Dragonfire (TV story)

Dragonfire was the fourth and final story of Season 24. It marked the final appearances of Mel and Sabalom Glitz, and featured the debut of Sophie Aldred as Ace.

Synopsis
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.

Iceworld takes off and Kane determines to return to Proamon and take revenge on his people. The Doctor however reveals that Proamon no longer exists. Kane despairingly opens a viewing port, allowing bright light to flood into the control room and causing himself to melt.

Plot
Iceworld is a space-trading colony on the dark side of the planet Svartos. It is a mysterious place of terror and rumour ruled by the callous and vindictive Kane, who buys supporters and employees and makes them wear his mark iced in to their flesh. Kane’s body temperature is so cold that one touch from him can kill. In Kane’s lair is a vast cryogenic section where mercenaries and others are being frozen and stored, with their memories wiped for future unquestioning use as part of an army; including a freezer cabinet into which Kane deposits himself when he needs to cool down. There is also, most peculiarly, an aged sculptor who is carving a statue from the ice.

The TARDIS materialises in a refrigeration sales section on Iceworld and the Seventh Doctor and Melanie Bush venture outside. They soon meet up with their roguish old acquaintance, Sabalom Glitz, who owes Kane a substantial amount of money. Glitz has come to Svartos to search for a supposed treasure guarded by a dragon. It is located in the icy caverns beyond Iceworld and by chance Glitz has a map, which he won from Kane in a gamble – indeed, Kane wanted him to have the map because he wishes to use Glitz as a pawn in his own search for the treasure. Thus the map contains a tracking device in its seal. Kane in return has Glitz’s ship, the Nosferatu, which he orders destroyed. Without realising he is being used, Glitz heads off on the search with the Doctor in tow – though women are not allowed on the expedition so Mel stays with a young, rebellious waitress they have met called Ace. It is only a matter of time before Ace behaves appallingly to customers and is fired. Mel is stunned to hear that Ace is a human from late twentieth century Earth who only arrived on Iceworld after a bizarre chemistry experiment caused a time-storm in her bedroom.

Kane’s staff are not happy. Once they have taken his coin they are his for life – as Ace wisely realises when she rejects such an offer. Officer Belazs was not so clever, and is keen to escape Kane’s service. She thus arranges for the Nosferatu not to be destroyed, hoping to use the craft to escape Iceworld. When this fails she tries to persuade Officer Kracauer to help her overthrow Kane, but he is one step ahead. Their attempt to alter the temperature in his chambers and kill him fails, so Kane exacts his revenge and kills them both. The same fate awaits the ice sculptor who has now finished his statue, which is of a woman called Xana.

In the ice caverns it has taken time but the Doctor and Glitz have encountered the dragon, which turns out to be a biped which did not so much breathe fire as fire lasers from its eyes, but not the treasure. Mel and Ace have now ventured into the caverns too and they meet their allies and are actually defended by the dragon, which guns down some of Kane’s cryogenically altered soldiers who have been sent into the ice caverns to kill them. The dragon takes them to a room in the ice, which is some sort of control area and contains a pre-recorded hologram message. The hologram explains that Kane is one half of the Kane-Xana criminal gang from the planet Proamnon. When the security forces caught up with them Xana killed herself to avoid arrest, but Kane was captured and exiled to the cold, dark side of Svartos. It turns out that Iceworld is a huge spacecraft and the treasure is a crystal inside the dragon’s head, which acts as the key that Kane needs in order to activate the ship and free himself from exile. The dragon is thus both Kane’s jailer and his chance of freedom.

Kane has overheard the location of the key through the bugging device on the map and now sends his security forces to the ice caverns to bring him the head of the dragon, offering vast rewards for such bravery. He also uses his cryogenic army to cause chaos in the Iceworld shops, driving the customers out and towards the docked Nosferatu. This is brutally accomplished. When the Nosferatu takes off Kane blows it up. The only survivors are a young girl called Stella and her mother, who have become separated but both survive the massacre. Shortly afterward two of Kane’s troopers succeed in killing the dragon and removing its head, but are killed in the process.

The Doctor has meanwhile realised that Kane has been a prisoner on Svartos for millennia. He retrieves the head of the dragon and is then told by intercom that Kane has captured Ace but is willing to trade her for the “dragonfire”. The Doctor, Glitz and Mel travel to Kane’s private chambers for the exchange. Kane rises to the Doctor’s taunts but still powers up Iceworld as a spacecraft, which now detaches itself from the surface of Svartos. However, when Kane tries to set course for Proamnon to exact his revenge he realises he has been a prisoner so long that the planet no longer exists. In desperation, he opens a screen in the surface of his ship and lets in hot light rays, which kill him by melting him rather horrifically.

The Doctor now loses a companion but also gains one. Glitz has claimed Iceworld as his own spacecraft, renamed Nosferatu II, and Mel decides to stay with him to keep him out of trouble. The Doctor acquires Ace instead, promising to take her home to Perivale via the “scenic route”.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Mel - Bonnie Langford
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Sabalom Glitz - Tony Selby
 * Kane - Edward Peel
 * Belazs - Patricia Quinn
 * Kracauer - Tony Osoba
 * Customer - Shirin Taylor
 * Anderson - Ian Mackenzie
 * McLuhan - Stephanie Fayerman
 * Bazin - Stuart Organ
 * Zed - Sean Blowers
 * Pudovkin - Nigel Miles-Thomas
 * The Creature - Leslie Meadows
 * Announcer - Lynn Gardner
 * Stellar - Miranda Borman
 * Archivist - Daphne Oxenford
 * Arnheim - Chris MacDonnell

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Christopher Sandeman
 * Costumes - Richard Croft
 * Designer - John Asbridge
 * Incidental Music - Dominic Glynn
 * Make-Up - Gillian Thomas
 * Producer - John Nathan-Turner
 * Production Assistant - Rosemary Parsons, Karen King
 * Production Associate - Anne Faggetter
 * Script Editor - Andrew Cartmel
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Don Babbage
 * Studio Sound - Brian Clark
 * Theme Arrangement - Keff McCulloch
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Andy McVean

Individuals

 * Ace's real name is Dorothy, she's 16 years old.

Story notes

 * Working titles for this story included; Absolute Zero, Pyramid In Space, The Pyramid's Treasure.
 * Part One ends on a 'literal cliff hanger' with the Doctor hanging onto his umbrella in a seemingly pointless act.
 * Script editor Andrew Cartmel encouraged his writers to read the academic media studies textbook Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text by John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado to help acquaint themselves with the series.
 * Ian Briggs actually used some short passages from Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text in the dialogue of Dragonfire.
 * Briggs had included in the back story for the episode that Ace had recently lost her virginity to Glitz. The plot point was, unsurprisingly, not included in the episode as shot. Paul Cornell later semi-canonized the event in his New Adventures novel Happy Endings.
 * At one point, the character Kane would have been called Hess, but that was changed due to the announcement that the Soviet government under Gorbachev was no longer opposed to the release of Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hess on humanitarian grounds, and then Hess' death by suicide in Spandau Prison, Berlin.
 * Although Ace is 16, the actress Sophie Aldred, who played her is in fact nearly 10 years older at the time.
 * The melting of Kane is reminiscent of the melting of the villain in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark film.
 * Tony Osoba previously appeared in DW: Destiny of the Daleks
 * This is the second story in a row to feature a full vehicle exploding, killing everyone on it. In Delta and the Bannermen it was a bus; in this it's Glitz's ship.
 * The patches Ace has on her are various Space Shuttle mission patches.

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 5.5 million viewers
 * Part 2 - 5.0 million viewers
 * Part 3 - 4.7 million viewers

Myths

 * This is the 150th Doctor Who story. (It is the 147th broadcast, although the BBC promoted it as the 150th. The production team apparently arrived at the total by counting the four segments of season twenty-three's The Trial of a Time Lord as four separate stories. Additionally this is listed as the 148th as Shada (TV version) is counted as a story, making this the 148th produced and the 147th broadcast. The 2009 Region 1 DVD release of Delta and the Bannermen indicates it as the 150th story.

Filming locations

 * BBC Television Centre (TC1 &amp; TC3), Shepherd's Bush, London

Production errors

 * The set designer badly fails in at least one scene, to achieve the intent of the script in creating Iceworld. In part two, when Ace throws Nitro 9 at the 'zombies', the 'rock face' behind her is obviously a billowing white curtain, rather than a solid block of ice.

Continuity

 * Sabalom Glitz last appeared in DW: The Ultimate Foe (part of Trial of a Time Lord). This was his third and, to date, final appearance on the series.
 * Ace was brought to Iceworld via a time storm, why this occurred is revealed in DW: The Curse of Fenric.
 * Mel reunites with the Doctor and discovers why she left him in this story in NA: Head Games.
 * Mel joins a long line of companions who leave the Doctor after developing a relationship with someone in their final story. Others have included Leela, Jo Grant, Vicki and Susan Foreman.

Timeline

 * Dragonfire occurs after: ST: Special Weapons
 * Dragonfire occurs before: ST: Echo

Home video and audio releases
to be added

Novelisation and its audiobook

 * Main article: Dragonfire (novelisation)


 * Novelised as Dragonfire by Ian Briggs in 1989.