1. The Curator’s Egg by Julian Richards
Zoltan Clarkson (Eccentric Billionaire, Cybernetics Tycoon, Museum Curator) had a dream of a domestic dinosaur in every home. He bought the empty county of Dorset to work on this dream and develop cyborg dinosaur hybrids in a safe, contained environment.
Now Clarkson lies insensate in the infirmary, his twin brother Andrew struggles to hold things together and dinosaurs walk the Earth. With the Doctor and Ben chasing monsters at sea, Polly has only a socially awkward scientist and the world’s friendliest dog to help her prevent the rise of the ultimate predators…
2. Dumb Waiter by Rob Nisbet
The Doctor and Victoria attend a civilised garden party. But their genial hostess, Mrs De Winter, is convinced that the garden conceals a secret; something about Carlos the head waiter who never speaks.
The hidden truth can be glimpsed by people less accustomed to the mask of politeness and cake. People like Jamie.
And people like Leela, the mysterious “warrior of the Seventeen”…
3. The Iron Maid by John Pritchard
“I saw a wheel up in the heavens – a wheel of fire and swords… And I saw a heap of armour that was waiting for a Maid to put it on. I feared that it was meant for me, but a voice said otherwise – that another Maid was coming and she would save our country from its enemies…”
The TARDIS has arrived in France in the fourteenth century – a time of devastation and despair. In an empty church beside a crowded graveyard, Zoe meets a woman who claims to see a dreadful future waiting for the world.
4. The Tactics of Defeat by Tony Jones
In the rain-swept jungle of Belize, Captain Ruth Matheson and Zoe Heriot are both about to discover just what sacrifices they are prepared to make when faced with a seventeenth century threat that might just spell death for millions of innocent people.
Does the end justify the means? Sometimes winning feels like exactly like losing…
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE CURATOR’S EGG
We’re back with our annual box set of Companion Chronicles, this being the second volume of Troughton-era stories, and the set kicks off with “The Curator’s Egg” by Julian Richards. Set in the earliest days of the second Doctor’s tenure, with only Ben and Polly accompanying him, this story sees the TARDIS land on Earth years after the Dalek invasion. Once there, they find a scientific research facility dedicated to producing… cyborg dinosaurs. It’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, and it doesn’t get any more sensible as the story progresses. The Doctor and Ben go off to sea, leaving Polly behind, and the bulk of the story is about Polly and socially awkward scientist Andrew Clarkson (Elliot Chapman) teaming up to fight Clarkson’s maniacal twin brother Zoltan (Chapman again). While Zoltan appears to be convalescing in the facility’s infirmary, he’s actually transferred his mind into a dinosaur’s body, and the story revolves around his attempts to clone his mind into multiple dinosaurs, thus making himself the sole ruler of a world solely populated by dinosaurs. This is a deeply, deeply silly story, one that wouldn’t be out of place in the bonkers, old Doctor Who Annuals of the time. But it’s not particularly funny, and it’s as shallow as a dry pond, so the silliness is more grating than entertaining. It also barely feels like a Companion Chronicle: yes, Anneke Wills is narrating, but so much of the script is full-cast it feels like an Early Adventure more than anything. I’m sure many fans will find a great deal to enjoy about this story; unfortunately, I am not one of them.
4/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: DUMB WAITER
The second story in the box is “Dumb Waiter” by Rob Nisbet, a tale that brings together two different eras of Doctor Who by sending Leela back in the Doctor’s personal timestream to meet the second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria. I criticized the (terrible) “Return to Telos” in the Fourth Doctor Adventures for having Jamie and Leela in the same story but not having them meet; here, they meet and interact extensively, but it still doesn’t feel all that important.
Jamie and Leela are an obvious pairing: they both view events from the perspective of a less developed society and they’re both trained fighters, though Leela is primarily a hunter and Jamie a soldier. They’re both fiercely loyal and ready to sacrifice themselves at a moment’s notice, and they’re both much more intelligent than their “primitive” exteriors let on. Nisbet explores this by having them fight each other a couple of times and gain a grudging respect in the process. This just isn’t very creative: it’s written well for what it is and the two actors play it very well, but that’s about the least imaginative path one could take when pairing these characters up. Other obvious moments occur: Leela at first thinks Victoria is a scared, useless girl, but a surprising act of bravery earns Leela’s respect. Leela doesn’t recognize the second Doctor and doesn’t trust him, until his actions reveal the truth of his words. Again, all of this is written well, and it’s delightful to hear Louise Jameson and Frazer Hines interact – especially with Hines playing all three members of the TARDIS crew – but I wish this had been more ambitious, like the best of the Companion Chronicles. We don’t learn anything about any of the characters that we don’t already know, and seeing them from the others’ perspectives isn’t nearly as rewarding as it should be.
As for the story itself, the setup is much better than the conclusion. I like the setting of a fancy garden party with a dark underbelly, and having different characters seeing different things is an effective way to communicate suspense. Louise Jameson goes way over the top as Mrs. De Winter, so much so that it distracts from the story. And while I appreciate the imagination on display in the conclusion, the action sequences translate poorly to audio, leading to a confusing mess of yelling and loud noises. Overall, though, there’s enough here for a recommendation, based purely on the uniting of two eras – but there’s also room for improvement.
6/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE IRON MAID
“The Iron Maid” by John Pritchard, the third story in the set, is best recognized for being utterly unmemorable. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe land in France during the Hundred Years’ War, and encounter a local woman who sees visions. Specifically, she envisions a maiden coming to wear a magical suit of armor and defeat the English, and she thinks Zoe is that maiden. Looks like we’re doing a Joan of Arc story, right? Actually, we’re not: the story is about a rift in time that has deposited soldiers and weapons from World War I several centuries in the past. Pritchard has a strong grasp of plotting and layers revelations throughout the script, from characters with hidden identities to forces with hidden allegiances. He also has a strong grasp of the characters – I like his take on the Doctor, who isn’t just a friend to Zoe but, in her eyes, also an inscrutable, intellectual equal. But the fundamental problem is that nothing that happens in the story is particularly interesting. The characters’ motivations are obvious, the structure is solid but devoid of surprise, and there isn’t much thematic depth to speak of despite ample opportunity. I don’t remember much about it, frankly, and I just finished listening to it. As a result, I also don’t have much to say about it. There’s certainly nothing bad about “The Iron Maid” but that, on its own, does not a successful story make.
5/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE TACTICS OF DEFEAT
This set of Companion Chronicles ends with “The Tactics of Defeat” by Tony Jones, a story which makes you wonder why it’s in a Second Doctor box set in the first place. Rather than focusing on a character from that era, this stars Daphne Ashbrook as UNIT Captain Ruth Matheson in pursuit of a criminal named Deakin (Matthew Brenher) in the jungles of Belize. She has a recording of Zoe visiting the same location, but that recording ends with Zoe’s death – and that recording is Wendy Padbury’s route into the story.
Right off the bat, I’m not sure why they chose to feature Ruth Matheson. While I appreciate attempts to shake up a staid format, someone who purchases this box set expecting four companion-driven stories from the Troughton era is going to be very confused when this one starts. And while “Dumb Waiter” in this same set also features a character from another era, no Doctor Who fan is going to wonder who Leela is. But Ruth Matheson? Are we just working from the assumption that every listener has heard “Tales from the Vault” and/or “Mastermind?” For that matter, are there other stories I haven’t heard? A big revelation here is that Matheson is on this mission to avenge Yee Jee Tso’s character from their previous stories together – when did that happen? I know it wasn’t in a Companion Chronicle. Imagine if Bernice Summerfield and her supporting cast turned up in a Peter Capaldi story and just assumed the audience’s familiarity. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it: it was a novel called Big Bang Generation and it was terrible.
All of that is of secondary importance, of course, but I addressed it first because the story itself isn’t very interesting. Deakin puts Matheson through a series of deadly challenges like he’s the bad guy from the Saw movies, and since Matheson is largely by herself, much of the story is taken up with Daphne Ashbrook monologuing awkwardly about her surroundings. Things liven up when Zoe shows up, but the grand revelations at the conclusion of the story are easy to see coming. When bizarre alien technology is revealed, explained, and immediately forgotten about, you can bet it’ll come back at the conclusion. And when we hear a recording of a character being killed, we can assume that sci-fi shenanigans will explain that we weren’t hearing what we thought we were hearing.
I don’t object to the idea of using Ruth Matheson in a Troughton story on its face, but “The Tactics of Defeat” – and what a lousy title – isn’t the way to do it. It’s dull, it’s predictable, and it’s unwelcoming – and it’s a poor ending to a shaky box set.
4/10