7-4. The Last Post.

2 episodes. Approx. 65 minutes. Written by: James Goss. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Caroline John, Rowena Cooper.


THE PLOT

When Liz Shaw's mother, Dame Emily Shaw (Rowena Cooper), reveals that a man killed during the attempted Auton invasion and another killed by the Silurian plague are members of her committee, Liz initially thinks it a coincidence. But when Dr. Taltalian and Sir James Quinlan, both killed during another alien incursion, turn out also to be members of that committee, Liz becomes convinced that something sinister is happening.

Her mother is also convinced, and confronts her committee. "We are dropping like flies," Dame Emily informs them angrily, insisting that the deaths must stop. Her committee is working with a device known as "The Apocalypse Clock," which is counting down to the projected end of the world - an end which has been delayed by weeks every time a committee member dies. Each of the victims has received a letter in the post informing him of his death just before it occurs. 

Now another letter has arrived... Addressed to Emily Shaw!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Seen only sparsely in this story. It takes most of Episode One for Liz to get him interested, then he is waylaid for the bulk of Episode Two. Still, writer James Goss knows better than to write a Third Doctor story that entirely sidelines this most flamboyant of incarnations, giving him a suitably showy scene early in the second part. We get some nice character bits sprinkled throughout the story. Liz compares his behavior to that of a child, hiding from her when he believes she's wasting his time with nonsense. She also observes his method of shopping: Wantonly pilfering items and leaving it to the UNIT Quartermaster - and, by extension, Liz - to sort out the mess.

Liz: Caroline John's final performance, which makes both the story and its title all the more poignant. John is terrific as ever, stepping back into Liz's shoes as if it were still 1970. She hits the right notes of intelligence, strength, and compassion. The story's second half puts her in the Doctor's usual role, confronting the villain and using her wits to try to stop the situation. John's reading shows Liz's very human fear even as she takes this action, and James Goss' script does an excellent job of keeping the focus on Liz's emotions even at the height of the action.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Despite his often gruff, military manner, Liz observes to her mother that he often has a twinkle in his eye even when barking orders, something that humanizes him. When the threat in this story is finally revealed, he doesn't hesitate to act - even bending UNIT's rules a bit to make his action as fast and efficient as possible.


THOUGHTS

The Last Post is a wonderful surprise, a story that far exceeds my expectations of it. Goss' deft script makes inventive use of the Companion Chronicles' format. The story is structured in epistolary form, switching back and forth between Liz and her mother and playing out through a series of phone calls and letters. 

Such a structure could have fallen badly flat, but sharp writing and wonderful performances from John and Cooper make it work like a treat. Goss has a firm grasp of each character's voice, with Liz's passages marked with an intellectualism tinged with dry humor, contrasted with the more emotional tone of her mother's scenes. The movement back and forth between them provides a structure even before the story fully emerges, and the format makes it feel natural as events unfold over a weeks-long period of time.

This structure also allows Goss indulges his fanboy instincts in a good way. With it taking weeks for the Doctor and the Brigadier to take the situation seriously, the first episode in particular takes the chance to draw Season Seven together into one unit. Stahlmann's project from Inferno is linked with the nuclear reactor in Dr. Who & the Silurians, with it planted that the Brigadier's airstrike at the end of the earlier story worsened the energy crisis that drove the project in the later story. Nods are also made to other stories: Much of the Brigadier's time in this story is occupied preparing for the peace conference that would take place in Season Eight's The Mind of Evil; and the story's resolution is linked to events from Season Three's The War Machines.

None of this comes across as an overload of continuity. Goss simply stitches the events of the television series together, in a way that connects this story to them without making this story reliant on them. If you've never seen the stories in question, you can still follow The Last Post and enjoy it as a story. The continuity references just add an extra layer of enjoyment for the rest of us.

The plot unfolds at a natural pace. The first episode slips out the exposition, allowing the story to reveal itself naturally. It goes from very leisurely to quite tense, with a very suspenseful and effective build to the cliffhanger. The second episode increases the pace dramatically, and has several fine scenes. Dame Emily's encounter with the Doctor is a quintessentially Doctorish moment that allows the Third Doctor to show his style and presence in a story that otherwise uses him sparingly. 

As fun as that scene is, though, the high point of the story comes in Liz's confrontation with the sinister Professor Prestain. Liz confronts him with confidence - but when Prestain reveals just how precarious her situation is, she becomes deeply frightened. She is able to complete the conversation with her accustomed cool manner, but she goes from walking to running by the time she reaches the safety of the exit. A great scene, beautifully performed by Caroline John.

In summation: An excellent story overall, one I think destined to sit among my very favorite Companion Chronicles.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

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6-12. The Rings of Ikiria.

2 episodes. Approx. 58 minutes. Written by: Richard Dinnick. Directed by: Ken Bentley. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Richard Franklin, Felicity Duncan.


THE PLOT

A series of crop circles has appeared on Sark, one of the Channel Islands. These aren't ordinary crop circles, but instead are pictograms, whose intricate shapes the Doctor identifies as letters in the Etherian language. The Etherians are trans-dimensional beings, a race the Doctor is happy to say are non-aggressive.

When the final pictogram appears, the Doctor realizes that they spell out "Ikiria" - the name of the Etherian who is making contact. Ikiria (Felicity Duncan) introduces herself as an artist, who manipulates matter to create works of beauty. She gives the Brigadier a ring to show to his superiors as a gesture of friendship. He then returns to the Home Office to make arrangements for Ikiria to meet some high-ranking officials, leaving Capt. Mike Yates in charge.

Mike quickly finds the situation slipping out of his control. The Doctor disappears, apparently (and rather suspiciously) having fallen from a nearby cliffside. Ikiria is distributing her rings among UNIT soldiers, and it is clear that she has a disturbing influence over them. With the officials soon to meet Ikiria, Mike is left with no choice but to take desperate action that could spell the end of his military career - if it doesn't cost him his life!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though he knows the Etherians to be essentially peaceful and non-aggressive, he does not give Ikiria his full trust. She identifies him as a threat early on, and takes steps to remove him. Though he's absent from the middle of the story, the Doctor has already made an impression on Mike as someone to be relied upon, and the captain never stops believing that the Doctor is still out there and ready to fight Ikiria - faith that is rewarded in the story's final Act.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: When the Doctor states that the pictograms are letters, the Brigadier reaches for the most obvious question: "What do they spell?" He likes concrete, practical answers, and has little patience when the Doctor tries to explain that the meaning of the letters won't become clear until all of them have appeared. After Ikiria gives him the first of her rings, the Brigadier becomes a cartoon of his own worst traits. This apparently alien-influenced Brig refuses to listen to Mike's concerns about her influence over the men and responds to Mike's doubts by threatening to transfer him out of UNIT.

Capt. Mike Yates: UNIT is the first posting that has seen Mike truly "at home." He has an enormous amount of faith in both the Doctor and the Brigadier. He seems to look upon the Brigadier almost as a father figure, which makes it all the more painful when the Brigadier says that UNIT may not be for Mike. Even knowing that the other man is under Ikiria's influence, hearing these words from him is painful to Mike.


THOUGHTS

The Rings of Ikiria hits the ground running. Literally, as it opens with a teaser in which Mike Yates runs from his UNIT comrades. He runs through a field of crops until he finds himself at a cliffside, surrounded. The Brigadier appears, brandishing a gun which he levels at Mike, firing and sending the captain over the edge.

Which yes, means we go into credits literally on a cliffhanger.

The story itself is basic, bread-and-butter Who, very much of the era in which its set. A remote country area on a peninsula, an alien claiming to come in friendship but having another agenda... Heck, it's even resolved by the Doctor putting together a Thingie to Reverse the Polarity of something-or-other. It's such a complete pastische of Pertwee-era Who that it could easily have been dreary in its predictability.

But that opening demonstrates the story's big assets. It may deliberately be formulaic, but The Rings of Ikiria zips along. The story moves breathlessly from plot point to plot point, making up in sheer momentum what it lacks in surprise. It also has real verve to it. Writer Richard Dinnick isn't cynically ticking off boxes on a list labeled "Pertwee UNIT story." His script sparkles with energy, made even more evident by Richard Franklin's enthusiastic reading. It may all be a bit lightweight, but it's such good fun that it's impossible to fault it for that.

Things do weaken a bit toward the end, with the resolution to the crisis seeming a bit too easy. Technobabbling a gadget may be in keeping with the television era, but it doesn't make it a good climax to a story. Also, the Companion Chronicles' own format means that a Third Act twist is easy to see coming well in advance. I'm not saying the twist in question would have been a big surprise in a full-cast story, but in a Companion Chronicle the nature of the presentation makes it regrettably obvious.

In the end, this story is solid fare. It's hardly indispensable, and it's far from ambitious. But its energy, enthusiasm, and spark make it a lot of fun. Its ambitions are modest, but it achieves them splendidly, making it an easy story to recommend. 


Overall Rating: 7/10.

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6-9. Binary.

2 episodes. Approx. 50 minutes. Written by: Eddie Robson. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Caroline John, Joe Coen, Kyle Redmond-Jones.


THE PLOT

When UNIT comes into possession of a damaged computer from a crashed alien ship, Liz Shaw is ordered to try to repair it. She is prohibited from telling the Doctor anything about it, lest he unilaterally destroy the machine. This leaves Liz in the care of UNIT Corporal James Foster (Kyle Redmond-Jones), who has been left on guard after the last two scientists who tried to study the computer were zapped into apparent nonexistence by a security device.

Liz disables the security device, but not before Foster also falls victim to it. Fortunately, help arrives in the form of Sergeant Andrew Childs (Joe Coen), a UNIT computer expert who guides Liz through making repairs. It isn't long before the two accidentally trigger something, however, transporting them to a series of bizarre corridors that look strikingly familiar.

Which is when Liz realizes where they are. They have been miniaturized and taken directly into the machine!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Since this is a full-cast audio drama set during the Pertwee era, it's unsurprising that the Doctor has a limited role. He's not completely absent - Liz reads messages from him from terminals inside the computer - but this story sees him discussed rather than observed. This story shows Liz having a more negative view of him than we've otherwise seen, with her describing him as patronizing and unwilling to listen - qualities which don't actually reflect the characters' interactions on television or in other Companion Chronicles.

Liz Shaw: Some of this uncharacteristic attitude might be because Liz is strongly considering leaving as this story unfolds. Yes, this is another "Liz leaving UNIT" story, which has been dealt with in no less than three of her five Companion Chronicles.  Surely this particular dead horse has now been punished enough?  In any case, Liz no longer feels useful at UNIT, constantly overshadowed by the Doctor and too rushed by crises to ever have a chance to do "proper research." While this is plausible enough for the character, I prefer the explanation given in The Sentinels of the New Dawn, that Liz simply got worn out by the constant series of crises that is life with the Doctor. 


THOUGHTS

It's fair to say I was looking forward to Binary. It's an audio that pairs Eddie Robson, one of Big Finish's most reliable regular writers, with Liz Shaw, one of my favorite companions. With a promisingly bizarre premise involving characters transported inside an alien computer, all the pieces are in place for a terrific story.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that this story falls so utterly flat.

Binary is an unusual Companion Chronicle, in that it's not an enhanced audio book like most of the range. Save for a brief Liz-narrated epilogue, this is a straight audio drama. This isn't quite unique among the range, with Solitaire and The Jigsaw War having also been full-cast audio plays. Those stories succeeded in creating more immediacy by presenting us with situations that were directly unfolding. This story fails, however, with the often overly-expository dialogue actually creating more distance between listener and story than would have been the case with narration.

It's not the format that's to blame, though. It's the story itself. From the usually clever Eddie Robson, this is depressingly predictable. Sure, there's a reveal in Episode Two. But it's one that most listeners will see coming from at least half an episode away. It was so predictable a twist, in fact, that I felt secure that something more must be coming. But instead of an even bigger reveal, what we get is... the same exact twist used a second time, to even weaker effect.

At 50 minutes, this is one of the shortest Companion Chronicles. Despite this, the story feels padded out. The situation comes down to a decision by Liz. The final scenes, in which she reaches that decision, are actually quite good, the story's best by a considerable margin. But a lot of what connects Liz figuring out she's inside the computer and her making that decision feels... Well, like a narrative that's running in place. 

That leaves me thinking that this would have made a better Short Trip or 30-minute Doctor Who Magazine freebie. There's really only enough story here to carry about half the running time, leaving a lot of dead space in which the listener is left to wait for the characters to catch up with the story and do something to move things along.

Even the production is far weaker than the norm. There's nothing actually faulty about it, but there's no sense of spark, life, or atmosphere. I'm not picturing Liz, Childs, and Foster inside a giant alien computer; I'm picturing actors delivering dialogue into their microphones. A rare "off day" for director Lisa Bowerman.

A few good scenes, mostly near the end, keep this from ranking with the worst Big Finish titles. But with a thin story and a weak production, I can't think of much reason to recommend Binary. A significant disappointment.


Overall Rating: 3/10.

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5-3. Find and Replace.

2 episodes Running Time: Approx. 60 minutes. Written by: Paul Magrs. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT:

It's been roughly 30 years since Jo left the Doctor, and she's lived a happy life. One day, while shopping for Christmas presents, she finds herself sharing a lift with a peculiar man named Huxley (Alex Lowe). He seems entirely harmless at first... until he begins narrating her thoughts.

Huxley is a Novelisor, a species that forms a mental link with subjects in order to narrate the lives of those they find interesting. Huxley is enthusiastic about meeting Jo, wanting to narrate all of her old adventures as assistant to that traveler in time and space - Iris Wildthyme.

Jo protests that he has it all wrong. Then Huxley introduces her to Iris, who warns her to play along. Iris sets the coordinates of her time and space bus to take them back to the 1970s, where Jo resolves to find the Doctor and become disentangled from this bothersome alien. But there's an added complication waiting for all of them...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: His actual role is small, with him mainly featured in a single scene, albeit a long scene. That still provides time to showcase how he reacts differently to different characters. He's instinctively gentle with Jo. He's scornful of Iris to her face, but there's a certain indulgence, and (once she's safely out of earshot) he includes her when he talks about friends. Meanwhile, he's authoritative and confrontational with Huxley. Katy Manning's Third Doctor performance is good, as always, capturing many of the characteristics of Jon Pertwee's Doctor.

Jo: She looks back on her time with the Doctor and UNIT as her "best time." This makes her protective of her memories when Huxley calls them into question. Huxley's powers are persuasive, and she begins to doubt her own mind, but she refuses to let go of the part of the past that means the most to her. When Iris takes her back to the 1970s, she is overwhelmed at returning to the UNIT base. She treats with wonder the simple act of walking into the Doctor's lab, something she used to do without even thinking about it. She's so entranced at returning to this golden period that she briefly argues for staying, though she quickly realizes the impossibility of that.

Iris Wildthyme: I've consistently enjoyed Manning's performances as Iris. Everything about Iris is garish, which gives Manning license to go over-the-top, delivering her lines with a broad accent at a high volume, while slurring the words just slightly to suggest a semi-permanent state of inebriation. Of course, Iris is also wily. She recognizes the danger Huxley poses and warns Jo to keep on his good side. She's vain and flirtatious with the Doctor, but she also knows how to use her surface foolishness to do good. The Iris/Jo combo is a lot of fun to listen to, and - as with many of Manning's Big Finish performances - it's easy to forget that both roles are played by the same actress.

Huxley: Writer Paul Magrs makes the Companion Chronicles format work in a way that an unnarrated audio wouldn't. As Jo shares an elevator with the unassuming Huxley, she describes her thoughts - only for her narration to suddenly be picked up by Huxley, with it made clear that he is narrating direclty in front of her. The effect is sinister, even though Huxley himself is entirely mild mannered. Alex Lowe reprises a role he originated in the 5th Doctor story, Ringpullworld - a story I remember enjoying even though I don't actually remember anything else about it. Happily, no knowledge of the other story is required to enjoy this one.


THOUGHTS:

I have usually enjoyed Paul Magrs' Big Finish stories, and Find and Replace is no exception. Like much of Magrs' writing, it blends clever concepts with a sense of whimsy in a way that I find appealing. It captures nostalgia for the Pertwee era in a way that feels entirely natural - because it's not just the listener feeling nostalgic (or worse, the writer trying to force a feeling of nostalgia) - It's Jo herself who finds herself missing that part of her past.

Iris as a character lends herself to comedy, so it's no surprise that Find and Replace is funny. More surprising is how genuinely emotional it was. There's a hint of this in the first episode, when Jo refuses to allow Huxley to overwrite her memories, stubbornly clinging to that precious time. But when Jo is finally reunited with the Doctor at the end, the depth of Jo's feeling becomes clear. She has a moving speech when talking to the Doctor near the end, one that's beautifully written and wonderfully delivered by Katy Manning.

The story zips along at a fast pace. There's barely a pause as we go from Jo's encounter with Huxley to her meeting Iris, and from there to the trip back in time to the 1970s. Enough information is given to comprehend that Huxley can overwrite others' memories, but there's no lingering on exposition. There's also a late twist that is surprising but that also makes sense given the characters involved, and it ties in nicely with both the plot mechanics and the emotional material.

It ends with a closing sting that teases potential future adventures with Jo and Iris, at least one of which - The Elixir of Doom - was later released by Big Finish. After how much fun I had with this story, I don't think there's any question about me moving directly on to that one.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Set After: The Green Death
Set Before: The Death of the Doctor

Followed by: The Elixir of Doom

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3-10. The Magician's Oath.

2 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 70 minutes. Written by: Scott Handcock. Directed by: Nigel Fairs. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Richard Franklin, Michael Chance.


THE PLOT:

It is summer. A time for families to go outdoors: eat ice cream, play in the park, and enjoy the warm sun.

But a freak temperature drop in Hyde Park freezes dozens of people to death in an instant. When UNIT investigates, Capt. Mike Yates is shocked to see a winter landscape under the hot summer sun, adorned with frozen statues that used to be living beings.

One eyewitness survived: a girl who was selected as a volunteer for a magic trick by street magician Diamond Jack (Michael Chance). At Jo's insistence, Mike agrees to help her find him while the Doctor and the Brigadier pursue other leads.

They find Jack easily enough. But while Mike's back is turned, the magician makes Jo the subject of his disappearing act - leaving the captain desperate to find her and stop Jack before his next deadly trick...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Richard Franklin does an excellent job of capturing the Third Doctor's authority, particularly in the scenes that see the Doctor confronting Diamond Jack. The Doctor is a little too sure of himself as he activates an alien device without knowing what the results will be, a mistake he does eventually own up to. His situation as an exile has some parallels with Diamond Jack's, though I don't think the story does enough with that element for it to stand out.

Jo Grant: Somewhat bizarrely for a Mike Yates Companion Chronicle, the story is mostly driven by Jo. She's the one who drags Mike out to follow up on a lead on Diamond Jack, and she gets the strongest link to Jack when he selects her as a volunteer. When she's held hostage near the end (because of course she is), she thinks up a plausible lie to save herself without betraying her friends.

Capt. Mike Yates: He finds the frozen statues in Hyde Park to be oddly beautiful, and the way he describes them makes it clear how much this sight haunts him decades after the fact. He has feelings for Jo, which makes it a little too easy for her to convince him to leave HQ with her, but he isn't willing to actually give voice to them, something Jack mocks.

Diamond Jack: The mysterious magician, whose powers are clearly not terrestrial. Jo thinks he doesn't have any actual ill intent. He's just a showman, playing to the crowds. Naturally, there's more to it than that - but I'm not sure there should have been. Jack is interesting in Episode One. Once all is revealed, he becomes just another routine villain to be routed. Michael Chance gives a good performance, playing Jack's lines as a man who is always showing off to an audience. His tone is mostly innocent in Episode One; then, in Episode Two, he takes on a harsher edge while still remaining the showman.


THOUGHTS:

The Magician's Oath is a story that I'd categorize as a "near miss." The imagery of the frozen Hyde Park and the victims caught in the disaster is eerie, horrible and beautiful all at the same time. That first episode is well paced, and Mike's initial encounter with Diamond Jack makes for a terrific scene. The cliffhanger is also good. At the midpoint, the story fully had me in its grip.

...And then proceeded to lose me about halfway through Episode Two.

The second episode still opens well, with a well-written confrontation that involves all of the regulars and Jack. But it's this scene that becomes the story's undoing. Everything is revealed all at once, in one big info-dump. By the time the scene ends, we know what happened at Hyde Park and why, and we know exactly what Jack's secret is.

At this point, there's still a good twenty minutes left in the story, but there's nothing interesting to fill that time. Instead, we get a pretty standard chase ending at Tower Bridge. Jack holds Jo hostage. Never mind that he has the power to freeze a park full of people without even trying - All of a sudden, the best he can do is become the umpteenth villain to menace Jo in a scene that feels like something straight out of a direct-to-video action thriller.


OVERALL:

The Magician Oath ends up as a disappointment, all the more because of how strongly it starts. The frozen over Hyde Park is a wonderful visual and a terrific narrative hook, and the first episode is both eerie and intriguing. Then the second episode devolves into standard villain clichés and ends with a routine standoff.

Would this fold neatly into the Pertwee era? Sure - but it would also rank among the era's weaker offerings.


Overall Rating: 4/10.

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3-3. The Doll of Death.

2 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 73 minutes. Written by: Marc Platt. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Katy Manning, Jane Goddard.


THE PLOT:

Jo Grant is meant to be attending a UNIT-mandated training session that the Doctor derisively labels "spy school." But when the Doctor detects a temporal anomaly at the National Museum, he insists on her accompanying him.

They find the anomaly in the office of Professor Harold Saunders, who has come into possession of an alien tablet. He refuses to let the Doctor examine it, fearing that the Doctor might be a professional rival looking to steal his work. Reluctantly, the Doctor and Jo leave - only to run straight back after an explosion in Saunders's office.

Saunders is dead and the tablet destroyed, but there is one clue: Mrs. Killebrew (Jane Goddard), an aging hippie they encounter at the museum. Killebrew runs a toy repair shop (a "toy hospital") in London.

The shop is in ruins, apparently gutted by an explosion that Mrs. Killebrew says hasn't happened yet. Jo and Sergeant Benton find a room of old dolls, which seem to come to life in their presence. Then time catches up with the explosion - and for Jo and the others in the shop, time begins running backwards...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Early on, he clashes with the Brigadier over having to fill out something as mundane as tax forms, a reminder of the sort of thing that makes him very frustrated with his exile. He hopes that the tablet's time properties will help him to escape his confinement, and he seems genuinely tempted to use it for himself. Despite the usual Third Doctor prickliness (and seriously, how did the often giddy and giggly First Doctor end up getting dubbed "the grumpy one?"), he remains compassionate at his core.

Jo Grant: Skilled at running interference between the Doctor and normal people. After the Doctor alienates Professor Saunders, Jo gives the man a warm smile and is friendly and respectful until he calms down enough to speak with them. She's also very impulsive, however. After Benton rescues her near the end of Episode One, she rushes right back into danger to help him. She also has a cheerfully materialistic side. During the long walk across a reverse-time London, she pauses to admire a pair of boots in a shop window. Killebrew sneers at her for being brainwashed by bourgeois capitalism, prompting Jo to reply that she simply likes the boots - which, inevitably, end up as part of her wardrobe.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: One of the few "off" character beats is the level of antagonism between him and the Doctor. Even in Season Seven, when they frequently did clash, the Brigadier wouldn't have accused him of "playing games" once dead bodies started showing up - and by the end of Season Eight, when this story is set, he was barely questioning even the Doctor's most bizarre impulses. This is made up for in Episode Two, however. When he, Jo, and Benton find themselves cut off from the Doctor, the Brigadier refuses to be ruffled, pointing out that this was the exact type of situation UNIT was created to handle even without the Doctor.

Sgt. Benton: When Jo insists on following up the lead on Mrs. Killebrew, an off-duty Benton offers to help. He rescues Jo twice in the toy hospital, first saving her from spectral hunting dogs and shortly after shielding her from gunfire. He ends up wounded but, despite increasing blood loss, continues to carry on, insisting that he's fit for duty.


THOUGHTS:

The Doll of Death benefits from some effectively creepy imagery. There's a reason that "living dolls" have become a horror movie staple. There's something intrinsically unsettling about seeing this thing that's human-like but not human suddenly turn its head. Writer Marc Platt makes this even better by choosing to use a Victorian doll. If you've ever seen one in person, you'll wonder that anyone would ever have put such nightmare fodder in a child's bedroom.

Somewhat to my surprise, this story didn't turn out to be a horror romp with living dolls. The doll is part of a more complex story involving parallel timelines, one moving forward and one moving in reverse. That's even connected to the doll via its palindromic name: Hannah, a name that's the same forward or back.

The story has some fun with the reverse timeline. Jo describes the difficulty of attempting to dodge people and objects moving in reverse. Damage is done not by an explosion, but by an implosion, with Benton's injury the result of a bullet going backward from a wall and into the gun that fired it. Key scenes from Part One are glimpsed again in Part Two when events hurtle back toward the beginning of the story.

Katy Manning's performance provides a considerable boost. When she reads the Doctor's lines, it's a bit surprising just how much of Jon Pertwee she captures. Manning is startlingly good at recreating some of the patterns of his line deliveries, to the point that I almost forgot that Pertwee wasn't actually present. Her Brigadier is also good, always sounding one increasingly miniscule step away from exasperation. With Manning changing her voice and delivery style for each character, this becomes less of a reading and more of a one-woman show (well, with a guest appearance by Jane Goddard).

My only serious reservation is the ending. The story just sort of... stops, abruptly cutting from the climax to the present day. It plays as if someone said, "We're at 70 minutes, and this is a one-disc release. Quick - wrap it up!" I emphasize that the ending isn't actually botched - you can easily enough put it all together - but I think a quick tag scene would have made it a bit cleaner.


OVERALL:

Outside of the rushed ending, The Doll of Death is a very good story, one of the Companion Chronicles' best. The story is clever and well-paced. The visual descriptions are strong.  Most of all, Katy Manning's performance is outstanding. The Third Doctor can be a difficult incarnation for audio performers to capture well, and Manning makes it look easy.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

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2-3. Old Soldiers.

2 episodes.  Written by: James Swallow.  Directed by: Nigel Fairs.  Produced by: Sharon Gosling.


THE PLOT

A plea for help from an old friend brings Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to Kriegeskind, a centuries-old German fortress that has been converted into a UNIT research facility. The Brigadier arrives to find that his friend Konrad (Toby Longworth), the facility's C. O., has been driven insane, leaving the fortress under the command of the fearful Major Schrader, a "limited" soldier who is clearly out of his depth.

Feeling a sense of something wrong, the Brigadier resists Schrader's attempts to get him to leave. His instincts are proved correct, when he finds the castle in under siege by the ghosts of soldiers from wars past, from Roman legionnaires to Nazi stormtroopers. The Brigadier sends for the Doctor immediately and, despite the friction left in the wake of the Silurian incident, the Doctor comes. But with the ghostly attacks becoming ever more relentless, and with Schrader preparing to take drastic action, it may already be too late!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: This is essentially an audio book with dramatized scenes. As a result, it is left to the listener to imagine Jon Pertwee delivering the lines written for the Doctor. Fortunately, writer James Swallow has a good feel for the Pertwee Doctor.  While Nicholas Courtney is no impressionist, he captures enough of Pertwee's vocal tics to make it quite easy to summon Pertwee's image.

The Doctor is in very little of Episode One. When he does arrive, near the end of the first episode, James Swallow gives him an appropriately grand entrance, descending onto Kriegeskind by parachute while the UNIT soldiers look mutely on. Though he came when called, he remains irritated at the Brigadier - note how he almost instantly declares that this problem won't be solved by blowing it up, a pointed reference to their last adventure. Despite this, he does show empathy at the end, laying a hand on the Brigadier's shoulder and softly (and with perfect delivery by Courtney) extending comfort. The Third Doctor is well-captured throughout, though Swallow does perhaps have him spend just a tad too much time fiddling with gadgets and wires.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: This is, of course, very much the Brigadier's story. The first, near-Doctorless episode is entirely carried by the Brig, and it's reassuring to see him firmly in Season Seven mode: absolutely competent, and quite intelligent. Despite Schrader's attempts to pacify him, he can sense that all is not well at Kriegeskind, and knows to trust his instincts. When Konrad experiences a moment of lucidity and references something "alien" and how "they all died," Lethbridge-Stewart finds his way to the facility's records.  From experience at concealing certain types of deaths, he knows exactly what to look for. Even in the second episode, when the Doctor takes charge of finding answers, the Brigadier conducts himself with absolute competence, taking charge of the soldiers in the fortress and leading them in holding off the phantom invaders.

When all is revealed, heavy parallels are drawn between the choices that led Kriegeskind to its current dilemma and the choice the Brigadier made with the Silurians. The Brigadier does not apologize for that decision. He tells us from the outset that he stands by what he did. He saw a threat, he tells us, and he removed it. He acknowledges that his decision at Wenley Moor was a difficult one, though, indicating that Lethbrige-Stewart was perhaps more conscious of the Silurians as an intelligent species than he may have let on.


THOUGHTS

Old Soldiers is an atmospheric and well-produced science fiction/action piece, one that sits quite comfortably in between Dr. Who and the Silurians and The Ambassadors of Death. The story is strong, and the nature of the story - once it is revealed - makes it a convincingly personal story to the Brigadier. I could believe this being an incident that Lethbridge-Stewart would relive over a drink or two, years later, and I enjoyed seeing the Brigadier's more reflective side.

Swallow does well in bringing both the 3rd Doctor and the Brigadier to life. I missed the presence of Liz Shaw - referenced, but not actually "seen" in the story - though I'm honestly not sure that there would have been room for her, particularly with the single-disc format constricting the running time to less than 75 minutes. The image of blank-faced soldiers from the past stepping out of the walls, attacking with no expression, and disappearing noiselessly when "killed," is a haunting one, and the high action content (particularly in Episode Two) keeps things moving at a tight pace.

I only have a few quibbles with the story. One is with Swallow's writing style. Too much of the story has major scenes and conversations summarized, creating distance from the events at unwelcome points. Most of the Brigadier's lines are clearly "recalled after the fact," with only a few of his lines delivered as if "in the moment." This lack of immediacy saps some of the urgency from the proceedings. I would have preferred these conversations be allowed to play out far more often than actually ended up being the case.

I also had problems with the character of Schrader. Konrad summarizes him as a decent soldier, yet limited - an adequate second-in-command who now finds himself in over his head. This type of characterization could have worked, could have made a nice contrast with the Doctor and the Brigadier (both of whom belong in command). But this isn't the characterization we see. Schrader doesn't come across as a decent X. O. abruptly elevated above his level of competence. He comes across as an idiot, a German Frank Burns, and I never believed that the Brigadier would have tolerated him for a heartbeat, let alone the Doctor. Some of this may be down to the demands of the 2-part format. A plot with reasonable meat on its bones in less than 75 minutes doesn't allow a lot of room for subtleties with supporting characters. Still, even a touch of subtelty with Schrader would have been nice.

Special mention to guest star Toby Longworth, who voices both Konrad and Schrader, and creates completely different voices for both characters. If I had played the CD blind, with no credits to reference, I would have thought this Companion Chronicle had two guest actors rather than one. Both performances are decent; and if Longworth does better with Konrad than with Schrader, that is solely down to Konrad being a better-written character.


Rating: 7/10. A good addition to the 3rd Doctor's era, one which fits very well within the season it has been placed.

Previous Television Story: Dr. Who & the Silurians
Next Television Story: The Ambassadors of Death

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1-3. The Blue Tooth.

4 episodes.  Written by: Nigel Fairs.  Directed by: Mark J. Thompson.  Produced by: Mark J. Thompson, Sharon Gosling.


THE PLOT

Liz decides to spend a day off visiting Jean, an old university friend. When Jean fails to show up at their scheduled meeting, though, Liz goes to her house and finds that her friend has vanished. When the Doctor arrives at the scene, he tells Liz that there have been several disappearances in the Cambridge area.

As Liz investigates a link between Jean and another missing person - Jean's dentist - the Doctor and the Brigadier follow up another lead: a particularly bizarre suicide-by-train. A look at the dead man's body confirms the Doctor's worst fears. The body has been infested, and partially converted, by Cybermats. The Doctor is about to pit his wits against the Cybermen once more...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Writer Nigel Fairs does a fair job of capturing the Pertwee Doctor's gentler side. The Doctor is compassionate with Liz in every scene. He is also unfazed and unruffled by the dilemma. Even when Liz is herself infected, he refuses to give up, identifying the means of this new Cyber conversion process and using his considerable skills to find an antidote.

Fairs does a good job of keeping the viewpoint Liz's while at the same time keeping the 3rd Doctor in the foreground of the story. The only thing that's missing from the Pertwee Doctor is the spikiness. Look at the televised stories from Season Seven, and Pertwee's Doctor is very short-tempered, even downright antagonistic, to characters in each of those stories. Here, we only get the 3rd Doctor's softer side. That makes for a more likable characterization, perhaps, but a slightly less interesting one. Still, Nigel Fairs captures the Doctor here somewhat better than James Swallow did in Old Soldiers, and Caroline John manages to suggest something of Pertwee's style of line delivery, making it quite easy to picture Pertwee throughout.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: The Brigadier is very much on the periphery of this story, and he ends up being the one regular Caroline John can't capture in her line deliveries. She basically just lowers her voice and grits out the Brig's lines in gruff tones, making for a rather one-note Lethbridge-Stewart. Still, the story does convey both his efficiency and his chivalry, in trying to protect Liz from harm. He is definitely the worst-captured of the regulars in this audio, though.

Liz Shaw: The Blue Tooth is Liz's story, so it comes as small surprise that the character is recreated quite effectively. The best characterization comes in the early episodes, which Nigel Fairs uses to fill in a lot of backstory for Liz (including why a seemingly over-serious, studious Cambridge scientist has such a penchant for such extremely short mini-skirts). It adds an extra emotional dimension to the character to have her personally affected by the Invasion of the Week this time; and while the audio never does quite answer its own question ("When did I decide to leave the Doctor?"), it at least points to some potential reasons for the character to have decided to move on.


THOUGHTS

The Blue Tooth succeeds in many respects. It recaptures its era quite well. This feels very much like an extra Season Seven story, with the Doctor and the Brigadier working together but not 100% harmoniously, and with UNIT even setting up temporary offices on-site (in this case, at the college), rather than at UNIT headquarters (a set which did not exist until Season 8). There is a sense of seriousness to the proceedings, a sense that this story takes place in something very like "the real world." Even the Cybermen are treated in a way that brings them closer to the real world, using a real world outlet that often is a source of anxiety (in this case, a dentist's office) to make the threat feel credible. Honestly, if you were to take a time machine back to 1970 and commission the production team to bolt a 4-episode Cyberman story onto the end of Season Seven, I could easily picture the result playing out much like this story does.

One thing I do enjoy about the first set of Companion Chronicles is that Big Finish had not yet decided on a "set" number of episodes for each story. All stories were single-disc, but there were both 2-parters and 4-parters. That's something I wish they would return to, the idea that different stories might benefit from being structured in different episodic formats. The Blue Tooth is very much structured as a 4-parter, and it benefits from that. The Companion Chronicles range has remained strong (it's my favorite BF range at the moment), but I do regret the rigid, "one disc = 2 episodes, every time" format.

My only major gripe with the audio, and one which does cost it a point, is the resolution. The climax - with the Doctor and Liz in the midst of a nest of Cybermen - had me. I was quite gripped, and the images were vivid in my mind. And then... Liz passes out, and the Doctor fills her in on the denouement retrospectively, and not in a great deal of detail. It's the equivalent of a TV episode cutting from the moment of greatest crisis to the tag scene, and having the Doctor tell the companion, "Oh, I sorted it out." The summary of this off-screen resolution also feels a bit too easy, almost as if Fairs had written himself into a corner and couldn't quite write his way out again. It still works better than "Pertwee wrapping a green tentacle around his neck and thrashing a lot." But it's weak, and lets down an otherwise first-rate story.


Rating: 7/10.

Preceded by: Inferno
Followed by: Terror of the Autons


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