8-11. The Elixir of Doom.

2 episodes Running Time: Approx. 72 minutes. Written by: Paul Magrs. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Katy Manning, Derek Fowlds.


THE PLOT:

The Doctor's former companion, Jo, is now accompanying a new time traveler: the irresponsible, frequently inebriated Iris Wildthyme, whose time machine takes the form of a double decker London bus. Iris takes Jo to 1930s Hollywood. She insists they're just going to enjoy a fun romp, shopping for fancy clothes before crashing a Hollywood party.

Naturally, that's not the truth. Iris is on the trail of Vita Monet, a glamorous horror movie queen famous for her array of monsters - and infamous for her sharp tongue and her five ex-husbands. On a previous trip to Hollywood during the Silent Age, Iris had misplaced an alien elixir. It's been in Vita's possession ever since - and as Jo and Iris soon discover, she's been using it to literally make the monsters in her movies.

Unlike most movie monsters, however, these creatures are genuinely dangerous - something Jo discovers when she gets caught snooping where she shouldn't be...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: The Eighth Doctor, that is, despite the photo of Jon Pertwee on the CD insert. I don't consider this a spoiler, since his first scene comes all of fifteen minutes in. Though Iris is careful to keep the Doctor and Jo from meeting, the Doctor actually receives a pretty decent role. He fearlessly faces down a monster near the start, using the same Venusian lullaby that the 3rd Doctor used on Aggedor. He also joins Iris in confronting Vita at the end... though his indignation at the villain gets sidetracked by his almost equal annoyance at Iris's carelessness.

Jo: She tries to restrain the worst of Iris's excesses, such as stopping her from drinking behind the wheel of the bus. When she wrestles a drink away and the glass breaks, Iris laments its loss. Jo shoots back a sharp: "Good!" She retains her primary traits from her television era: a sense of basic decency and a reckless streak. These end up combining in a way that creates chaos at the story's climax.

Iris Wildthyme: "Chaos" is the word that best describes Iris. Sure, she's trying to do the right thing in this story... but that right thing basically amounts to cleaning up her own mess. Without her past carelessness, there would be no story. She gets some choice lines. When it's revealed that Vita made her ex-husbands into monsters, Iris all but rolls her eyes: "Blokes often use that excuse, I've had that one chucked at me before."

Vita Monet: Jo met her once with the Third Doctor, on a trip to 1970s Hollywood. She was a horrible and selfish old woman then. After meeting her when she's young and beautiful, with her career at its height... Jo realizes that she was always horrible. Vita is the villain, using the elixir she stole from Iris to advance her career by destroying the lives of others. She is definitely not a charming villain. She's unpleasant as a default, sneering at everyone around her. Katy Manning adopts a gratingly harsh American accent, one that helps to make this human monster be as easy to hate as she deserves.


THOUGHTS:

Find and Replace ended with Jo and Iris going off on their own adventures. Three years later, The Elixir of Doom finally followed up on that premise. Though the Doctor is present and plays a key role, this almost plays like a backdoor pilot for an Iris/Jo spinoff... which, frankly, I wouldn't have minded listening to, as the two characters are great fun together.

Iris and Jo are equally headstrong but they also have sharply contrasting personalities. Jo is idealistic, Iris is self-absorbed and seems often oblivious to the world around her. In this story, both are trying to do right in their own ways, and both of them frequently make a mess of it.

The characters are enjoyable in themselves, and Paul Magrs adds a layer to that with his use of the narration. Scenes are divided between Jo's viewpoint and Iris's. In plot terms, this allows Magrs to write scenes featuring each character and even cut between them. The alternating narration also drives home the differences between them, with Jo earnestly describing people, places, and situations, and Iris giggling her way through and lending an exaggerated broadness to her moments.

Of course, Magrs also subverts audience expectations with the Doctor. The story is billed as a Third Doctor entry, complete with Jon Pertwee's face on the cover... all the better to tweak the audience's nose when it's the Eighth Doctor who appears.

The 1930s Hollywood setting is nicely realized. Vita's stable of creatures is an evident stand-in for the old Universal monsters, right down to crossover films; instead of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, we get Leopard Boy Meets the Human Jelly. Historically speaking, the 1930s is a touch early; Universal's crossovers didn't materialize until the '40s, to keep up audience interest in a franchise that was starting to wane. But accuracy isn't the point. The fun is in Jo and Iris visiting classic Hollywood, crashing a glamorous party and then sneaking onto a set in which torch-wielding extras are primed for a big action sequence against painted backdrops.

As ever, Katy Manning is a joy to listen to. Jo, Iris, and Vita all have distinct voices, making scenes involving all three characters feel almost like a full cast release. The story moves along nicely, with plenty of humor and a decent amount of action. It also ends well, and in a way that takes care to maintain consistency with Jo's off-screen previous meeting with Vita.


OVERALL:

Unlike Find and Replace, there are no wellsprings of emotion in The Elixir of Doom. This is just good, escapist fun. But I happen to enjoy good, escapist fun. I also well remember the classic monster movies, which a local television station aired weekly during my childhood, so this engaged me through nostalgia almost as much as it did through the actual storytelling.

If pressed, I think Find and Replace is the better story, but I had a fine time listening to this. I only regret that there are no more Iris/Jo stories to look forward to.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Preceded by: Find and Replace

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8-5. The Beginning.

2 episodes: The First Flight, Red Lightning. Approx. 62 minutes. Written by: Marc Platt. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Carole Ann Ford, Terry Molloy.


THE PLOT

In the beginning, there was the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan - two people who didn't fit within their rigid society. For reasons unspecified, but related to his disagreements with those in authority, they are forced to flee. They take refuge in an old time ship scheduled for the scrapheap. When it's clear their pursuers have found them, the Doctor decides to take off, launching himself and Susan off to places unknown.

But they are not alone - Quadrigger Stoyn (Terry Molloy), a member of a work crew dismantling the time ship, fell asleep near the engines, only to wake to the ship's departure. Stoyn insists they must return, but for the Doctor return is not an option. He destroys the man's homing device, making it impossible to contact their home world, and sets off to explore the world on which they have landed...

A world populated by The Archaeons, beings seeding life onto the infant Earth, determined to create a perfectly ordered society. When the Archaeons attemt to dismantle the TARDIS, the ship's defenses activate, sending the experiment out of control. The human race emerges, in all its disorder and violence, leaving the Archaeons determined to repair their experiment the only way they know how: By eradicating the human race!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: It's strongly indicated that he's fleeing arrest because his opinions have been deemed dangerous/subversive by those currently in power... Something that fits very well with what we know of his character. He falls instantly in love with the TARDIS, and is certain that with enough time he'll be able to figure out how to fly it perfectly (which is true enough - though he probably doesn't expect it will take several lifetimes). He's appalled at the Archaeons' plan to destroy the human race, but is willing to feed them power for at least long enough to distract them for a getaway, which fits with the more selfish Doctor of the early television stories. As soon as he's had the distraction he needs, however, he makes sure to cut their power, ending their aggression.

Susan: She falls in love with Earth the same way the Doctor falls in love with the TARDIS, which foreshadows that she will eventually find a home there the same way he will find one in the time ship. She's excited at the prospect of visiting alien worlds. At the same time, she's a very young woman who has just been uprooted from the only home she's ever known. She misses that home, and admits to wishing she could return. She is disgusted by Stoyn's willingness to destroy all life on Earth. When Stoyn tries to get her to come with him and leave the Doctor, she makes clear that she will not abandon her grandfather under any circumstances.

Quadrigger Stoyn: Bound by rules and procedures, he is aghast that the Doctor and Susan would take this obsolete time ship off their world without proper clearance. He is terrified by the unfamiliar, afraid to leave the ship without encasing himself in a protective helmet even when it's clear the Doctor and Susan are walking around on the surface with no ill effects. He is not just willing but eager to save his own skin at the expense of not only the Doctor and Susan, but the entire human race. Not because he's a villain with an evil plan - but because he's a petty, small-minded man who can't conceive of anything more important than his own life and well-being and his place in society.


ANNIVERSARIES AND CONTINUITY

The Beginning is one of several 2013 Doctor Who projects commemorating the series' 50th anniversary. Telling the story of the Doctor's flight from Gallifrey and his first flight in the TARDIS - A natural enough idea, and one that's had groundwork laid in the multiple pre-Unearthly Child stories Big Finish has already recorded. With this, Quinnis, and Hunters of Earth, you have a pretty decent mini-season acting as a prologue to the television series.

Writer Marc Platt is the perfect choice. He not only wrote Quinnis, he also wrote the "Doctor-who-never-left-Gallifrey" Unbound audio Auld Mortality (which, with a few minor rewrites, could almost act as a prequel to this). He's made almost a sub-career out of exploring the Doctor's pre-series background, and has created a consistent tone to the early Doctor/Susan dynamic across these stories.

He's also careful with his continuity. The Doctor's mythology as it's been created over the decades gets plenty of play. We recognize Gallifrey in the descriptions of the Doctor's home world, but names such as "Gallifrey" and "Time Lords" are never uttered - Nothing that hadn't been named in the Hartnell stories is named here, which makes it feel properly of a piece with the early television stories, and additional information about the Doctor's exile from his home is kept vague.

Platt takes care to reconcile his story with other bits of continuity from the television series. The Name of the Doctor saw Clara steer the First Doctor to the TARDIS. Platt has Susan pushed into a different vessel and hearing what we know is that very conversation... But at the same time, it's not intrusive if you're not familiar with the scene in question. Later, Susan comes up with the name "TARDIS" while wandering the corridors, explaining why she insisted in An Unearthly Child that she named the ship... While the Doctor clearly knowing that the ship IS a TARDIS reconciles that with the word's common usage later in the series. Again, done quickly and, to someone not aware of the continuity, largely invisibly.


THOUGHTS

The first part of the serial, focusing on the Doctor's escape from Gallifrey, is excellent. It opens on action, making us eager to know what's going on. We learn enough to justify the Doctor's hasty departure, with enough mystery left for another potential story at some later date. The opening scenes are drenched in atmosphere, and seeing the Doctor and Susan discover the TARDIS for the first time, and listening to their first-ever dematerialization, are things that are an absolute joy.

Much like the previous "beginning," An Unearthly Child, this outstanding opening is a prologue bolted onto a standalone story. About halfway through the first episode (a quarter of the way through the story), the TARDIS makes its first landing, signifying the start of the story involving the Archaeons.

The Archaeons represent the type of rigid order and conformity the Doctor has fled. They do not tolerate dissent, labeling the Doctor's arguments against them as "heresy." To them, absolute order is perfection. The chaos of life on Earth horrifies them as much as it delights the Doctor, and - appropriately enough - the Doctor's first encounter with an alien menace involves him saving the human race from them, before he's so much as properly met a human being.

It's all very enjoyable, and a fitting enough first step on the long journey to come. It's not up there with the great stories - the Archaeon story fits nicely, but it just isn't as gripping as the opening flight. Still, it's well-done and highly entertaining throughout. A fine new "beginning" to celebrate the series' anniversary.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Next Television Story: An Unearthly Child

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8-4. Ghost in the Machine.

Not Yet Reviewed.

8-3. Upstairs.

Not Yet Reviewed.

8-2. The Alchemists.

THE PLOT

The Doctor and Susan's travels bring them to 1933 Berlin - just prior to Hitler's rise, in a time when Germany is in chaos. The Doctor is aware of the dangers of this time and place, but he is also excited about a gathering of scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Though Einstein has already left for America, several other luminaries are still present: Heisenberg, Planck, and Fritz Haber, whose work with ammonia revolutionized the production of fertilizers for farming (as well as explosives for war and terrorism).

The Doctor takes some gold coins he received in the Roman era and changes them for local currency to reach the Institute. He talks his way inside very easily, his scientific knowledge acting as a calling card. But when a kidnapping attempt on Haber fails, the criminals settle for taking the Doctor instead. Susan is left to search for him on her own, and the money she received draws all sorts of unwanted attention: from shady British expat Pollitt (Wayne Forester), to crooked jeweler Strittmater (also Forester), to the force that has in many parts of Berlin taken the place of the corrupt police - the fascist Brownshirts!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The Doctor is so eager to meet the scientists at the Institute, he is oblivious to caution. He happily accepts Strittmater's offer to drive them to their destination and ignores Susan's wariness of the jeweler. His joy at discoursing with other scientists seems to be more one of conversing with men of intellect than an actual desire to learn; Susan observes that he spends as much time engaged in conversation on a theory that he knows to be absolute nonsense as on other, more potentially valuable conversation. He trains a gun on Pollitt at one point, declaring his intent to shoot - Something Susan insists is a bluff, though evidently a convincing one.

Susan: An outsider in a time and place she knows nothing about. She does not even know the value of the money in her possession, drawing quite a few eyes by giving it out a little too freely. When she meets Hans, a member of the Brownshirts, she finds him ridiculous: an awkward boy in a poor-fitting outfit, pretending an authority beyond his years or intelligence. She scoffs at the Brownshirts' claims that all the city's crime is the work of a single, organized enemy, and argues against the idea of any mastermind behind a situation driven purely by the poverty and desperation of individuals. Carole Ann Ford is superb, and particularly impressive in her recreation of her 1960's performance - When voicing Susan's dialogue, she sounds as young as she did in the series' early stories.


THOUGHTS

The Alchemists is another addition to the increasing library of stories set before the series. Per the writer's notes in the CD insert, this was because the pre-World War II setting would have made it too much Ian and Barbara's story had they been present. World War II was still quite recent history when Doctor Who premiered, putting it too much in the original companions' living memory for it to be Susan's story - leaving no choice but to set the story before their arrival.

This makes it evident that the setting of 1930's Berlin was Potter's starting point for the story, and he brings it to life effectively. Susan's descriptions of the beggars who interfere with their drive to the Institute effectively shows how widespread the poverty was in this time and place, and the discussion of why so many of the beggars are drunk reinforces the hopelessness that was the lives of too many of German's people. The lack of any strong government, the corruption of the authorities, and the flourishing of seedy nightclubs that attract criminals of all stripes... The decay of Berlin society is an ever-present character in itself. You can see how so many people to support the fascists, if only for the promise of order and safety.

The Doctor's kidnapping leads to Susan spending time in the company of a group of Brownshirts, and shows just one of many situations in which people would turn to them for help instead of the police. We are also shown their potential for brutality in their harsh questioning of a minor criminal who's singled out simply because he's too drunk to get out of their way.

Susan's desperation to find her grandfather also makes it just plausible enough that she would go along with Pollitt when she should know better, leading to the most vivid scene of the story - In which Susan is herself captured, and threatened with violence unless she provides information she doesn't actually possess. Carole Ann Ford's performance makes tangible the horror, as Susan cries over and over that she knows nothing and that she just wants her grandfather.

The actual narrative is fairly thin, with the kidnapping plot more a justification to get Susan into the company of various shady characters, and it takes a fair bit of time to build momentum. But even before the story proper starts moving, the tone is very true to 1960's Who; and it should be said that while it takes its time, it's never dull.

Not among the very best of Big Finish's Companion Chronicles. But if it's not great, it is at least generally quite good. The strong sense of setting and Carole Ann Ford's performance combine to make it highly worthwhile listening.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Next Television Story: An Unearthly Child

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8-1. Mastermind.

Not Yet Reviewed.

7-12. Council of War.

Not Yet Reviewed.