Sil's last outing...?

I don't usually wander into the area of Dr Who spin off media because ... Well, ... life is short and I hardly have enough time to watch the Doctor on television these days... but I did the other month give in to curiosity and purchase "Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arador" by Philip Martin... largely because Sil the giant slug (as brilliantly realised by disabled actor Nabil Shaban) was amongst my favourite Doctor Who characters.  Philip Martin had a long and distinguished career as a script writer on many TV series and asked to write for Doctor Who in the 80s because he really loved the show ... and it showed.  

Sil was a satire on 1980s venture capitalists - investing the galactic revenues of the Galatron Mining Corporation of Thoros Beta in an endless series of dodgy deals to make a quick buck and unfortunately creating a lot of human misery along the way...  

Despite his repugnant schemes and complete lack of scruples Sil remains a lovable character due to his own Arthur Daley like incompetence... but also because he's a put upon underling himself - a minion of the pompous Lord Kiv (Christopher Ryan) who is constntly burdened by having to make "mega wealth".  

Profits are more than just money to the Thoros Betan Mentors but a near religious duty - Sil often references "the great god Morgo" in whose honour they are acquiring their often ill-gotten gains... It occurred to me the other day that there's some similarity between the Mentors and the Ferengi in Star Trek with their similarly extreme capitalist culture and hierarchical bullying social structures... but that's another story ...or another franchise... but one has to wonder if the Mentors have "rules of acquisition..."

In the original serials Kiv is a similar slug like being who has his mind transplanted into Peri (or does he?) but perhaps for budgetary reasons in this serial Kiv is transplanted into a human who looks like Christopher Ryan.  

Indeed, its only watching this back that I finally realised that Kiv was indeed Christopher Ryan from the Young Ones and McKendrick Twins from One foot In the Grave and various Sontarans ...

Anyway, the point is ...unlike other of Reeltimes attempts to create Doctor Who without the Doctor ... Sil is a complex enough fleshed out character that the absence of the Doctor from this Reeltime film for copyright reasons doesn't seem to matter.  The budgets and sets are minimal and some of the make-up/latex joins aren't properly concealed at times but no more than Old Who and its still fun... The rest of the cast Sophie Aldred (cast against type), Sakuntala Ramanee, Janet Henfrey (still typecast as a stern type) all give great performances too...

Indeed, it works so well it would be nice to see a sequel but unfortunately Martin died not long after at 82 so horay for his last harrah...!

Still, could we perhaps see Sil in new Doctor Who...