Battlefield is the 1st serial of the 26th, and last, season of Doctor Who and the 4 episodes aired September 6-27 1989. Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor and Sophie Aldred is Ace. The story is by Ben Aaronovitch and the episodes are directed by Michael Kerrigan. Andre Cartmel is the script editor and John Nathan-Turner is the producer. The story features the return of Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It will be his last appearance on the series.
When the story opens we see the old UNIT Brigadier in his retirement buying a plant with his lovely wife, played by Angela Douglas. Carry On film fans will remember her from several of those films. I remember her from The Saint and The Avengers. She was married to Kenneth More until he passed away in 1982.
The Doctor and Ace return to Earth in 1989 to find UNIT moving a nuke somewhere. The Brigadier of the UNIT is Angela Bruce. The Doc and Ace hitch a ride and stop at the local hotel. They see a scabbard that seems to have some powers. It flies in the air and points to the lake. A soldier in medieval armor shows up and calls the Doctor Merlin.
Jean Marsh and her soldiers show up to take over and Lethbridge-Stewart shows up to join the Doctor for another adventure. There's the usual running about and fights as the Doc chases after Jean and her troops. It all ties into the Merlin - Arthur legends and it appears that the Doctor will become Merlin in his future. I enjoyed the show and had a laugh or two. It was nice seeing the Brig back again.
There's the usual commentary Sophie Aldred, Andrew Cartmel, Nicholas Courtney, Ben Aaronovitch and Angela Bruce. The making of was ok, the nice thing about the later serial extras is that more of the people that made the show are still alive and they have a bunch of them on the featurette. There's a writing featurette with writer Ben Aaronovitch and a shot piece on the water tank scene and it's problems. There's nearly 19 minutes of unedited recording footage from the studio. Jean Marsh is the subject of a short piece on her appearances on Doctor Who back in the 1960's and the 1989 serial. There's the Trails and continuity, a photo gallery, the info track, an isolated score and the Radio Times listing. There's a second disc with the serial with all the titles and credits edited out. I'm not a big fan of those but there you go, someone seems we need that. There's also a trailer for the 26th season.
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