Summoned By Shadows / More Than A Messiah

Once upon a time back in the Black and White days of 1963 the BBC commissioned and odd little show about an alien who wondered through time and space, it was never intended to be a long running show but thanks in no small part to some other funny looking aliens who became unusually popular the show ran for 26 series ( seasons for US based readers ) before it was decided to give the show a rest.

During this time the wondering alien was played by seven actors, some proved to be more popular than others, one of those actors was fired for no good reason other than one of the management types at the BBC was a boring git who didn't like the show anyway and wished it would just go away.

Eventually the boring git did in fact get his way and the show was no longer produced ( for a while anyway ) but it's fans kept it's memory alive.

The actor who was unfairly fired ( the sixth to play the part ) went on to work with an independent production company to produce stories about an alien who wandered through time and space with a companion and they had all sorts of adventures.

Summoned by Shadows and More than a Messiah are the first two of six independent features starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as The Stranger and Miss Brown, for the first three stories in this series it's hinted than The Stranger may in fact be The Doctor or at least some alternate version of the character, these were very low budget features but they managed to capture some of the spirit of the then defunct Doctor Who television series.

What these features lacked in budget and professionalism they made up for with heart, these were fans trying to keep the spirit of their favorite series alive, it's a shame that these films were made in the early 90's instead of now, with the advances in personal computer technology they could easily have achieved far superior special effects to what they were obviously struggling to create at the time, especially considering their low budget.

I had previously seen some of The Stranger videos before but I recently purchased them all on DVD and so far I have enjoyed seeing them again, it's an interesting look at what the Sixth Doctor could have been if the character was developed properly.