Episode #150 : Dragonfire

"Do you feel like arguing with a can of deodorant that registers nine on the Richter scale?"

Episode 150:    Dragonfire.
Companions:   7th Doctor and Mel.
Air Date:          23rd November to 7th December 1987.

The TARDIS materialises in Iceworld, a space trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos. The Doctor and Mel encounter Glitz and learn that he has come here to search for a supposed treasure guarded by a dragon. Also on Svartos is Kane, a - literally - cold-blooded criminal who has been imprisoned here by his own people from the planet Proamon. The Doctor and Mel, aided by Ace, a disaffected waitress, discover that the 'dragon' is a biomechanoid and the 'treasure' a power crystal held within its head. Kane is desperate to obtain the crystal and the Doctor uses it to bargain with him for Ace's freedom. It turns out that Iceworld is a huge spacecraft and the crystal the key that Kane needs in order to activate it.

With Dragonfire the show has finally begun to shirk off the silly stories that started the Sylvestor McCoy era. It still has the silly costumes and low production values of the late 1980's but at least we start to see some decent story and the beginning of the true 7th Doctor.

We finally lose Mel as a companion and she gets replaced at the end of the story with Dorothy "Ace" McShane, a far better choice. I'm not sorry to see Mel go in all honesty. Ace is a plucky young girl with skills in explosive making. We learn that she was swept up in a time storm from 20th century Earth and dropped on Iceworld. This will make a reappearance later as we learn how and why.

The adventure is memorable for the rather grisly final end of the villainous Kane, whose face melts away in clear camera shot. Even now it is rather unpleasant and I wonder how well that went down with children at the time. Not well I imagine.

Dragonfire is a reasonable story that shares elements from lots of different science fiction genres, including some elements that seem lifted straight out of the movie Aliens. It isn't perfect but you can see that things are getting better in the writing and the characterisations.