting idea, with the Doctor bumping into a bunch of Minyans, a race whom the Time Lords previously "uplifted" to greatness but inadvertently gave the tools to destroy themselves, leading to the Time Lord policy of noninterference in the affairs of other species. The Minyans therefore see the Doctor as a cursed god, a great idea that is abandoned after about one scene. The Minyans then arrive on a planet that has formed around a spacecraft they are chasing which holds the key to saving their species. There's a lot of running around in tunnels, rebels rebelling under the Doctor's tutelage (for all the Doctor's hatred of violence, he has no problem with other people doing it on his behalf) and a mad computer to cap it all off. There's a lot of interesting ideas here that aren't allowed to flower fully. The story also suffered severe budget limitations to the point where they couldn't afford proper sets, so instead built models and green-screened people into them. There are some scenes where this works really well, and some where it's a bit of a disaster.

Things are capped off by The Invasion of Time, where the Doctor arrives on Gallifrey and promptly goes bonkers, seizing control of the High Council and allowing aliens to invade for no apparent reason. Obviously there's a whole reason for it, but it's not a particularly good one. Then, unexpected Sontarans! The story is an overlong mess, but it's also oddly watchable. We don't go to Gallifrey all that often so it's interesting to see more of the Doctor's homeworld, even if it's all a bit underwhelming (the Time Lords get outfoxed by some very dumb aliens, and there's some Standard Primitives living like two miles from the city who are a problem but then not, as the plot demands). Season 15 was under huge budget problems due to the rampant inflation of the late 1970s (hence the Underworld issues), which leads to the bizarre sight of the deep interior of the TARDIS looking like a British hospital. We also have Leela leaving for no apparent reason, and the huge open-but-missed goal of not recruiting Hilary Ryan's splendid Time Lady engineer Rodan (after an initial bout of wet-blanketitis) as the replacement companion.

Season 15 (***½) is well-intentioned, with some good ideas, but is ultimately a bit of a letdown after the preceding three seasons. Horror of Fang Rock and The Sun Makers are highlights, but The Invisible Enemy is enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. Every other story can be summed up as "promising but underwhelming."

The season is available on DVD and limited edition Blu-Ray. The regular edition Blu-Ray should be out later this year. The season is also available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on various overseas streaming services.

• 15.1 - 15.4: Horror of Fang Rock (****½)
• 15.5 - 15.8: The Invisible Enemy (***)
• 15.9 - 15.12: Image of the Fendahl (***)
• 15.13 - 15.16: The Sun Makers (****)
• 15.17 - 15.18: Underworld (***)
• 15.19 - 15.24: The Invasion of Time (**½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

WARHAMMER: DAWN OF WAR IV announced

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV has been officially announced. The latest instalment in the venerable real-time strategy series will be released in 2026 on PC. It will also be the first game in the series not to be developed by Relic Entertainment, with instead King Art Games taking on development duties for publisher Deep Silver.

Despite the new team, the game will be steeped in the lore of the earlier titles. Once again you take control of the Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines and their Adeptus Mechanicus allies as they battle Orks and Necrons on the planet Kronus. Cyrus, a major character from Dawn of War II and its expansions, also returns as the commander of the Blood Ravens forces in this game. The game promises a return to the larger-scaled combat of the original title and its expansions, and promises an eyebrow-raising 70+ campaign missions spread across the four factions, whilst there will also be several multiplayer options.

Dawn of War was released in 2004 and was a smash hit success, praised for its detailed (and gory) combat animations, its cover system and replacing resource gathering with holding strategic points on the battlefield, forcing players to play aggressively rather than turtle in their base. The original game allowed players to play as the Blood Ravens, Eldar, Chaos and Orks (though only the Blood Ravens in the story-driven campaign mode). The game was expanded through three well-received expansions, Winter Assault (2005), Dark Crusade (2006) and Soulstorm (2008), which added strategic maps where players could plan their next assaults, as well as adding the Imperial Guard, Tau, Necrons, Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar factions.

Dawn of War was regarded as a major reason for the increase in popularity of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise in the United States, as well as renewed interest in the franchise in the UK and a boost for sales of the wargame and associated novels. Relic also used the same game engine to power their critically-acclaimed World War II series Company of Heroes, with its first entry released in 2006.

Dawn of War II was released in 2009 and was also successful, but the decision to move away from traditional real-time strategy stalwarts like base-building in favour of guiding a smaller group of tougher units around the map, with a stronger focus on cooldown abilities, was controversial. The initial release allowed players to play as the Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids. The expansions Chaos Rising (2010) and Retribution (2011) added the Chaos Space Marines and Imperial Guard factions. 

Dawn of War III was released in 2017 and was highly controversial, with an attempt to appeal to both the fans of the previous games meaning it fell between the two stools and was not regarded as a good RTS or a good hero-focused action game, although the expansion of the game's scale to accommodate Titan-class units was appreciated.

The series has recently returned to prominence with the release just last week of Dawn of War: Definitive Edition, which repackages the original game and its three expansions into one title, with (modestly) upgraded graphics and resolution, and compatibility with modern systems and enhanced options for modding.

First trailer for FALLOUT: Season 2 released

Amazon have released the first trailer for the second season of their Fallout TV series.

The trailer confirms the second season will be set in and around the city of New Vegas, Nevada, the same setting as the iconic 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas. The TV show will revisit some of the same locations and factions, including the Strip and the Lucky 38 casino, the robot Victor, the Novac dinosaur, the antagonistic Caesar's Legion and the enigmatic Mr. House, now played by The Leftovers' Justin Theroux. The show also hints at a civil war within the Brotherhood of Steel, the first show appearance for the Deathclaw (Fallout's most iconic monster), and even suggests that VATS - the PipBoy-generated targeting system which seems to slow down time to allow for better combat reactions - might be an in-universe thing (or it might just be really cool slowmo).

Fallout's second season debuts on Amazon Prime Video on 17 December this year. After the massive success of the first season, the show has already been renewed for a third season, presumably to follow in 2027.

Doctor Who: Season 14

The Doctor continues to travel in time and space, but an emergency summons from his homeworld of Gallifrey results in him having to travel home alone to confront an old nemesis.

Season 14 of Doctor Who aired from 1976 to 1977 and is the last of three seasons produced by Philip Hinchcliffe. Under the stewardship of Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, and impeccably led by Tom Baker, the series had acquired impressive critical results, with some of the highest-rated stores in the entire Who canon being made under their leadership, as well as excellent ratings. But the show had also attracted heavy criticism for leaving the kids behind and becoming too dark and adult. The show was relentlessly targeted by groups determined that the show should become safe, sanitised and predictable, something Hinchliffe and Holmes were not interested in.

The BBC was more minded to listen to the criticisms, though, and had to concede that Season 13's focus on horror had perhaps gone tad over the top for a show aimed at a family audience. Hinchliffe decided to leave at the end of Season 14, with Holmes likewise deciding to depart but he was asked to stay on into Season 15 to ease the transition. However, before they left, they clearly decided to give the complainers something to really complain about.

The season starts off relatively placidly, with The Masque of Mandragora, possibly one of the most forgotten-about stories in Doctor Who history. It's certainly not bad, but compared to the heavy hitters later in the season it's definitely flown under the radar. The story sees the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith inadvertently let the TARDIS be boarded by a hostile alien presence, the Mandragora Helix, which they unwittingly unleash in 15th Century San Marino. A guilty Doctor works to recapture the Helix whilst navigating political intrigue between Count Federico and his nephew Giuliano, whom he is trying to stop becoming the local Duke.

This is a reasonably good story, with some nice period detail. The serial was shot on location in Portmeirion, Wales (where The Prisoner was famously shot) where there were some buildings that at least looked the right ballpark for the time and region, which added a higher sense of production value, as did the superb costumes. The story itself is quite nicely executed, but the political scheming (despite riffing on Hamlet a lot) feels more interesting than the actual alien threat. I sometimes wonder if the story would have been better as a pure historical without the aliens. A good story without being too flashy. As a point of trivia, this is also the very first time - fourteen years into the show! - that someone asks how they can understand all the people they meet when they must be speaking wildly different languages.

The Hand of Fear starts off extremely dramatically: the Doctor and Sarah arrive in a quarry (an actual quarry for once, not one posing as a planet) and almost immediately get blown up in a construction accident. Sarah is possessed by a malevolent alien entity trying to regenerate its form from a single severed hand that landed on Earth millennia ago and storms into a nuclear power station to use its radiation to that end. This is a strong start that carries the story through most of its opening three episodes, with the sight of Sarah, wielding alien firepower, single-handedly storming a nuclear power plant being quite memorable ("ELDRAD MUST LIVE!"). The guest cast is compelling, and the prosthetics work for Judith Paris as the alien Eldrad is exceptional for the time.

Things drop off a cliff in the fourth episode, unfortunately, with the events on the alien homeworld being decidedly less interesting and Judith Paris' more skilled performance being replaced by Stephen Thorne's more bombastic and blustering one (revisiting his role as Omega in The Three Doctors). The resolution to the threat is also a bit ludicrous. This can be forgiven a little as they had to rush the end to the story to accommodate Elisabeth Sladen's decision to leave the show. Holmes outlined a loose ending which Tom Baker and Sladen disliked, so they rewrote it themselves to be more emotionally affecting. The normally magnificently aloof Baker gives one of his most emotional performances as he tries to get Sarah home and apparently succeeds (though, as we found out thirty years later, he was actually off by a few hundred miles), whilst Sarah's visible mixed feelings on going home versus continuing to adventure in time and space are well-sold by Sladen. Without this scene, the story would be a lot weaker.

The next story can only be described as a total gamechanger. The Deadly Assassin takes us back to Gallifrey, which we've visited very fleetingly before in The War Games and The Three Doctors, but never in this detail. The whole story takes place on Gallifrey and sees the Doctor return home and almost immediately be implicated in the assassination of the President of the High Council of Time Lords.

This is a remarkable story, first up for being the only Classic Doctor Who story where the Doctor has no companion for the whole story. There are some stories where he starts off with no companion but rapidly acquires one, but this is the only one where he has none at all, and this nearly continued for at least the rest of the season, but the writers found it so tough not being able to have the Doctor provide exposition to another character they changed their minds on that. It's also the story that rewrites our conception of the Time Lords, here presented as a stuffy, somewhat ossified species with unbelievable power but no will to use it, and instead consumed by their own internal concerns. It's also the story that establishes a lot of Time Lord iconography, including their costumes, ranks, government system, the Panopticon, the Matrix and the twelve-regeneration limit for Time Lords (something Steven Moffat didn't appreciate during his tenure when the Doctor hit the limit during his period in charge).

This is also the Doctor Who story - airing in 1976! - that adds its bit to the rise of the cyberpunk genre. The Time Lord computer system is identified as "the Matrix" and the Doctor interfaces with it through a VR simulation, eight years before Gibson. Doctor Who is rarely at the cutting edge of the latest science fiction subgenre, but here it was way ahead of the game.

The story hinges not just on an imperious performance by Tom Baker but an outstanding guest cast: Angus MacKay as Borusa (in the first of many appearances by the character), Bernard Horsfall as Chancellor Goth (probably the same Time Lord he played in The War Games), Erik Chitty as Engin and a splendid George Pravda as Castellan Spandrell, the Gallifreyan Poirot. We also have Peter Pratt becoming the second actor to play the Master, taking over from the sadly late Roger Delgado who passed away after Season 10 was filmed, delaying further appearances by the character. The Master's horrific visage, caused by a failed final regeneration, is a bit undercut by the prosthetics work being quite poor, but the idea of the Master, ravaged in agony, spending the last moments of his life trying to kill the Doctor and destroy Gallifrey, is appropriately evil. This is a great story that recontextualises a lot of what we know about the Doctor and his homeworld in a very entertaining way.

The Face of Evil, a disappointing and thankfully uncharacteristically mediocre script by future Blake's 7 showrunner Chris Boucher, drops the quality level significantly, although the idea - two descendant tribes of a crashed spaceship crew feuding with one another - is sound. The story tries to recapture the magic from the previous season's Planet of Evil, with a similarly impressive jungle set, but this set is less-successful, and they don't shoot it on film as much so it ends up looking cheaper. The central core threat of a mad computer system inadvertently driven insane by the Doctor during a prior visit which the Doctor barely remembers is also interesting, but under-explored, and not helped by the Tesh tribe being awful in both characterisation and costuming. That said, the story is buoyed to a high level by Louise Jameson's impressive performance as Leela, which is really above what the story deserves. It's unsurprising that the writers immediately decided to make her the new companion.

Boucher returns with The Robots of Death, an immensely superior script. The Doctor and Leela arrive on a massive sandcrawler where very rich miners try to keep their quality of life absurdly high by taking crazy risks, including crewing the crawler with a bunch of hyperintelligent robots who, surprise, rebel. More interesting is that some of the robots - which are all a marvellous design - have distinct personalities, goals and ideals, not all of them hostile. This is a story inspired a lot by classic science fiction, with a bunch of references to the works of Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl, and with some great pacing and characterisation, including a splendid guest turn by Pamela Salem (who will later return in Remembrance of the Daleks).

The story is let down a little by the story's descent into a fairly predictable pattern later on, and also by the higher-than-average bodycount, which the Doctor really doesn't seem to give much of a toss about. The Fourth Doctor disdains unnecessary death and destruction, but he also doesn't seem to be as remorseful as his predecessors or successors (excluding maybe Six) when a bunch of people die. The story also has a very abrupt ending, as if they almost had too much story for four episodes and had to cut hard.

The final story of the season is one of Doctor Who's most acclaimed moments, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It's easy to see why the story has gained the reputation it has. The production design is absolutely remarkable, the sets numerous and exquisite, the guest cast is on fire, Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are establishing a really interesting rapport, and Robert Holmes' script is witty, clever and accomplished.

The story essentially has the Fourth Doctor playing Sherlock Holmes, investigating the disappearance of a number of women in late Victorian London. He allies with the local police, gentleman doctor Professor Litefoot (Trevor Baxter) and showman Henry Jago (Christopher Benjamin). I get the impression that Holmes inadvertently let Litefoot and Jago take over the script, and the two actors rise to the occasion with two of the best guest turns in Who history (a spin-off TV show was even mooted, and eventually realised as an audio series for Big Finish). For a six-parter, the pacing is crisp and Holmes keeps inventing new ideas, plot twists and turns to make the story really sing.

Unfortunately, the story hits a bunch of stumbling blocks. A key one is that the experienced actor John Bennett has a spectacular turn as the villain Li He'sen Chang, but he is sidelined as the story goes on by Weng-Chiang, played by Michael Spice, a graduate of the Stephen Thorne School of Shouty Acting (not as good as the Brian Blessed one) and a vastly less compelling villain. There is also a problem with the story's requisite monster, a giant rat. The rat looks bloody awful, not quite Invasion of the Dinosaurs awful, but not far off. More annoying is that the rat is really extraneous to the story at hand and could have been disposed of without a problem.

There is also a bizarre problem here with the decision to cast a very English actor as a Chinese villain. Britain in the 1970s had plenty of actors of Chinese descent available to play the role, and Doctor Who had even previously gone down that route just five years before this story in The Mind of Evil, which used British-Asian and Hong Kong (then administered by Britain) actors to good effect

 (negating the traditional, "well, it was the style at the time" excuse). Using both yellowface and prosthetics to make the actor appear Chinese feels rather unnecessary, and only exacerbated because the character is not even the main villain of the story.

Finally, that issue of the Fourth Doctor appearing a bit uncaring about the titanic number of casualties in the previous story recurs here to an even larger decree: the Doctor cracks jokes about a guy who is basically murdered right in front of him. There's a thin line between having a more practical Doctor who shrugs off immediate crises to focus on resolving the situation, and one who appears uncaring and even cruel. Arguably this story crosses that line, even if only slightly.

Despite all of that, Talons is still a terrific story with an immense script which sees out the Philip Hinchcliffe era in style. It's hard to overemphasise how incredibly successful these three seasons have been, contributing at least seven stories that hold a claim to being the best Doctor Who stories of all time (The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Brain of Morbius, The Deadly Assassin, The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang; some also add The Seeds of Doom). Hinchcliffe would be a very hard act to follow, as Graham Williams discovered very quickly.

Season 14 of Doctor Who (****½) is a terrific success, with only The Face of Evil being slightly disappointing and that still being buoyed by a mighty performance by Louise Jameson. It's sad to see Sarah Jane leave, though she does at least depart with two great stories for her character, and Leela is a fascinating replacement, though one the show will struggle more and more to accommodate in future stories. But this season contains at least three of the best Doctor Who stories ever made, and the rest are not too shabby. An impressive season, but not one to watch with little children.

The season is available on DVD and Blu-Ray. The season is also available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on various overseas streaming services.

• 14.1 - 14.4: The Masque of Mandragora (****)
• 14.5 - 14.8: The Hand of Fear (***½)
• 14.9 - 14.12: The Deadly Assassin (*****)
• 14.13 - 14.16: The Face of Evil (***)
• 14.17 - 14.20: The Robots of Death (****½)
• 14.21 - 14.26: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (****½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

One night on stage in Toronto, famous actor Arthur Leander dies of a heart attack. The same evening, a deadly virus arrives in North America, spreading with unprecedented speed. Two decades later, a young actor who worked previously with Arthur is now a performer in the Travelling Symphony, performing Shakespeare whilst travelling a grand circle around Lake Michigan. When members of the Symphony disappear after visiting a town frightened by a figure known as "the prophet," events set in motion before and during the pandemic begin to converge.

Station Eleven was published in 2014 and has since been widely acclaimed, winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel in 2015 and being adapted as a well-received HBO mini-series.

The novel is unusual, given that it employs standard post-apocalyptic fiction tropes without seeming to be hugely interested in indulging them. The post-apocalyptic sequences hint several times at a capability to go all Walking Dead, overwrought-but-entertaining melodrama with absurdly larger-than-life villains, but Mandel avoids that cliche; she likewise avoids the temptation to go fully-stripped-back minimalism like The Road. Instead the story circles between and lands on an idea the novel itself notes was lifted from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager written by Ronald D. Moore: "survival is insufficient." It is not merely enough to survive a massive, world-changing traumatic event, life afterwards has to be worth living, through friendships and the creation and enjoyment of art and stories.

As a result the focus of the story is on Arthur Leander, a deeply flawed man who can't make relationships work and enjoys the trappings of fame too much, but who also suffers from constant imposter syndrome and fearing he is not as good an actor as people say he is. Mandel tries to make him a sympathetic human through his immense flaws, though how successful that is will vary by reader. Even when Leander is not on the page - which is quite a lot of the book as he dies on the opening page - his decisions continue to have an impact on the people he knew, and the impact of their actions on others. I must admit that Leander wasn't a particularly compelling character to me and I'd have much rather followed the story of Miranda, the author of the titular Station Eleven comic book whose surviving issues have an impact on several people in the post-apocalyptic timeline, but her story gets relatively short shrift. Given she gets a cameo appearance in the author's subsequent book, The Glass Hotel, I wonder if the author agreed.

Because of the trifurcated narrative, the book sometimes feels more like an anthology than a novel. We have several episodes from Arthur's life, either done in flashback from his POV or various friends and contacts (like Miranda), and several from the pandemic itself ravaging the world. These sequences are horrifying and well-done, but Mandel seems unwilling to dwell on the apocalypse itself, more on the before and after. We then get further episodes in the post-apocalyptic storyline, with Kirsten in the Travelling Symphony, and another friend of Arthur's as he is marooned at a remote airport and helps turn it into a new township, possibly the first new one to emerge after the pandemic.

All of these dispersed story elements come together at the end in a manner that is thematically satisfying, but highly coincidental. Maybe if the characters were unaware of their connections to Arthur, this idea would have worked as a piece of irony, but the fact that multiple people with this connection to Arthur all run into one another in this location twenty years later and remark on it risks feeling contrived. The other complaint about the novel, that despite the apocalyptic backdrop featuring the destruction of civilisation as we know it, it ends up feeling slight, was for me not a major problem. The book not descending into cliched conflicts between disparate groups of survivors was a major plus for me. We've seen that too many times before.

Station Eleven (****) is a fine, restrained novel about the creation, propagation and enjoyment of art, which just happens to feature an apocalyptic event to make that point more loudly. Mandel's prose is elegant, her character skills are fine. At just 330 pages in paperback despite a multi-pronged narrative with a large number of POV characters and three different timelines, it even occasionally feels a bit rushed, as if Mandel developed more plot points than she'd perhaps originally envisaged exploring. Still, an interesting, concise and mature novel.

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Foundation: Season 2

The Galactic Empire is showing some early signs of the decline prophesised by Hari Seldon and his science of psychohistory. Unnerved, the Genetic Triumvirate of the Cleon Dynasty plan to shore up their position by marrying Queen Sareth I of the Cloud Dominion, a powerful ally, and employing the formidable General Bel Riose to neutralise the Foundation, now resurgent as a religious force in the galaxy. Meanwhile, Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin find themselves working together with a copy of Hari Seldon's consciousness to fulfil a key part of his design: the establishment of a Second Foundation.

The first season of Apple TV+'s Foundation was a very qualified, partial success. The vfx, music and general atmosphere and mood were all very accomplished, as were the performances of Lee Pace, Terrence Mann, Cassian Bilton, Lou Llobell, Laura Birn and Jared Harris. The political intrigue and scheming on the Imperial capital world of Trantor was also very well-done, justifying the show's informal tagline of being "Game of Thrones in space." Unfortunately, the show's quality level dipped rather wildly whenever it returned to the storyline of Terminus, the Foundation and Salvor Hardin; the weakest part of Foundation was the actual bit about the Foundation and adapted (loosely) from Isaac Asimov's source material. Pacing was also problematic.

Season 2 picks up the baton by adapting, also loosely, the second novel of the original Foundation Trilogy, Foundation and Empire. However, the season benefits a great deal from having all of its disparate plot threads converge at the same point, meaning the season has a much greater sense of coherence and structure from the start. The addition of Ella-Rae Smith as Queen Sareth, Sandra Yi Sncindiver as Sareth's advisor Rue, and Ben Daniels as Bel Riose are all excellent. The show's conceit of having the same three actors playing not just the Emperor at different stages of life, but clones of them repeating across generations also allows Terrence Mann, Lee Pace and Cassian Bilton to effectively play new characters. The season also has a dramatically increased screen presence for Jared Harris, who's heavy use in the marketing and almost total absence from Season 1 felt a bit like bait-and-switch marketing. Harris is more present in Season 2 and has a more satisfying storyline.

The season builds to an impressively epic finale, though Asimov purists, probably more satisfied by a closer following of the book then the first up to this point, may end up spitting blood at a pretty major divergence from the events in the novels. Those less wedded to the original texts will find much to admire here with impressive dramatic and vfx set-pieces established with solid character arcs and intriguing politicking. It helps that the show is allowed to be a character drama rather than emphasising explosions and action. Pacing is also much-improved, though some of the events with the founding of the Second Foundation threaten to chug a little.

Foundation's second season (****) represents an impressive improvement over the first season, with stronger writing, dialogue and characterisation, although some minor flaws remain. But the show is on a pleasingly improved trajectory.

The season is available to watch on Apple TV+ now. A third season is currently airing on the same service.

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Doctor Who: Season 13

The Doctor has been called back to Earth by the Brigadier to investigate a new threat in Scotland, but his ties to Earth and UNIT are becoming stretched. The Doctor once again yearns to travel in time and space in search of mystery, adventure...and horror.

Season 13 of Doctor Who, airing from 1975 to 1976, marked another shift in tone. The last script commissioned in the Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks era was shot for this season and Philip Hinchliffe and Robert Holmes took over in full force. It's the first season where their vision of a show aimed at an older audience really kicks in, and it's the season that finally kills off the traditional "UNIT format" of the Doctor working alongside UNIT and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart on Earth that has dominated the show since Season 7. Season 12 began shutting down that format, and Season 13 finally ends it altogether. This season also marks a new format, still with 26 half-hour episodes, but now making up six stories, with only one six-parter and more four-parters. This makes things a bit snappier.

This is also, easily, Doctor Who's darkest and more horror-infused season to date (and possibly ever, though Season 14 is also in that conversation). Each of these stories is heavily inspired/influenced by a classic horror story, sometimes several, and it's no surprise this move was highly controversial, with the show taking heavy criticism from various viewers' groups concerned that the show had become too disturbing for children to watch.

Terror of the Zygons kicks us off with a story that's a huge amount of fun. We're in Scotland and local oil rigs are being attacked by an unknown force. The Doctor helps UNIT investigate, uncovering the threat of the alien Zygons, shapeshifters who can take on the form of humans. This is a bonkers story that has an absolute ton of crazy ideas (an alien posing as Harry, a cyborg Loch Ness Monster, organic alien technology), some very good prosthetics work and some very nice dialogue and characterisation, particularly of the Brigadier. It's not Doctor Who's subtlest hour and the Skarasen's stop-motion model shots are overly ambitious, but it's a fun story. It's also the effective end of the traditional UNIT era, and the last appearance of the Brigadier for over seven years. It's also the least horror-driven story of the season, though the shapeshifting aliens do recall Invasion of the Body-Snatchers.

Planet of Evil is a more direct homage to Forbidden Planet (itself a take on The Tempest, of course). The Doctor and Sarah arrive on a jungle planet with an invisible creature lurking in the jungle, a scientific expedition meddling with things they don't understand and a military back-up expedition about to arrive and complicate things further. The star of the show is the terrific alien jungle set, which the BBC loved so much they even let the team shoot a lot of it on film to make it look more convincing. Unfortunately, it goes a bit to waste as the second half of the story is mostly set on a spacecraft with some fairly nondescript visuals. The story has a lot of promise, but it's let down by the starship captain over-acting and the Doctor and Sarah having to spend about two-thirds of the story trying to prove their trustworthiness versus the blatant alien creature killing people. A shame as there's a lot of potential here, but it's a fun watch.

Pyramids of Mars has acquired a reputation of being almost unassailably superb over the years, and Russell T. Davies loved it so much he made a direct sequel to it in Series 14 of Modern Who. The main influence here is from every Egyptian and mummy-based horror story that came before it. The plot revolves around servants of the powerful alien Sutekh trying to free him from his prison which is powered by a structure on Mars. The story has a cracking pace with some fine acting from the likes of Michael Sheard, Bernard Archard and Gabriel Woolf, and some good action beats with a minimum of the "Doctor getting captured for half the story" shenanigans that have bogged down some recent serials. Sutekh is also a formidable, pitiless foe with an imposing presence. The late shift to a Crystal Maze-alike series of puzzles on Mars is a bit odd though, and feels like a close retread of Death to the Daleks (something that Sarah even notes in dialogue), with a rushed conclusion. Pyramids is still a very good story, but perhaps marginally overrated.

The Android Invasion is a Terry Nation story not to feature the Daleks, only his second script of that kind (after Season 1's The Keys of Marinus, twelve seasons earlier). Instead it opens with the Doctor and Sarah arriving in a rural English village which gets really weird, very quickly. There's a vague Wicker Man "cosy" horror angle here which is quite interesting, although the android duplicates risk feeling a bit too similar to Terror of the Zygons. There's one very clever plot twist, a lot of running around and some fun action scenes - including the Doctor memorably giving up on smart-arse dialogue or scientific exploration and just diving head-first through a window - but it feels like the story runs out of steam towards the end. The story is particularly disappointing as being a UNIT story lacking the Brigadier, and for being the final swansong of both Harry Sullivan and Benton (the latter bowing out having appeared in at least one story every season from Seasons 6 to 13, a formidable track record) but not really giving either character much interesting to do. Still, it's an entertaining story.

The Brain of Morbius goes full bonkers, riffing on Frankenstein but throwing enough curveballs to make it interesting. The Doctor and Sarah arrive on Karn, a planet near Gallifrey, where the scientist Solon (Philip Madoc) desperately seeks a humanoid head to house the brain of executed Time Lord criminal Morbius, whilst avoiding the wrath of the enigmatic Sisterhood of Karn. The barmy plot is offset by Philip Madoc's magnificently controlled performance as Solon and the effective, extremely weird vibe of the Sisterhood. But this is easily Doctor Who's most horrific story premise yet, with Solon waxing lyrical about cracking open the Doctor's skull and replacing his brain with Morbius', Sarah spending a chunk of the story blind, and a monster made out of the bits of other creatures. It's very effective but maybe let down a little by plot logic: why is the Doctor so quick to trust Solon again after he tries to crack his head open like an egg? And if the Sisterhood can peer inside Solon's lab to kidnap the Doctor, why can't they do the same to monitor his attempts to resurrect their foe Morbius? Still, very good stuff, especially Elisabeth Sladen's "blind acting" selling you on the absolute terror of her predicament.

The Seeds of Doom is our solitary six-parter for the season and it's clear that the writers decided to go overboard in trying to avert the normal pacing problems associated with long-haul stories. The first two episodes are effectively their own tale with the Doctor and Sarah visiting an isolated research base in the Antarctic where the discovery of alien pods in the permafrost naturally results in a horrific creature running amok. This is The Thing from Another World with a light dollop of Mountains of Madness thrown in for good measure. Eventually the threat, and thus the Doctor and Sarah, relocate to England where one of the alien pods is hatched out in the country retreat of the eccentric plant expert Harrison Chase, leading to further shenanigans.

It's all good fun, with a great guest turn from a pre-Only Fools & Horses John Challis, and a solid villainous turn from Tony Beckley as Harrison Chase. But it's definitely still a somewhat thin story, with the country house setting and tiny cast not really helping the latter four episodes with their pacing. It also tries to segue into being a UNIT story, but with no recurring UNIT characters available, that connection feels a bit unnecessary. It's clear the writers agreed, as this would become the last UNIT story of any kind until Season 26's Battlefield, a full thirteen seasons later.

Season 13 of Doctor Who (****½) is terrific viewing, with no real duds. When your weakest stories are still as enjoyable as Planet of Evil and The Android Invasion, and your strongest are of the quality of Pyramids of Mars, it's not really possible to complain. This is a very strong season of Doctor Who, even if the show is very clearly moving away from its original family-friendly vibe at a rate of knots, something that will only accelerate hard in the next season.

Some caveats with this season. The season is available on DVD and will be released later this year on Blu-Ray. The season is available on the BBC iPlayer and some other international streaming platforms, but due to a rights issue, Terror of the Zygons and The Seeds of Doom are both missing. I ended up buying those two stories on DVD and then watching iPlayer for the rest. When and if this problem will be rectified remains unclear.

• 13.1 - 13.4: Terror of the Zygons (****)
• 13.5 - 13.8: Planet of Evil (***½)
• 13.9 - 13.12: Pyramids of Mars (****½)
• 13.13 - 13.16: The Android Invasion (***½)
• 13.17 - 13.20: The Brain of Morbius (****½)
• 13.20 - 13.26: The Seeds of Doom (****)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.