Anthony Coburn (1927–1977)

Part of the Doctor Who range from Big Finish, The Lost Stories (2009-2013, revived 2019) are audio adaptions of scripts that were generally considered pretty good, but for some reason never made it to production. The Masters of Luxor is a sci-fi story that was originally intended to be the second story of the First Doctor. It was eventually replaced by The Daleks, and the rest is history. It does share some themes with the Daleks, not least a dead planet, inhabited only by robotic creatures, but is much more philosophical, dealing with an android (The Perfect One) who wants to be human.

This version has been adapted for audiobook, rather than a full cast drama, with Carole Ann Ford (original Susan) and William Russell (original Ian) providing the dialogue and narration for their own characters, as well as for The Doctor and Barbara. And doing a brilliant job of the different pitches of voice. They are joined by Joseph Kloska, who plays the Perfect One, Tabon, and the various androids (who are all somewhat related anyway). Nigel Robinson has adapted Anthony Coburn's original script to an audiobook format, and in doing so has removed some of the religious content (which probably would have been removed from the original anyway, had it gone to production). He has also moved it from its early first season slot to some point prior to Susan's departure, but after [a:Moris Farhi|96332|Moris Farhi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1475486803p2/96332.jpg]'s [b:Doctor Who: Farewell, Great Macedon|24073629|Doctor Who Farewell, Great Macedon|Moris Farhi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1419523809l/24073629._SX50_.jpg|62696586], an earlier release in the Lost Stories. Anthony Coburn's complete original script was published back in the 90s as part of the short-lived Titan series, Doctor Who: The Scripts [b:The Masters of Luxor|800028|The Masters of Luxor|Anthony Coburn|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1207842539l/800028._SY75_.jpg|785993].

A somewhat dated story, but a really superb adaptation.… (meer)

The Masters of Luxor could conceivably be called the first ever lost story in Doctor Who history. Written by Anthony Coburn, it was intended to be the second serial, ultimately rejected in favour of The Daleks (or The Mutants, if you prefer). For the next part of the third season of The Lost Stories, Big Finish has moved on from the Sixth Doctor and back to the First: Nigel Robinson adapts Coburn’s script, and William Russell and Carole Ann Ford perform it in a third-person “enhanced audiobook” format, in the style of 2010’s The First Doctor Box Set.

The first thing that strikes the listener of The Masters of Luxor is its amazing scale — a scale one suspects would have had to be rendered in a few model shots had the story been made in the 1960s. The story opens with the TARDIS being drawn off course by a mysterious signal, bringing it to a citadel on an unknown planet in a distant galaxy. The TARDIS even flies around this citadel, something we would only see in a scant few later stories, perhaps most notably Delta and the Bannermen and The Runaway Bride. The first two episodes, especially, give us a magnificent series of descriptions of this citadel and its environs, as Ian and Susan slowly explore it.

Read the rest of this review at Unreality SF.… (meer)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/886338.html

Well, here is an oddity, the rejected script for the second ever Doctor Who story, written by the same guy who wrote the first, and published almost thirty years later as one of a short lived series of TV scripts.

Like The Daleks, which was the story used instead of The Masters of Luxor, we start with the Tardis crew exploring a mysterious abandoned city and encountering its robotic inhabitants; they find a more human ally outside the city and re-infiltrate it via a secret route through the mountains, before destrying the evil robot creatures.

There are significant differences though. The robots are more standard robots, human creations whose leader, the Perfect One, seeks to become human itself. The human ally is Tabon of Luxor, the robots' creator, roused from hibernation by the arrival of the Doctor and Ian. These are the only two significant guest roles, though a couple of the junior robots would have had speaking parts.

It's a slow starting six-part story - the robots don't appear until half way through part two, and Tabon not until part four. Our heroes spend a lot of time held prisoner or exploring new corridors, with the Tardis swooping around in part one rather like it does in The Runaway Bride, and Susan and Barbara in the grips of the robots (who have not previously encountered humans) for most of the story. Coburn does not seem to have been briefed about the desirability of cliff-hanger endings either, let alone a reprise for the start of the next episode.

The central plot - helping Tabon to destroy his own robotic creations - is similar to various other Who stories, but Tabon is interesting because of his early repentance, and one can even feel some sympathy for the Perfect One in its doomed quest to become human. Of the main characters, perhaps Ian is the furthest from the TV character we came to know, much more slangy in his vocabulary; the others seem fairly close to canon, though there is more explicit reference to the Doctor and Susan's off-Earth origins.

Anyway, this is an interesting alternate-history read, and frankly better than some stories that made it to the screen.… (meer)