Whilst trying to prove who he is to the Brigadier, who hasn’t seen the Doctor since his second incarnation, they hear a plane overhead as it heads towards the hills and crashes.  They hear it, but don’t see it.  When the Brigadier talks of a scientist that defected, the Doctor wonders if the person that invented “invisibility” technology might just help him overcome the TARDIS inhibitor that prevents him from journeying to another time zone.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

They head to the hills, initially to offer assistance, but also to learn of the scientist’s technology.

It isn’t long before U.N.I.T. arrives with the verbally abusive and shouty Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood (David Tennant) in the position vacated by the Brigadier.  They set up HQ in a nearby monastery, one in which the monks spend all day sitting around an odd box, chanting at it.

Two people were in the stealth ‘plane – the pilot, who is rescued alive – and the passenger, presumed to be the scientist, who has disappeared.  Colonel Wood’s first priority is to locate this scientist.  An eye-witness says that he saw the passenger but that he “changed” before his eyes.

The Doctor and the Brigadier learn that the plane was heading towards the monastery before it crashed on landing.  The scientist is not a human scientist, he’s a Time Lord, one that the Doctor doesn’t immediately recognised.  It turns out that the Master has been stranded on Earth for many years and has been causing havoc in an attempt to attract the Doctor’s attention, but the Doctor never came to Earth until now.

The Master has plans for the entity inside the monk’s box, one which will ultimately lead to world domination, but one that could lead to world catastrophe if tonight’s weapons test doesn’t go as expected.

Sympathy for the Devil is actually a very good story, and one that could easily have been made in the regular Doctor Who range.  Whilst it’s interesting to note the little differences when comparing to the history of the Doctor on Earth as we know it, very little of it is relevant.  This could easily have been the Doctor arriving in 1997 to visit a retiring Brigadier without hanging it around the notion of him never having been U.N.I.T.’s scientific advisor.

The only relevance of this being an “alternative” Doctor Who comes right at the end when the Doctor and the Brigadier travel to an alien world, offering hints at off-world adventures with the Brigadier being the Doctor’s companion.  Hopefully the other David Warner / Nicholas Courtney adventure I have will explore that idea further.

The supporting cast perform well in this adventure, particularly David Tennant who uses the crisp enthusiasm of his vocal range to bully Colonel Wood’s soldiers (and everyone else) around with verbal abuse and swearing, reminding me of a line spoken by Stephen Fry as Wellington in an episode of TV’s Blackadder.  Upon being asked by Blackadder if Wellington ever stops bullying and shouting at the lower orders, Wellington replies “There’s only one way to win a campaign – shout, shout and shout again!”  That’s Colonel Wood.

Mark Gatiss plays a sly Master, more along the lines of Peter Pratt / Geoffrey Beevers than either Roger Delgado or Anthony Ainley.  It shouldn’t work but, with other characters being quite manic (and shouty), this quiet and sly Master is a credit to the story.

The main reason for listening to this adventure, however, has to be the late Nicholas Courtney who proves, once again, that he will forever be immortalised as the Brigadier.  That firm rock, that bastion of Britishness, the man that will never change regardless of how much the world around him changes.