The Penalty

"Night waited for the Doctor."

Writer: Unknown
Format: Short Story
Released: August 1982
Printed in: Doctor Who Annual 1983

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan

Synopsis

The Fifth Doctor is in the TARDIS and has been passed out for two days. Tegan and Nyssa are understandably worried. He is suffering from Ponassan fever, but nobody knows how long it will last. The Doctor though is having a nightmare...

Verdict

The Penalty was a pretty decent little story but there definitely could have been some improvements to see this story receive a higher rating than I awarded. It was the first time in over a year that I have done a blog entry from the 1983 Doctor Who Annual and after finding my copy at the bottom of a cupboard following my move out of Bristol and back home (I wasn't even aware I had it with me in Bristol!), I was able to get back into reading it. This was the penultimate story in its pages and I find it quite staggering that I did the first story in this collection way back in 2014! It will all come to an end very soon though I'm sure as it usually doesn't take me to long finish something once I'm on the last. I look forward to that but for now this was quite an interesting little tale. There wasn't much at all for Nyssa and Tegan to do which was a little shame as they are companions that work well together and have very different attributes in terms of what they can bring to a story. They opened it up so I figured they were going to play a big part so I was quite surprised when that didn't turn out to be the case. It was all about the Doctor and his suffering from Ponassan fever. That essentially meant he was having a nightmare, and this is where I think the artwork let the story down a little bit. The Doctor Who Annuals of the Classic era are quite renowned for having shall we say questionable illustrations accompanying their short stories, but this one wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't quite correct. Or at least correct enough. I loved all of the moments where the Doctor was hearing little comments from his past companions and it was often quite obvious who it was that was saying the lines. So why couldn't the illustrations have matched? It was a missed opportunity in my book. I can appreciate that the Doctor was said to also be seeing enemies and Time Lords, but surely some art depicting the likes of Jamie or Jo would have been terrific. There was something close to a redemption when it was said that the Dren was some sort of amalgamation of all the Doctor's enemies, a staggering concept when you think about, but it also had the addition of being all of those the Doctor saw die. That must be quite the struggle to deal with so perhaps it wasn't that surprising when it was revealed that the Doctor was having a nightmare. The pondering of why people have nightmares was quite intriguing but I'm not sure if I can agree with it. Is it really a punishment for having a nice day? If that's true, well I haven't had a nice day for around 16 years! I may have a struggle some days, but that's pushing it quite far if I do say so. I think this story plays with some interesting concepts but it felt a little too much like a post-regeneration adventure with the Doctor's reaction to the fever. I think the nightmare element could have been incorporated into a previous regeneration but with what occurred in Logopolis with the Watcher and in Castrovalva with the Zero Room, there wasn't a lot of room to play with in that regard. Overall though, it was still a decent little adventure.

Rating: 6/10