Day 672: The Happiness Patrol Part 1

The Happiness Patrol is an interesting little story. It concerns the Doctor and Ace arriving on a human colony, Terra Alpha, where it is apparently illegal to be unhappy. Thus, te colony is filled with fake smiles and false happiness, whilst a garish secret police perform executions based around sweets and jokes. This is obviously not a nice place to live, so the Doctor decides to overthrow their entire government over the space of one night.

It's a story that feels as if it's completely new and different, despite drawing on the same themes as previous adventures. We still get the Doctor and Ace being captured, we still get the main characters meeting up with locals in order to form some sort of resistance to fight the tyranny present in the world, but it's all done with a motivation that is is their main goal for the story, not as a secondary goal whilst they try to save the Universe or fix the TARDIS or some other plot element. Take, for instance, the start of the story where the Doctor and Ace meet up with members of the titular Happiness Patrol. The Doctor and Ace don't try and run away, or fight them, instead they look for excuses to be arrested by them, because they recognise that this process is an element of the story that will eventually lead to the government being overthrown. It also helps that the story is only three parts long, as it lends the adventure a sense of swiftness that helps the illusion that the entire revolution will take place in one night. It all certainly makes for an interesting story, and I'm looking forward to the remainder of the adventure.