1. Fields of Terror by John Pritchard
The TARDIS has brought the Doctor back to Revolutionary France, a place that’s always fascinated him. But this time he, along with Steven and Vicki, are drawn into a devastated land, caught between the soldiers who are burning all before them and a monstrous shape that follows in their wake.
2. Across the Darkened City by David Bartlett
On the planet Shade, The Chaons, an invading race of strange, amorphous creatures that ravenously absorb energy, have reduced the city there to a desolate ruin. Separated from the Doctor and Vicki, Steven has to join forces with an unexpected ally to find his way back to the TARDIS. Ahead, lies a nightmare journey through the dark – a test of endurance and trust.
3. The Bonfires of the Vanities by Una McCormack
When the Doctor, Polly, and Ben arrive in Lewes in the late 1950s, they’re just in time to celebrate Guy Fawkes’ Night. But there’s no fun on the streets tonight – the town is in the grip of fear. There are imps on the loose in Lewes, the Bonfire Boys are on the march, and nobody is safe from the fire.
4. The Plague of Dreams by Guy Adams
“Pray welcome, one and all, to this, a fantasy in two acts, presented, most humbly, for your pleasure. We bring you drama and magic, angels and demons, a tale of mysterious plague… of nightmares made flesh… of a war fought both in this world and those immeasurably distant. A war, in fact, fought through the mists of time itself. It will make you gasp! It will make you weep! It may even make some of you wake-up…”
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: FIELDS OF TERROR
The Companion Chronicles are back, with another four-story box set focusing on the Hartnell era. The first of these is “Fields of Terror” by John Pritchard, a story that returns us to the time of the Reign of Terror, but in a much different and much more dangerous part of France.
While Paris was relatively civilized even in the depths of the Terror, other areas of the country did not fare so well. Bands of soldiers, referred to as “columns of hell,” ransacked the countryside, brutally murdering anyone suspected of anti-revolutionary thoughts or sympathies. It is into this mess that the TARDIS lands, stranding the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki with one such band of soldiers and their leader Lagrange (Robert Hands). The plot is quite simple: the soldiers have been destroying everything in their path, and now something is stalking them through the forests and killing them off one by one.
The title, the setting, and various conversations by the characters all illustrate that this story is about terror: how it is inflicted, its effects, and whether it can be controlled. The Doctor astutely points out that terror can never work as a strategy to rule because those inflicting the terror will always ultimately fall victim to its effects. And so is the case in this story, as the same soldiers wreaking havoc are the ones who cannot function in the face of the creature stalking them. It’s never explained what is following them, only that it seems related to a hospital the soldiers burned to the ground. I think this is a smart move by Pritchard – putting a name to the creature would strip it of its mysterious power.
Unfortunately, the story does virtually nothing with the lead characters, which renders it something of a lost opportunity as a Companion Chronicle. There’s no narrative frame – although we haven’t had one of those in quite some time, so perhaps I should stop expecting them – and despite Maureen O’Brien’s expert narration, we never really get a good look into Vicki’s head. She’s plucky, outspoken, and cautiously brave, but we don’t get to see how the story affects her. The narrative itself is also rather close to an audiobook, complete with frequent “said the Doctor” lines. The sound design is great, the atmosphere is creepy, and the plot is intelligent – I just wish they’d done more with the characters.
7/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: ACROSS THE DARKENED CITY
One of the best elements of the Companion Chronicles was their willingness to push the boundaries of Doctor Who audio storytelling, whether through unconventional plots or altering narrative convention. Since the move to box sets, this has not been on display nearly as often – but fortunately “Across the Darkened City” by David Bartlett delivers a plot we haven’t seen before.
As a concept, the plot is very simple, and therefore I don’t have much to say about it: Steven is marooned on a planet with a lone, damaged Dalek that needs his help to survive. The planet, meanwhile, is shrouded in darkness, and so Steven needs the Dalek’s infrared vision to get around. Two natural enemies thrown together on a “road trip” narrative – as I recall, we’ve never seen this in Doctor Who, and it’s a compelling hook for a story. Bartlett tries to evoke audience sympathy for the Dalek by having it act out of character: it insists upon keeping Steven alive, to the point of exterminating another Dalek that tries to kill him; it speaks approvingly of teamwork; it claims it’s not like other Daleks because it’s a new, superior genetic variant. Steven, always ready to help the unfortunate, starts to think of the Dalek as an individual, referring to the Dalek by its designation rather than just as “a Dalek.”
Of course, the Dalek betrays him at the end, largely because Steven forgets himself and puts the Dalek mutant into a fully functional casing, eliminating his own usefulness. But it’s important to point out that the two really were relying upon one another; it wasn’t like the Dalek could have murdered Steven and escaped whenever it liked. This prompts an interesting question: is a wounded Dalek worthy of sympathy? Of help? It’s not “The Scorpion and the Frog” territory, because the Dalek resists its nature. Steven struggles with this question throughout the story – we don’t get a concrete answer, but perhaps that’s for the best.
The plot and its related questions comprise the entirety of the story. The narrative is ordinary and while we spend a great deal of time with Steven’s thoughts we don’t learn anything interesting or surprising about him. As such, the story as a whole could be better. But what we do have is executed quite well, and the presence of Peter Purves elevates everything – he’s a masterful narrator. I wish these stories would be a bit more ambitious, but what we have is quite entertaining.
7/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE BONFIRES OF THE VANITIES
The third Companion Chronicle in the set is “The Bonfires of the Vanities” by Una McCormack, and it’s about as straightforward as the first story. The TARDIS lands in 1950s Lewes right as the Lewes Bonfire celebrations are about to begin on Guy Fawkes Night. And while the people of the town are rowdy in their celebration, something more sinister is going on, driving otherwise reasonable people to acts of violence.
There’s not much to recommend the plot. An alien force is terrorizing the city, animating Guy Fawkes masks and robes into imp-like creatures that do its bidding. There’s an attempt to give the alien some depth – when it first arrived on Earth, the people of Lewes thought it a monster and threw it into a bonfire – but this ultimately falls into the traditional Doctor Who storytelling trap of becoming a megalomaniac. Some of the people were cruel to me, therefore I’m going to kill every single one of them, burn the town to the ground, and salt the ashes! Ha ha ha ha ha! It’s not interesting and the historical trappings do nothing to counteract the lack of interest.
I like some of the surrounding material. Much of the story is set around an old library, which is a wonderful location for a tale like this. The librarian is a fantastic character, a woman ahead of her time who even catches Polly out making sexist assumptions. And the atmosphere is effective: it genuinely feels like a festival but with something malevolent slowly encroaching. The narration is also effective, splitting the duties between Anneke Wills and Elliot Chapman. We get to hear Chapman’s take on Hartnell, and while he captures the vocal mannerisms well enough, his relative youth and accent make the Doctor sound overly patrician. And while both narrators are more than capable, I don’t like how the story is split between them – it removes a lot of the potential uniqueness of a Companion Chronicle and makes the story feel more like a talking book. There’s also no character development here whatsoever, meaning the story relies almost entirely on the plot, and I’ve already said the plot is disappointing. This story is a Companion Chronicle in name only; had it come out in the old release schedule, it would have passed without comment and sunk quietly to the bottom of the ratings. Oh well.
5/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE PLAGUE OF DREAMS
Finally, in Guy Adams’ “The Plague of Dreams,” we get a story that feels like an “old-school” Companion Chronicle. There’s a narrative device, it’s actually about something – of course it’s also overwritten and its attempts at arc plotting don’t work, but it’s still an ambitious script that rewards the listener.
For those who differentiate between such things, “The Plague of Dreams” is actually a “full-cast” story rather than a narrated drama. It certainly seems to be narrated at first, with Elliot Chapman’s Player describing the events of a late-period Hartnell story, but when Polly enters the scene we realize they’re actually performing her memories of the story on stage. The Player talks her through it, encouraging her to act out various roles – it’s very self-referential, but it avoids being smug and thus gets away with it. This is one of the few times that a Companion Chronicle has pointed out that the companion herself is doing an impression of the Doctor, and Anneke Wills makes it entirely convincing. But while the meta-narrative elements are very entertaining, the story (specifically the Player) is obsessed with Shakespeare, something that never fails to annoy me. It’s nothing against Shakespeare, who was one of the greatest and most influential writers in human history – I just don’t like stories in which characters recite entire parts of the script from various plays. It invariably feels like the author bragging about their education rather than any sort of dramatically necessary element.
The other significant part of “The Plague of Dreams” is its ties to the Time War. I was waiting for an explanation of why certain lines of dialogue were distorted and repeated in the earlier stories, but all we get is “the Time Lords are watching.” As it turns out, the explanation is in the trailer – assuming your audience listens to every piece of supplementary material is not wise. Though it does explain why the box set includes its own trailer on the final disc. As for the Time War material, it’s necessarily vague because it’s set in the Hartnell era. But why? You’re already bringing material from the new series back into 1966, so why now decide that you can’t use the words “Time Lords” or “Gallifrey” because they weren’t spoken on TV until years later? As for the material about the Doctor’s regeneration, it’s ineffectual because we don’t see it on screen by definition. Apparently the Doctor voluntarily decided to go to Antarctica in order to start down the path to becoming the War Doctor, and then immediately forgot all of that as soon as the TARDIS was in flight. Great?
“The Plague of Dreams” is, on the whole, a very smart story with a brilliant delivery – but it gets bogged down in arc plotting and continuity and ends up weaker than the sum of its parts. Get rid of the Time War stuff, ease up on the Shakespeare references, and this could be a 10 – as it is, it’s not quite there.
7/10