The Cybermen return to invade a small english village; it's up to the Doctor and Leslie to stop them. But at what cost? An outstanding fan produced video that keeps Doctor Who alive on screen in the 1990s.

Doctor Who in the 1990s is primarily a fan-created affair; with the exception of the Paul McGann telefilm and a charity special, the only possibility to see new adventures on a television screen has been through fan productions. The Timebase collection of fan videos, staring Rupert Booth as the Doctor, is almost certainly the most ambitious of the lot. To date they've created four stories; all of which manage to recreate the Doctor Who style.

Phase Four is their second story; even though it was the fourth produced. Their previous stories has run through a number of classic Who situations; stories taking place in the past, present, and future. Their previous stories had all been two parters; from Regenesis, a two part story that demonstrated how a new Doctor Who series could start without bringing back an old Doctor for a regeneration, (another story), a surreal future adventure that could be compared to the Mind Robber or Warriors Gate, and the pseudo-historical (story).

Phase Four is also their most ambitious project; with a half a dozen Tomb-style Cybermen, multiple settings, both inside and outside, props, and music. I've never seen a fan video as ambitious as this; with special effects, costumes, and props; they can stand the comparision to the original series; no tin-foil cybermen or cardboard box police box here.

One of the amazing things with this story is they are able to create "definitive" Doctor Who scenes -- the shots of the Cybermen throughout the village and church are properly reminiscient of similar scenes in The Invasion; there are other scenes as well, which I won't spoil, that have that Doctor Who magic. In my mind, that is the highest praise I can give this production -- it is, without a doubt, Doctor Who.

There are some problems -- since these are Tomb style Cybermen, it is sometimes difficult to understand their mechanical voices. It's not obvious why the Cybermen picked that location for their base; but that's a standard Doctor Who Invasion problem. Part of the enjoyment factor of the story is to watch all of the costume and set design -- this isn't Doctor Who for the masses, but for fans that know the Cybermen of old.

But the story doesn't just use the Cybermen from Tomb of the Cybermen; this story has light references to almost every Cybermen story -- the threat that "you will become like us"; to the desire for the Cybermen to make experiments with humans (one way in which they are different from Star Trek's Borg). But despite all of these references; I never got the feeling that this was indulgent fanwank; the story isn't a sequel to any past Doctor Who story.

As you can expect, the story itself has elements of the Jon Pertwee era even without the military presence of UNIT; some of the supporting characters feel like they could have walked out of Claws of Axos. This combination of different eras of Doctor Who also makes it enjoyable; it successfuly combines different eras of Doctor Who into something that is still modern and nineties. As the last "original series" Cyberleader might put it: "Excellent".