Two dual-part stories comprising the final part of a loose Fifth Doctor trilogy that began in "Tartarus", featuring new companion Marc. These stories deal with the Doctor once again facing off against the Cybermen from "Earthshock" for the first time and dealing with Adric's death.
Warzone by Chris Chapman
At Warzone, competitors gather from across the galaxy to test the limits of their endurance and achieve their personal best. So, when the TARDIS materialises in the middle of a racetrack, the Doctor and his friends must literally run for their lives.
Warzone contains examples of:
- The Ace: Marc's natural athleticism gives him a leg up in the race, easily outpacing the rest of his friends and most of the actual contestants. Unfortunately for him, this makes him a prime candidate for cyber conversion.
- Came from the Sky: A ship crashed down on Samotis many years ago. It was empty, but the advanced technology found within gave the planet some major upgrades once they reverse-engineer it. It was a Cyberman vessel, and they were relying on the humans doing exactly that in order to start taking them over.
- Combat Stilettos: For once, Tegan gets to avert this, as a robot helpfully provides her some running shoes to swap her high heels with.
- Connected All Along: Like the previous story, "Interstitial/Feast of Fear", this release was advertised as two separate stories, with the second part, "Conversion" promoted as the big face-off between the Doctor and the Cybermen. Their influence slowly becoming more clear throughout this story was something of a surprise.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Most of the planet has had cybernetic upgrades, provided by technology reverse-engineered from a spaceship that crashed there years ago. The more a person is upgraded, the less empathy and compassion they exhibit. The crashed ship was a Cyber ship, and the technology has been slowly corrupting the inhabitants, driving them to become Cybermen.
- Death Course: The Warzone offers many potentially lethal hazards, but the officially registered contestants wear special bands that prevent them from actually being killed by them. The TARDIS crew, on the other hand, have no such protection. Marc almost dies because of it.
- Glory Hound: Once he finds himself involved in the race, Marc gets quite caught up in the pursuit of glory, believing the Warzone is his chance of living like the gladiators of his own time did.
- Heroic BSoD: Upon seeing that Marc might be dying, the Doctor is briefly paralyzed by the lingering fear and guilt he feels over losing Adric. It takes Tegan at her bluntest to motivate him into doing something useful.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Tegan doesn't understand why any sensible person would willingly go into something called the Death Spinner.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Though she had no way of knowing what would happen, Tegan's decision to give consent to have Marc cybernetically upgraded in order to save his life ends up having some serious consequences.
- Secret Test of Character: The entire Warzone course is designed to identify the most physically capable people and select them to be subjected to Cyberman upgrades.
- Serious Business: The contestants in the Warzone, essentially a beefed-up Fun Run, treat it with more seriousness and competitiveness than the Olympics.
Conversion by Guy Adams
On the fringes of the galaxy, techno-pirates and research medics fight for the secrets of advanced extra-terrestrial technology. For the Doctor, however, a more personal battle awaits as he confronts his own guilt and the creatures that killed a friend: the Cybermen.
Conversion contains examples of:
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: In the middle of breaking into the Cyber base, Tegan and the Doctor finally have a real conversation about how they feel about Adric and how his death affected them.
- Breaking the Fellowship: After the traumatic events of the last couple of stories, the Doctor enforces a break from himself and his companions, leaving them on a planet and taking off in the TARDIS.
- Call-Forward:
- The Cybermen refer to Marc's consciousness hanging on despite his cyber programming as "ghosting".
- Continuity Snarl: Possibly. In an episode that focuses so much on the fallout from Adric's death in "Earthshock", you'd think that Nyssa and the Doctor might at least bring up the time they found out he actually survived, but it's never mentioned once.
- Distressed Dude: Poor Marc spends the entire story Strapped to an Operating Table and trying to fight off Cyber conversion.
- Cyborg: By the end of the story, Marc. He retains full control over his mind and body, but the cyber upgrades are still active.
- Downer Ending: Even though, thankfully, Marc wasn't fully Cyber-converted, by the closing minutes of the story, he is still deeply traumatized by his experiences, Tegan is thoroughly disgusted with the Doctor for his actions at the base and the Doctor decides they all need a break from each other, leaving his companions some money and then taking off in the TARDIS without them.
- Fighting from the Inside: Marc spends the entire story desperately trying to fight off cyber conversion. With some help from the Doctor, he wins.
- Mad Scientist: Combatta the medical researcher turns out to be more than a little bit insane.
- My Skull Runneth Over: The Doctor defeats the Cybermen by turning back their conversion process and forcing them to mentally relive the physical pain and horror of their transformation. This amounts to torture, and Tegan is horrified by the Doctor's justification of "whatever it takes" for doing it.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Zig-zagged. While Tegan and the Doctor have some nice things to say about Adric, particularly praising his intellect, they also admit that they didn't really like him a lot of the time and found him annoying more often than not.
- Not Himself: Tegan is seriously freaked out by the Doctor's increasingly erratic and angry behaviour, brought on by confronting the Cybermen and working through his guilt over Adric's death.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The Doctor acknowledges the many similarities between Adric and himself as a teenager on Gallifrey.
- Only Sane Man: With the Doctor being distinctly Not Himself and the only other humanoids at the Cyber base being the trigger-happy psycho pirates Herb and Creasey, Tegan has a very tough job trying to make sure that cooler heads prevail.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The latest invasion ploy by the Cybermen, partially converting humans like Marc and letting them keep their human forms, using them as sleeper agents to infiltrate human populations.
- What the Hell, Hero?: After all the lectures the Doctor has given on respecting the Web of Time, he freely volunteers to give Herb and Creasey the TARDIS, horrifying Tegan, who lets him have it. Later, after his erratic behaviour on the base and his torture of the Cyber-Leader, she is completely disgusted with him and tells him so. It's bad enough that when he elects to leave his companions behind on Carlanna, she is only too glad to see the back of him.
