Doctor Who: Season 17

The Doctor and his companion Romana are on the run from the evil Black Guardian, using a randomiser to make them impossible to track through space and time. Their journeys will take them both to Earth and new, alien worlds.

Season 17 of Doctor Who was arguably the show's most troubled since its start. The show was near the apex of its success - Season 17 features several of the highest ratings in the show's history - but was also chronically hit by economic woes, with rampant inflation demolishing the show's budget, or at least its buying power. Creatively, the show had a unique problem: new script editor Douglas Adams had just penned a science fiction radio series, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had blown up unexpectedly big and seen him commissioned to write a second radio series, a novelisation, a TV show, a possible movie version and, a year or two down the line, even a video game. Adams did his best not to let this distract him from the day job, but it resulted in him shouldering a very heavy workload.

The season also featured continued clashes between star Tom Baker and the creative team. Baker had a low opinion of "boring" scripts and would tend to adlib or even rewrite scripts on the fly. Adams, who was a huge fan of Baker's humour and got on well with him, was inclined to indulge this tendency, to the irritation of other writers and directors (Baker, notably, was more restrained in meddling with Adams's own scripts). The season's production was also afflicted by strikes, and Baker's romantic relationship with his costar Lalla Ward which could be sparky.

Things kick off with Destiny of the Daleks, in which the Doctor and Romana travel to Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks, and get caught up in a war between the Movellans and the Daleks, who are trying to rescue their creator Davros, despite his apparent extermination in Season 12's Genesis of the Daleks. The first episode is pretty good, high in tension and atmosphere, but drops off a cliff quickly. David Gooderson is fairly inert as Davros, a sharp drop-off from the magisterial Michael Wisher in Genesis, and the conflict between the Daleks and Movellans (who look like members of a pop band) is underwhelming in the extreme. The Dalek models, some of which are over sixteen years old by this point, are also looking decidedly ropey. There's some nice location filming and a couple of interesting plot reversals, but it's a rather underwhelming story (if not as bad as its rep) and a disappointing bowing-out moment for Terry Nation, arguably Who's most important writer.

Fortunately, things immediately reverse with City of Death. Co-written by Douglas Adams, Graham Williams and David Fisher, City of Death is sometimes cited as Doctor Who's greatest single story, which is probably pushing it a bit. But it is definitely up there. The script is almost unrelentingly witty, the actual location filming in Paris really gives the show a filmic quality it has never had before (and rarely will again, at least in the Classic era), and Julian Glover gives one of the all-time great Doctor Who villain performances as Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth. Even the model shots are high in quality. Endlessly quotable ("what a delightful butler, he's so violent,"), well-paced and with a cast all on maximum form, City of Death is easily the season highlight, if not the highlight of the last three seasons (and maybe the next three as well).

The Creature from the Pit is an interesting story, mainly for its outstanding cast, particularly Myra Frances as Lady Adrasta who gets the assignment and performs with total conviction (Eileen Way is also excellent). The story has a very nice twist which almost subverts your expectations of what a Doctor Who story is about, whilst also being quintessential Doctor Who, but I feel the twist is really propping up the whole story. Without it, the plot is quite thin, so it doesn't reward rewatches as much. The visual effects, especially of the titular creature, are also a bit weak (and unnecessarily phallic). A solid story but not one you're going to revisit a lot.

Nightmare of Eden has a pretty strong premise, with two ships that ram into one another in a hyperspace accident. The Doctor helps them out, only to discover a whole ton of weird alien lifeforms are on the ship as well. Some interesting ideas in the story (if a bit of influence from Carnival of Monsters) and some strong guest performances - David Daker delivering his second memorable guest turn after his role as Irongron in The Time Warrior - help enliven a story that doesn't quite have the legs for four episodes, along with the Mandrels being the cuddliest and least-threatening Doctor Who monster, possibly of all time.

The Horns of Nimon, for many years, was decried as the worst Classic Doctor Who story of them all, which is debatable. It's definitely not the show at its best, with a plot that borrows more than a bit from Greek mythology and the titular Nimon being rather underwhelming in appearance. The serial is more infamous for Graham Crowden's ludicrous performance as Soldeed, which is 150% pure turbopanto. If you're in the mood for the hammiest performance in Doctor Who history, the story can be very entertaining; if not, it's a bit of a dire slog.

Shada, the final story of the season, has acquired a hushed, legendary reputation in Doctor Who circles by dint of 50% of it not existing. The story was fully written and filming had begun, with extensive location shooting in Cambridge mostly completed and a studio session also finished, when an electrician's strike halted shooting in its tracks. Attempts to remount the story for the following season failed, leaving the story incomplete. After various attempts to remount the story, including an audio version featuring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor, and a video release with Tom Baker narrating the missing material, the BBC finally paid for animation to fill in the gaps, with the original voice cast returning to complete the script. Although the quality of the animation is...variable, this is the best solution for ensuring the story is completed in accordance with Douglas Adams' original intentions.

Once you get over the jarring shifts from live action to animation and back again, the story ends up being quite interesting. As an Adams script, it's inevitably witty and enjoyable. The guest cast is excellent, particularly Christopher Neame (whom some fans of this parish might recognise from his turn on Babylon 5's And the Sky Full of Stars fourteen years later), Denis Carey, Daniel Hill, Victoria Burgoyne and Gerald Campion. The plotting is a bit questionable in places - the Doctor convincing a computer that he's dead so should ignore orders to kill him is a joke drawn out for too long - and the pacing is definitely sluggish, with Adams not being best-represented in the six-part format. But still, it's a very solid story and a shame it was never finished to the original plan.

Season 17 (***½) is not as poor as its rep suggests. City of Death aside, these aren't the strongest scripts in Doctor Who history, but Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are on good form, and even where the scripts aren't the best, there's still some solid ideas being explored. It could be better, and the season is clearly compromised by budget issues in some places, but it ends up being firmly watchable.

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

• 17.1 - 17.4: Destiny of the Daleks (***)
• 17.5 - 17.8: City of Death (*****)
• 17.9 - 17.12: The Creature from the Pit (***½)
• 17.13 - 17.16: Nightmare of Eden (***)
• 17.17 - 17.20: The Horns of Nimon (**)
• 17.21 - 17.26: Shada (***½)

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House of the Dragon: Season 2

King Viserys Targaryen has died. He left instructions for his oldest child, Princess Rhaenyra, to inherit the Iron Throne. But Ser Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, has instead crowned his son as Aegon II. The realm is divided with almost half declaring for the Queen on Dragonstone and almost half for Aegon. Banners have been summoned and armies are forming. But this war will be bloody, for both sides are armed with dragons. Some are trying to halt the bloodshed with a negotiation, but others are seeking to profit from the chaos as much as possible. The Dance of the Dragons has begun.

Game of Thrones was the biggest TV show of the 2010s and also, easily, the biggest live-action fantasy television series of all time. The show stumbled hard at the end, though, and left behind a bitter taste for viewers. When HBO announced a prequel spin-off, they knew they would have to work hard to win back the fans disappointed by how Game of Thrones ended.

Against the odds, they succeeded. The first season of House of the Dragon was well-characterised with some great dialogue, brief but impressive action sequences, and some outstanding performances, particularly Paddy Considine's epic turn as King Viserys and Matt Smith as his brother, Prince Daeron, as well as Milly Alcock and Emma D'Arcy as Rhaenyra and Emily Carey and Olivia Cooke as her rival, Alicent. This was all great stuff, and established House of the Dragon as the clear fantasy successor to Game of Thrones, succeeding where Wheel of Time, Rings of Power and The Witcher had, to one extent or another, failed.

The reason for the success appears reasonable: whilst Game of Thrones struggled when it outpaced the books and did not have access to George R.R. Martin's source material any more, House of the Dragon had its entire storyline mapped out in Martin's 2018 tome Fire & Blood, with character motivations and arcs clearly established, and major action setpieces established. With a great cast, some strong writers who'd already established themselves in the first season, and some superb vfx designers (the dragons remain unmatched on the small screen), there was no reason to expect Season 2 to be anything other than a smash hit success.

Which is why it's a bit of a mystery why the second season is such a bizarre mess. Season 2 certainly has some great character moments to match anything in Season 1, some superb action scenes, some phenomenal vfx etc, but the pacing of the season has been hugely thrown off. Much of the season feels sluggish, with too many scenes of characters sitting around talking about the plot (again) rather than getting on with business. There's also a bizarre reluctance to embrace the fact that the war has started and cannot be stopped: Season 1 ended in such a way that should have left nobody in doubt that a full-scale conflict could not be avoided. Season 2, however, spends almost its entire length re-litigating about whether the war is inevitable and maybe there's a way to avoid it etc, which beggars all belief. The writers also seem to have realised that, following the book, they'd never have a scene with Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke verbally sparring ever again, so they introduce a surreal device where the two find ways to sneak into one another's strongholds for occasional hearts-to-hearts. It's genuinely bizarre and does not wreck a sense of disbelief as drive a four-ton truck right through the middle of it.

The writers also decided it was a great idea to have Matt Smith spend most of the season wandering around the "haunted" castle of Harrenhal having weird visions and strange exchanges with the locals. One episode of this might have been interesting, even fun, but when this extends into a third episode you might be wondering this was a good use of resources, such as one of your best and most expensive actors. There's also a bemusing obsession with trying to tie the events of House of the Dragon into those of Game of Thrones, through visions, dreams, prophecies, etc that just makes the show feel less confident in standing on its own two feet.

The season finally perks up with the fourth episode, where all hell breaks loose. The Battle of Rook's Rest is excellent, with a well-choreographed ground battle and a furious aerial engagement. Any fears that HBO's vfx department would not be able to deliver on the promise of dragon-on-dragon ultraviolence are laid to rest here. The battle and its plot ramifications are a major highlight of the season.

Any hope of the season turning the corner and becoming more compelling is quickly dispelled: Daemon continues to mess around at Harrenhal interminably, Rhaenyra and Alicent continue to come up with reasons not to, y'know, get on with the actual the war the story is about, and there's a whole lot of not very much going on . The season is not helped by the late HBO decision to reduce the episode count from ten to eight, with the writers' strike just starting. This meant that the production team couldn't do anything to compact the events into fewer episodes (usually ill-advised, but in this case it would have helped the season tremendously with pacing) and just had to cut off the final two scripts from the run and shunt them into Season 3 instead. This robs Season 2 of any kind of climax, it just stumbles to a halt.

There are other strengths to Season 2. Though he debuted at the end of Season 1 and showed some good promise, The Last Kingdom's Ewan Mitchell really nails the role of Prince Aemond and becomes a great addition to the show. Jefferson Hall's Tyland Lannister is also most entertaining and has more to do this season as a politician and diplomat. The acting throughout remains strong, even if the actors sometimes struggle to sell the more nonsensical plot twists.

Season 2 of House of the Dragon (***) is a deeply odd, dispirited convulsion of television. It retains many of the strengths of the first season, including great acting, vfx and casting, but the pacing and writing are all over the place. There's a lack of firm commitment to the fact this is a war, and despite the source material being complete and eminently filmable, there's a strange tendency to drift away from it at times in favour of contrived, less interesting "TV drama" moments. Game of Thrones and House are both at their very best when they resist being "ordinary TV" and it's odd this season makes such strides to try to become that. The battle sequence in the fourth episode is a huge highlight, though, and hopefully now all this additional scene-setting has been done, Season 3 can just cut loose with business and get the story going at last.

The season is available to watch on HBO and Max (and local equivalents) in much of the world, and Sky Atlantic and Now TV in the UK, alongside physical media releases. A third season of House of the Dragon is currently in production for release in late 2026.

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Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition

The planet Tartarus has come under heavy attack by the Orks, hard-pressing the planet's Imperial Guard defenders. The Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines arrives to reinforce the planet and carry the fight to the Ork forces, but with both the Eldar and Chaos Marines also playing a role in events on the planet, it is clear that more is going on behind the scenes...

Originally released in 2004, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War was an important milestone in the growing popularity of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was a major sales success, unusually for a real-time strategy game at a time when the genre had already started stagnating, and has been credited with helping boost the success of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, particularly in the United States, where it had previously been quite niche. The game was also hugely praised for its voice acting, graphics and particularly its characterful animations, with gory "finishing moves" for melee combat. Although I enjoyed the game, I wasn't keen on its brevity versus its price, a repeating issue with Relic Entertainment games (with just 11 missions and one faction playable in campaign mode, though this expands to four in multiplayer), and the slow drip-feed of content over the next four years. I also found the first expansion, Winter Assault, underwhelming enough that I never checked out the later two (Dark Crusade and Soulstorm). It also didn't help that Relic's Company of Heroes took ideas from Dawn of War and made many of them work much better in a World War II context.

Now Relic have taken a leaf out of the Age of Empires book - reasonable given their work on Age of Empires IV - and combined all of the content for the original Dawn of War and released it as a "definitive edition," with all of the game and expansion content and factions rolled into one package, moderately remastered. This isn't a comprehensive remake. The game looks a bit better than in 2004 with higher-resolution textures and a better draw distance, but it's mostly the same game with a slight shine added rather than a massive update. That said, it's a definite improvement and an easy recommendation if you are new to the game. Far more important is removing the original game's memory limitations, allowing it to scale much more nicely and appropriately with modern hardware rather than being limited to just a few gigs of memory. There are also some interesting new options, like being able to keep corpses on the battlefield rather than them disappearing over time, which makes the psychotic kill-count in some battles much clearer. These changes should also allow for more impressive mods to appear.

The Definitive Edition also handily removes a lot of the issues I had with the original game. This is now a big game taking about 50 hours for a full run-through of all four campaigns with a single faction (far more if you try to 100% it with every side), featuring no less than nine factions: the Blood Ravens Chapter of the Space Marines, the Orks, the Chaos Marines, the Eldar, the Imperial Guard, the Tau, the Necrons, the Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle, making multiplayer correspondingly more interesting. This is now a pleasingly chunky package as opposed to the anemic original release.

It's also a varied one, with each of the four titles having a different approach. The original Dawn of War is a linear, story-led campaign with you guiding the Blood Ravens under Captain Gabriel Angelos in the defence of Tartarus. At first the battle is a straightforward clash between the Space Marines and their Imperial Guard allies (not a full faction in the first game, but some units are playable in some missions) against the invading forces of the Orks. But soon the Eldar and the Chaos Marines both intervene, with all sides tracking a powerful artifact. There are plot twists and betrayals in the well voice-acted cutscenes, as well as the clash of forces on the battlefield and an a reluctant alliance of convenience between people whom in other circumstances would be mortal enemies. It's all good stuff, just a bit on the easy side even on higher difficulties, and far too short.

Winter Assault switches gears and sees a battle unfold for control of the planet Lorn V, fallen to Chaos, with the Imperial Guard tasked with reclaiming the planet for the Imperium, with some limited support from a small group of Ultramarines. The Eldar provide clandestine support from the shadows, hoping to use the humans to soak up the invading Chaos and Ork forces before revealing themselves. The twist here over the base game is that the story is divided into two distinct campaigns: Order and Disorder. Both campaigns see the factions forced into an uneasy alliance (Elder/Imperial Guard and Chaos/Orks), with the player having the freedom to choose which faction within each alliance will gain the upper hand. This is a clever way of making the most out of limited assets, as there's only a handful of maps. The game's structure allows you to revisit each map with different factions and alliances doing different things. Having said that, it's still a very short game, and the only Dawn of War title not to have any presence from the Blood Ravens, making it feel separate from the rest of the canon.

Dark Crusade throws a huge curveball into the mix. There is no linear, story-led campaign here at all. Instead, there is a strategic map of the planet Kronus, when multiple armies fighting for it. You tell your forces where to attack next, with each province of the planet providing different bonuses and abilities. Seize the planetary starport and you can mount assaults anywhere on the planet rather then the immediately adjacent provinces. Seize an industrial region and you start your battles with more resources. It's not exactly Total War - what to do in each province is pretty limited - but it does offer some interesting choices and some of the most challenging battles of the entire collection. The main problems with it are a lack of exposition on what's going on with the strategic map and how to play optimally, and the baffling absence of any kind of autosave. You have to manually save regularly or lose progress, no matter how many battles you win. It's barmy nonsense. It also doesn't help that the game doesn't explain the "Honour Guard" mechanic, which is the key to winning some of the endgame, ultra-hard battles. The expansion does add the Necrons (always a hard species to balance correctly) and Tau into the mix, and does a good job with them.

Soulstorm is where it feels like the wheels have come off the game a bit. It's basically Dark Crusade II, though for some reason it looks a lot worse (the attractive strategy map of Dark Crusade has been replaced by something much more primitive and ugly here). It looks bigger, as it unfolds over three planets and several moons, but the provinces are just bigger and scattered over the various worlds instead. The game adds the Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle to the mix but I'm not sure if they were playtested, as their balance feels a bit off. The game is also odder in that it's generally more straightforward and easier than Dark Crusade, but the last couple of factions you have to eliminate will have built up so much strength that in order to defeat them, it becomes a bit of a joyless slog. Soulstorm also - utterly nonsensically - doesn't keep structures from previous missions in the same province in place (unlike Dark Crusade). I'm assuming this is because in Dark Crusade it was a viable strategy to take every strategic point on every map and hugely fortify it before assaulting the enemy base and ending the mission, making it almost impossible for the enemy to actually win counterattack missions. But it's otherwise illogical why all the infrastructure you spent ages building up in a region are missing just five minutes later. Soulstorm also has very little story (even less than Dark Crusade) and plays even less lip service than Crusade as to why the Space Marines, Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard are fighting one another. Soulstorm is the weakest link here, even if moving your armies around to conquer territories and paint the map your colour retains some appeal.

The core appeal of the game remains intact. Sending scout forces out early to secure territory to gain enough recruitment points to form a huge army that then assaults the enemy position never gets old, resulting in a constant tension between attacking, defending, capturing and consolidating. Get the timing of your attack wrong and you will pay a heavy price. Animations remain among the best-in-class, and the polish-up from this remaster allows the game to remain visually pleasing whilst also being playable on a potato. The combination of the four titles into one gives it enough heft to be worth the reasonable asking price, without even counting the possibility of mods and multiplayer.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Definitive Edition (****) is, indeed, the definitive edition of the game. There's probably not enough of a change here to justify the purchase for established veterans who already own all the content, but for newcomers or maybe those who got the original game but skipped the expansions, this an enjoyable experience. The game is available now for PC.

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

Wheel World

The world is in danger. The ancient cycling spirits hold the key to salvation, but their legendary bicycle parts have been scattered through the world. A skilled young cyclist, Kat, is recruited to help find the parts and restore the world's balance.

Wheel World is a game with a odd setup and storyline. It's basically a bicycle racing game in an open world where you are guided to objectives by a sentient floating skull (as you do). The use of the supernatural plot to explain why you're taking part in a lot of cycling races is unconventional, but interesting. Would Forza Horizon be improved if there was a metaplot explaining you're working for the God of Drivers in order to save the world by winning races? Probably. It certainly gives Wheel World a unique flair even if it's weird.

The game is set in a moderately-sized open world divided into zones which you can cycle across. You have to defeat several "boss" cyclists in order to claim their legendary parts, but you can only challenge the bosses once you have built up enough Rep to do so. You gain Rep by winning races, finding collectibles and pulling off tricks. You can also upgrade your bike to be faster, more durable, better at cornering or capable of faster acceleration (but not all at the same time), which makes winning races and building rep easier.

The game has a gorgeous, somewhat cel-shaded art style that is always very entertaining to cycle through (and refreshingly undemanding on hardware). The controls are pretty responsive, and the different upgrades make your bike handle convincingly differently. This isn't a hardcore bike physics simulator, so there aren't tons of complicated things to understand about the upgrades and physics (the game is fairly forgiving on things like crashes), and you can wing it to an extent. You also don't need to do every race, or get 100% on every race, to get enough Rep to challenge the bosses.

There is no reason not to do that though. Going for a completionist, 100% approach to the game will only take you around 12 hours. Speed-running the main story path will take around half that. The completionist approach, where you have to find hidden words on each race course, will also take you to more corners of the map than just running through the essential races as fast as possible.

The worldbuilding is interesting, though thin: this is a world where cars exist, but the bicycle is still king, and people are revered for their cycling skills over all other forms of achievement. The first land you visit is all beautiful countryside, verdant fields, picturesque villages and one sizeable-but-pleasant town. A later city you visit is polluted, messy and squalid, a hint of what will come to the whole land unless you prevail. I would say the later city is a less interesting location, with twistier, tighter courses that are not as fun to explore, and a general downer vibe at odds with the sunny opening. It's not a major problem - this is still a fairly short game - but it does slightly mar the experience. The final section is also odd, taking place in a very large area but where there's not much to do, making it feel like the developers ran out of time.

Still, it's hard to argue with the game. Wheel World (****) is short and focused, has a great art style, a nice soundtrack, is relatively chill and overcoming weaknesses to win the races is fun. The game is relatively cheap, doesn't outstay its welcome and is genuinely amusing in places. A recommended palate cleanser between longer games. The game available now for PC, PS5 and Xbox X/S.

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Pinnacle Entertainment launches DEADLANDS: THE DARK AGES Kickstarter

Veteran roleplaying company Pinnacle Entertainment has launched its Kickstarter campaign for Deadlands: The Dark Ages, the latest spin-off from its popular Deadlands roleplaying game.

Deadlands, a horror-steampunk-Western, was created by Shane Hensley and released through Pinnacle Entertainment way back in 1996. The original version of the game, which expanded over thirty sourcebooks, a mild revised edition in 1999 and spin-off miniatures game The Great Rail Wars, was hugely successful, popular and critically-acclaimed. In 2001 the company pivoted with Deadlands d20, a version of the game using the same rules as Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. This was monstrously unpopular, and the commercial failure of the game almost drove Pinnacle out of business.

They made a comeback several years later by using the streamlined version of the Deadlands rules from Great Rail Wars to launch Savage Worlds, a generic or universal rules set that could be applied to any kind of setting, from space opera to epic fantasy to steampunk to historical. The game was a big success and in 2006 they released Deadlands Reloaded, a revised version of the game acting as a setting for Savage Worlds. This was also highly successful. In 2018 they released the revised Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) and in 2021 released Deadlands: The Weird West, the current version of the setting.

Deadlands postulates a break from established history during the American Civil War. At the Battle of Gettysburg, the hordes of dead soldiers come back to life and start spreading across the country. Shortly thereafter, a huge earthquake destroys most of California. In the ruins prospectors find "ghost rock," an unusual substance that triggers both a "ghost rock rush" and huge leaps forward in technology, particularly for the way it supercharges steam technology. Supernatural creatures start appearing across the continent (and, it's at least hinted, the world). Magic suddenly becomes real. The result is a setting that resembles the real Wild West, but one in which magic and steampunk technology also coexists. The setting can be described as a Western meets Lovecraft meets The Difference Engine. The setting is noted for its huge tonal variation (it can move from adventure to horror to comedy) and its well-described array of factions and personalities.

The original game spawned several spin-offs. Deadlands: Hell on Earth is set in the post-apocalyptic future, asking what happens if the forces of evil win and reduce the Earth to a "deadland," a world of fear and despair. The vibe here is more Mad Max. Deadlands: Lost Colony is set in space, on a colony planet settled before the Reckoning took place on Earth. Deadlands Noir is set in an alternate, possible 1930s where the focus is more on gumshoe detectives in the back-alleys of places like Chicago and New York, and the forces of evil have to be much quieter and more subtle.

Deadlands: The Dark Ages is both a prequel and sequel to Deadlands, set in 877 on the island of Britain. Morgan le Fay has been retroactively resurrected thanks to events in the mainline Deadlands setting, a thousand years further in the future. Her return changes history (which may or may not result in ramifications in the extant Deadlands settings), but it also spawns opposition, namely the return of Merlin with the goal of stopping her schemes. He recruits bold adventurers to help take down Morgan and return history to the right path (more or less), whilst they also have to fend with issues such as Danish invaders and civil insurrection.

The Dark Ages range will launch with a core rulebook, a graphic novel called Merlin's Champions, the Accessories Box including dice, bennies, tokens, archetype cards, action cards, maps and some 3D terrain. The Cursed Village set adds more terrain, enough to build a full village (cannily, the 3D terrain can be repurposed easily for other roleplaying games). Optional accessories include metal dice and item cards. There are an array of options for physical products and PDFs (and both).

The Dark Ages Kickstarter has already hit its goal, with additional stretch goals expected. The campaign will run until 4 October.

Foundation: Season 3

The Galactic Empire continues its long-expected decline. Thousands of star systems have declared independence or joined the Foundation. But the Foundation itself is divided, with the Traders demanding more and more autonomy and power, and faith in the Seldon Plan is not as absolute as it once was. The arrival of the Mule, a powerful warlord with mentalic abilities, triggers the awakening of Gaal Dornick from her long cryo-slumber, and pitches the galaxy into chaos.

The central conceit of the Foundation storyline is that it is about the impending fall of the Galactic Empire, with the Foundation carrying the hope of humanity across a potential millennia of decline and barbarism before civilised order returns. But the Empire, or at least a shadow of it, chugs along through the early part of the story. The actual "fall" doesn't happen until surprisingly near the end of Asimov's original Foundation Trilogy.

Apple TV's adaptation chronicles that fall in the third and (apparently) fourth seasons of its run. We're now adapting the latter part of the second novel in the trilogy, Foundation and Empire, and the early part of the third, Second Foundation. The Mule has arrived and upset the delicate balance of power between the Foundation and the Empire, enough for the two old rivals to consider joining forces against him. Hari Seldon and Gaal Dornick secretly established a Second Foundation to guide the first from behind the scenes and account for unpredictable variables in the Seldon Plan, but this can only succeed with absolute secrecy, which is compromised by the Mule and his formidable powers. Meanwhile, back on Trantor the Cleonic Dynastic is becoming more unstable; this particular Brother Dusk is very reluctant to cede power and go into the night; Brother Day has abrogated all sense of responsibility, content to live out live in a dissolute life of languid boredom; and Brother Dawn is ambitious, smart and fair-minded, but inexperienced, and whose eagerness to act is as much a weakness as it is boon.

Multiple storylines evolve, taking in New Terminus, Trantor, the Second Foundation, Demerzel, the backstory of the Robot Rebellion and more, anchored on the firmer foundations (ha) of the first two seasons, which had rocky moments but eventually evolved into a solid space opera series. Season 3 has all the ingredients to become the best season so far, simply because it's adapting the most compelling part of Asimov's saga: the struggle between the Foundation(s) and the Mule. Pilou Asbæk plays the Mule with scene-chewing relish, building on his form from shows like 1864 and Game of Thrones, but really the whole cast is on good form this season. Newcomers Synnøve Karlsen and Cody Fern have a tough job playing superficial socialite-influencers, but both show solid chops as their characters reluctantly become agents in the struggle between the Foundation and the Mule. Cassian Bilton also has a great time playing a more measured and competent version of Brother Dawn than we have seen previously.

There's also a whole lot more action. Planets are conquered, space fleets do battle, stars burn, and massive superweapons unleash destruction on a vast scale. The fall of the Empire takes place mostly off-page in Asimov's novels, but here it's shown in its full, terrible, technicolour expanse. Or at least partly, as this storyline is allowed to unfold across two seasons.

I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea. The pacing early in the season is very good but it drops off in the latter. Brother Day (an under-served Lee Pace) spends a lot of time wandering around Trantor's weird underworld of cults, and trying to make an amnesiac person remember something that they're clearly never going to. There seem to be excuses to tread water in a lot of storylines rather than get on with business. They could have easily wrapped up the Mule story here, but given the appeal of the saga, they decided to split it across two full seasons instead. I understand the commercial reasons why, but it doesn't help the pacing (recalling that the books in the original Foundation Trilogy are very slim volumes indeed). The writers do alleviate this as they have been given permission to use references to the Robots novels by Asimov (the rights to which are held by Warner Brothers, who are apparently planning a more faithful adaptation of that saga than the Will Smith movie) for the first time, so can discuss the Laws of Robotics, Daneel etc, allowing them to fill in some awkward blanks in the backstory.

As usual, fidelity to the source material is a constant source of discussion among watchers. Season 3 is much closer to the books than arguably any season before it, but also deviates in some big ways, including one late plot twist that feels like it's doing something different for the sake of being different to the books, rather than because it's logical. Season 4 will have to do the heavy lifting on making that plot twist make sense as I'm not sure this season does a good job of it.

Pacing issues and some questionable plot points undercut a terrific sense of action and good characterisation, meaning that Season 3 of Foundation (****) never quite fulfils its potential, and has to settle for merely being pretty decent rather than outstanding.

The season is available to watch on Apple TV+ now. A fourth season, with a different showrunner and a significant budget cut, has been greenlit to enter production early next year.

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Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Conman Moist von Lipwig is sentenced to death-by-hanging, but is saved at the last second by Ankh-Morpork's Patrician, who then tasks him with resurrecting the Post Office (this passes for a career path on Discworld). Moist finds his task complicated by a tiny staff, a headquarters overrun by decades' worth of undelivered mail, and competition from the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, who can send a message across the entire continent in the time it takes a mailman to have his first cuppa of the day. It falls to Moist, several golems and a very punctual cat to save the Post Office and restore a decrepit Ankh-Morpork institution to greatness. Or something adjacent to it, anyway.  

Going Postal, the thirty-third Discworld novel, is a super red-hot, contemporary piece of timely fiction. It's Sir Terry Pratchett's exploration of zeitgeisty ideas like late-stage capitalism and ensh!tt!f!cat!on, the way a beautiful and amazingly convenient idea/business is taken over the money people and the product is made ten times worse in the relentless pursuit of extra profit, and any attempt to compete with it is ruthlessly crushed by lawyers or the competition just being bought out.

Of course, Pratchett had no truck with the linear progression of time, hence this hugely topical piece of modern metafiction actually came out in 2004, which may indicate that Pratchett was a peerless seer of the future or he was just engaging with constant truths of human nature.

Most book series, let alone fantasy book series, struggle when they're thirty-three volumes deep. The author can be forgiven for phoning things in, settling back on their laurels or employing thinly-veiled cover versions of their earlier character and storylines and collecting the cheque. After teetering a little on the precipice of that in the mid-twenties of the novels, Pratchett decided to go the more difficult route of challenging himself with new characters and new audiences, such as the YA focus of the Tiffany Aching sub-series. Going Postal appears to be familiar, with the story once again exploring the introduction of a real life concept to the fantasy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and the resulting mayhem (one of the oldest standby plots in the series), but it's got a much sharper bite than some of the earlier novels in the same vein, and the protagonist - an unrepentant conman and charlatan - is a bit darker than Pratchett's norm. Pratchett's protagonists are sometimes well-meaning bumblers who end up becoming heroes reluctantly, or older, more established, overly-cynical veterans who are dragged back into being in the thick of events, or hyper-competent people constantly bewildered by the incompetence of everyone else in the world. Moist von Lipwig is different, and maybe a bit more challenging than most of Pratchett's characters, being a lot more selfish and less sympathetic.

This all combines to make Going Postal feel incredibly familiar and quite new and fresh, which is an impressive achievement. The book also makes a statement by starting with a bang and just keeps going, with Moist plucked from certain death into uncertain-death-by-tedious-bureaucracy and the story moving like a freight train, despite its (by Pratchettian standards) generous 470+ page count. We get cameos by the City Watch and Unseen University wizards, but for once they don't take over the book. We also get a bit more of Patrician Vetinari than normal, and more insights into how Vetinari keeps the messy engine of the city running without going stark raving mad. The semaphore towers - the "clacks" - have been a key part of the background worldbuilding for quite a few novels now but here take front and centre, with plenty of exploration of how the service works and its own arcane customs (like the memories of deceased tower operators kept alive in the network, zooming back and forth along the network).

Pratchett packs a lot in, including further exploration of the golems and a potential romance between Moist and the chain-smoking Adora Bell Dearheart. Maybe even too much: the romance doesn't get a huge amount of development and he seems to lose a little bit of the thread with what to do with the villain at the end, who first appears to being set up as an ongoing antagonist to Moist but Pratchett seems to change his mind at the last minute.

But it's hard to argue with the results. Going Postal (****½) manages to feel safe and edgy at the same time, bringing in ideas both new and old and unfolding with some vigour. Pratchett is on fine form here, and with Moist von Lipwig he has created a compelling new protagonist whom you'll look forwards to seeing again.

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Doctor Who: Season 16 - The Key to Time

The Doctor and his new companion Romana, a fellow Time Lord, are summoned to a meeting with the powerful White Guardian and is given a tremendous task: to track down the six missing pieces to the Key to Time, one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe. Their quest will take them across all of time and space, but also into a confrontation with the sinister Black Guardian.

Season 15 of Doctor Who was a bit of a mixed bag, as new showrunner Graham Williams struggled to meet the BBC's mandate to remove the horror from the show that had attracted significant complaints without completely gutting the show of its tension as well. The result was probably the most variable season of the show since the black and white era, if not ever.

For Season 16 (airing from 1978 to 1979), Williams decided to take a different tact by giving the season a much more serialised arc than normal. Whilst Seasons 8 and 12 had explored loose story arcs, the first about the Master and the second about the team being separated from the TARDIS and having to explore time and space by other means, Season 16 was going to have a more focused arc and even its own special subtitle: The Key to Time. In the event the arc ends up being a bit of a nothingburger. Aside from a bit at the start and end of each story (where some artifact, usually disconnected from the rest of the story, ends up being the Key) the arc might as well not exist, with only the end of the final story really dwelling on the Key and its powers.

The season kicks off with The Ribos Operation, by arguably the show's greatest writer, Robert Holmes. Holmes is no longer script editor, but it's clear new script editor Anthony Read knows better than to mess with a winning formula. We once again get some top-notch worldbuilding, very fine dialogue and the usual assortment of much-better-than-normal guest characters. The setting, a medieval ice planet where the people are unaware of the existence of space travel but the planet's location and resources mean a lot of aliens are undercover there at any one time, is ingenious and the plotting is pretty good, though even Holmes struggles with the "Episode 3 is mostly spent wandering around catacombs" problem, here enhanced by the "the Doctor calls in K9 and wins instantly" syndrome. Mary Tamm makes a positive first impression as new companion Romana, and it's entertaining to see the Doctor having a companion who is as smart as he is and can pilot the TARDIS as well (if not better), but is inexperienced.

The second story, The Pirate Planet, feels like it should be more momentous, as it's the first Doctor Who contribution by legendary British comic SF writer Douglas Adams. Adams had already written his famed radio serial The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy when he started work on Who and some of that humour can be found here. Adams is also clearly not one to let a good idea just be used once, as some elements of the Hitch-Hiker's series show up here with only slight modifications. The Pirate Planet isn't quite on the Hitch-Hiker's level, possibly as Williams' directive for this season was "less humour" after the previous season's Invasion of Time attracted massive complaints for being too silly. The story bounces along quite nicely and there's some good performances, but Bruce Purchase's over-the-top performance as the Pirate Captain is divisive (even if a late plot twist turns him into a much more interesting character than his earlier bombast suggests).

The third story, The Stones of Blood, is the only story this season to take place on Earth. With its invoking of standing stones and druidic ceremonies, the story recalls The Dæmons but lacks that story's warmth and banter (though it also treats its main companion much better). It's still a solid script, even if Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Rumford not only steals every scene she's in from Tom Baker (to the point where even he seems impressed) but his lunch money along with it. The story does an odd thing of completely shifting setting and tone in its final episode which a lot of people seem to hate, but I found quite intriguing, with the alien Megara (who feel like they've just teleported in from an episode of Futurama) proving to be quite amusing.

The fourth tale, The Androids of Tara, takes up to a weird alien planet where humans work alongside androids in a feudal society with kings and ceremonies, but also electric weapons. The story never really explains this oddness, and is rather stronger for it, with lots of political intrigue, scheming, insinuating and sword fights. Aside from the obvious inspiration of The Prisoner of Zenda, the story also benefits from its small stakes (the fate of the universe/galaxy/planet is not hanging in the balance) and the amusing inversion of finding the next part of the Key to Time immediately but the rest of the story is basically how the Doctor and Romana can extricate themselves from the chaos. It's also the strongest showcase for Mary Tamm, who has multiple parts to play and does so marvellously.

The penultimate part of the saga, The Power of Kroll, is the weakest, though still entertaining. The Doctor and Romana arrive on the third moon of Delta Magna where they run into a conflict between the owners of a methane refinery and the indigenous population. Complicating matters is the apparent return of the natives' god, a mile-wide squid called Kroll. Cue lots of running around as the Doctor has to mediate between the two sides, manage a gun-running rogue agent, find the next part of the Key to Time and avoid being killed by the gargantuan megasquid. As a Robert Holmes joint, the script is better than the story and premise deserves, with again some nice worldbuilding and some good dialogue, but Holmes was held back by the directive to include a really massive monster. The story also has a better guest cast than it deserves, especially Philip Madoc (from The War Games and The Brain of Morbius) and John Abineri (whose performance is compromised by the green paint he has to wear). The real star of the episode is the expansive location filming along the River Alde reed beds in Suffolk, which is actually quite successful in depicting a vast area of rivers and swamps on an alien planet, along with a surprisingly decent rubber squid monster (even if it gets a bit over-used) and even some very early attempts at computer graphics. It's just a little bit too Doctor Who-by-the-numbers, especially for Holmes (who considered it his weakest script, possibly because he'd deleted all memory of The Space Pirates from his mind).

The final story of the season is The Armageddon Factor, in which the Doctor and Romana blunder into a nuclear war between the planets Atrios and Zeos. Their quest for the final part of the Key to Time is also complicated by "the Shadow" ("the Shadow? THE SHADOW!"), a servant of the Black Guardian who is also on the trail of the Key. A potentially strong story is weakened by its six-episode length, which the story can't quite fill. However, Doctor Who fans rejoice! This the last six-parter to air in Doctor Who's history (kind of *), which will improve a lot of future episodes' pacing.

The guest cast is also splendid, with John Woodvine suitably authoritative as the Marshal and Lalla Ward making for a very charming Princess Astra, whilst cockney wide-boy Time Lord Drax (Barry Jackson) is extremely random but also entertaining. The story suffers a lot from "K9 solves all obstacles instantly" syndrome and from an ending that so abrupt you wonder if the writers' typewriter spontaneously exploded. The twenty-six episodes of buildup to the completion of the Key to Time and the final confrontation between the Doctor and Black Guardian ends up in the biggest damp squib (not damp squid, that was the previous episode) in the show's history.

Still, despite suffering from a lot of problems, like bogging down in running around caves in its latter part, the story is entertaining enough. The story feels more Robert Holmes than almost any other story not written by Holmes himself (and is mildly better than The Power of Kroll). What is interesting is that the story doesn't really betray the behind-the-scenes turmoil which was going on: Williams and Tom Baker were having an almighty barney, Baker actually quit at one point but changed his mind, and Mary Tamm decided to leave despite Graham Williams having no viable plan to replace her (again, after the exact same thing happened with Louise Jameson a year earlier).

Season 16 (***½) of Doctor Who is fine. It might be the most "fine" season of the entire show. There are no solid gold classics here, but also no total disasters either, and it's a notable improvement over the previous season (and the following). It's watchable, often fun, and the idea of the story arc is interesting, even if it ends up being mostly irrelevant and then underwhelming. Mary Tamm is a fine companion and it's a shame she doesn't come back for another season. One weakness here is Tom Baker's increasing disinterest in the show whenever he's not the centre of attention, with bursts of underacting and overacting, and few (if any) of the sonorous, well-written speeches his earlier seasons featured. This is the beginning of Baker's Latter Shatner Period.

The season can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD. The season is one of several awaiting release on Blu-Ray.

• 16.1-16.4: The Ribos Operation (****)
• 16.5-16.8: The Pirate Planet (***½)
• 16.9-16.12: The Stones of Blood (***½)
• 16.13-16.16: The Androids of Tara (****)
• 16.17-16.20: The Power of Kroll (***)
• 16.21-16.26: The Armageddon Factor (***½)

* Season 17's Shada was a six-parter but never completed due to filming strikes, though it was later completed through animation. Season 22's The Two Doctors was also three 45-minute episodes in length, so technically would work out the same as a six-parter. But anyway.

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