2 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 64 minutes. Written by: Nigel Robinson. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Deborah Watling, Frazer Hines.
THE PLOT:
The Doctor is quite pleased with himself when he manages to materialize on Earth immediately after the TARDIS is struck by a meteor. His smugness is short lived. While exploring their new surroundings, they find the dead of a massacred village. A traveler named Fen informs them that the townspeople were killed for believing that a recent meteor strike signaled the gods' displeasure with the emperor - the very meteor that the TARDIS deflected!
From Fen's statements, the Doctor realizes that he and his friends are in ancient China during the final part of the reign of Qin, the first emperor. Fen takes them to a nearby village for shelter. But it's not long before Imperial troops descend on the village, as well, taking the Doctor away to the Imperial palace. The emperor intends to force the time traveler to give him the secret of eternal life - leaving it up to Jamie and Victoria to rescue him!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: He recognizes that Fen is not who she says she is, but he plays along. He is appalled at the sight of the massacred villagers and, when the sadistic Lin threatens to do the same to the village where he's staying, he readily agrees to come with him. Since he knows that, according to history, the emperor will die soon, his plan is just to wait things out and let history take its course - at least, until Victoria reveals her suspicions that an assassin might be about to change history.
Victoria: This story emphasizes her compassion. She strongly believes that everyone is capable of redemption, as she tells Cho early in the story. When they traverse the corridor of molten silver, her background as a scientist's daughter serves her well - or maybe not so well, since she realizes what Jamie does not: That the liquid would be fatal if they fall in. Deborah Watling sometimes struggles when trying to recapture her young voice, but she does a good job of both reading and performing - and every so often, she manages to get a line just right, and the mental image of the young Victoria pops right into mind.
Jamie: Ever the protector, he tries to keep Victoria from seeing the corpses of the dead villagers. After seeing the field of bodies, he is wary of the strangers they meet to the point of hostility. He even voices the opinion that it would be all right if the emperor died. This is initially startling, but it does make sense - seeing those slaughtered villagers would almost certainly have brought back memories of his own clan. He also gets a couple moments to show that he is genuinely observant: He spots that Fen's horses are too regal for a peasant, and he demolishes Cho's pretense of being a monk with a series of observations that would have done Sherlock Holmes proud... though being Jamie, he immediately jumps to the wrong conclusions.
Fen: The young woman who takes the time travelers to the village, and later assists Victoria and Jamie in getting into the palace. The time travelers all spot that her story of being a peasant woman is clearly false. Her clothes, bearing, and even horses are far too aristocratic. Also, as Jamie notes, she is far too familiar with the secret way into the palace. The revelation of her true identity results in a memorable moment - though given the character's prominence in the story, it's disappointing that the revelation makes no real difference to the ending scenes.
Cho: The strange monk who appears in the village, only to immediately earn the suspicion of both Jamie and the villagers. He bonds with Victoria and seems genuinely moved by her statements about redemption and forgiveness - but when the Imperial soldiers ride into town, he hides himself immediately, only to take off toward the palace afterwards, which leaves the others convinced that he is an assassin.
THOUGHTS:
Emperor of Eternity has all the ingredients for a fine story. Writer Nigel Robinson describes the regulars' surroundings with a keen eye toward painting pictures in the listeners' minds. The setting, in ancient China, is inherently interesting. Lisa Bowerman directs with a steady hand, and the sound effects and music are carefully applied to make scenes that little bit more vivid.
It also ends up being a tale of two halves. The first episode is very good, with several memorable moments: the discovery of the dead villagers, Jamie's verbal sparring with Cho, the violent arrival of the Imperial guards, and the cliffhanger (and pickup in Episode Two) with Victoria finding an army of clay soldiers. All of this contributes to the atmosphere and helps raise tension while establishing the stakes.
Even in the first episode, however, most listeners will spot some of the tropes the story invokes. One narrative turn is so obvious that I called it by the thirty-minute mark. Still, as long as the story remained good, I could forgive such contrivances. It's not like televised Doctor Who in any era has gone out of its way to avoid such things.
Unfortunately, the second episode is much weaker. Not initially - the first ten minutes or so of Part Two remain strong, even if one obstacle in the characters' path feels a little too much like something out of a video game. But the momentum stalls once Victoria and Jamie reunite with the Doctor, and the story gets progressively worse from that point on - right up to an ending that's both limp and trite.
This was Deborah Watling's second, and last, Companion Chronicle. As was true of The Great Space Elevator, she struggles audibly to recapture her 1960s performance for Victoria's actual dialogue. She also has difficulty in differentiating the voices of the characters, which occasionally makes it hard to tell which person is speaking.
Still, Watling does just fine when directly reading. She brings the descriptions and action to life with suitable emotion and energy, and there was no point in which I had trouble picturing where the characters were and what their situation was. It's a perfectly fine audiobook performance - It just feels a bit more like a reading and less like a performance than the work of certain other narrators.
OVERALL:
For the first 40 minutes, I'd have labeled The Emperor of Eternity a good story, even a very good one. Then it starts to deteriorate, sliding into an ending that just doesn't work for me at all. There is still much to enjoy here - but the final Act leaves a poor last impression.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
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Next Television Story: Fury from the Deep
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