The search for the final segment of the Key to Time takes the Doctor and the First Romana to Ancient Rome. The Time Lady is appalled when her companion prefers to watch the latest Plautus comedy rather than complete their mission, and is even less delighted to meet the playwright himself.
But all is not what it seems, either onstage or behind the scenes…
In the far, far future, the Second Romana is destined to have her own encounter with a legacy of Rome, but Stoyn has been waiting. And his actions will set Romana on a collision course with her own past.
Quadrigger Stoyn wants his final revenge on the Doctor, and only Romana stands in his way.
Both of her.
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: LUNA ROMANA
Matt Fitton’s “Luna Romana” is a lot of things. It’s the 75th Companion Chronicle. It’s the final part of the anniversary trilogy and the final story to feature Stoyn. It’s the last Companion Chronicle to feature Lalla Ward and the last one to feature a living Doctor. It’s the last four-episode Companion Chronicle. It’s a tribute to the late Mary Tamm. And it’s… well, it’s not very good, unfortunately.
I’m under the impression that “Luna Romana” started out as a story intended for Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward, but that Tamm’s unfortunate passing caused a restructuring. Ward is still in the story, but taking Tamm’s place is Juliet Landau, first introduced in the Gallifrey series as a future incarnation of Romana. She narrates the story as her Romana reflecting back on an adventure experienced by her first incarnation, which leads to the odd experience of Landau doing Mary Tamm and Tom Baker impressions in the same story. And she’s quite good at it, especially her take on Tamm – she really nails her predecessor’s tone and inflections. She also has a pleasant, listenable narrative voice. Lalla Ward’s part of the story is more conventional, though it’s probably her best Companion Chronicle appearance yet.
The story follows both incarnations of Romana on separate adventures with the fourth Doctor that intersect at a few crucial points. Fitton keeps the Doctor largely out of the loop in the earlier story while allowing the later Romana’s memories of the first encounter to govern her actions. Fitton is normally quite good at structuring these time travel stories, and this is no exception, as the plot logic holds firm throughout. The story itself is languid: much of the “first” story involves the Doctor once again shirking his Key to Time responsibilities in ancient Rome and taking in a Plautus comedy instead. Terry Molloy plays all the parts of the play, and while his performance is largely excellent, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story: I don’t think there’s any significance to it. So the first episode drags quite a bit, and really every time we return to Plautus’ company the story grinds to a halt. I think the other plot, with the Doctor and the second Romana visiting a Rome-themed lunar theme park in the future, is better, as things actually happen, but even that tends to drag. I like how Fitton ties things into season 16, making the Doctor and Romana conduct a second search for the fifth segment of the Key to Time, but even that sounds like padding when you write it out.
The biggest problem here is Stoyn himself. Nick Wallace gave him some genuinely interesting material in “The Dying Light,” but here Fitton transforms him into a generic cackling maniac hell-bent on revenge. Sure, he still wants to return to Gallifrey, but now he wants to destroy the Doctor on the way, and erase Earth from history in the process for reasons I’m sure are known to him. Stoyn’s “splintering,” while interesting, doesn’t really contribute to his story – “Luna Romana” is an example of taking a subtle character and making him more obvious for no particularly good reason other than to provide a conclusion to his story. Molloy is great, of course, but he deserves better material than this.
As a tribute to Mary Tamm, “Luna Romana” is better, but even then it goes too far. I loved the audio clips of her other Big Finish appearances at the beginning, and Fitton writes a great line for Landau about how Tamm’s Romana exists eternally as a time traveler. But then, at the end, the tribute goes on and on, and leaps from touching straight into mawkish, which left me cold during the credits instead of emotional.
On the production front, Lisa Bowerman’s direction is quite good, but the sound design from Richard Fox and Lauren Yason is questionable – some of the background effects repeat to the point of irritation, for example. Overall, “Luna Romana” is another disappointment. There’s nothing truly bad about it, but as the capstone to an anniversary trilogy it’s a letdown. Honestly, the same is true of the trilogy as a whole: it’s by far the worst set of linked plays in the entire Companion Chronicles range. Of all Big Finish’s various ranges, this is the one I would have thought least likely to fail at an anniversary story, but here we are.
Sigh.
5/10