On a brisk winter’s morning in 1850s Yorkshire, Cuthbert, head of the intergalactic business known as ‘The Conglomerate’ prepares to hijack a very special train.
In the far future, his assistant, Mr Dorrick is awoken by howling alarms. There is a problem with the Quantum Gateway.
In the TARDIS, the Doctor, Romana and K9 detect strange distortions in the Vortex, an energy stream coming from a strange creature called a Laan.
The threads of a plan centuries in the making are coming together. But who is behind this plan? And can anyone possibly escape when history is against them?
THE PURSUIT OF HISTORY
Another year, another series-ending Nick Briggs spectacular in the Fourth Doctor Adventures, and another crushing disappointment. This time it’s “The Pursuit of History,” and while it’s only the first of two parts, it inspires no confidence that the second part will be any good.
For this story, Briggs resurrects Cuthbert (David Warner) and the Conglomerate, last seen in the “War Against the Laan” and “The Dalek Contract” two-part stories from the second series. Cuthbert is an important character to Briggs, as he was one of the recurring villains in the old Audio Visuals series. But he’s not an important character to me, because my only exposure to him was in these Fourth Doctor Adventures, and this appearance is just as uninteresting as the previous ones. After three years, it’s easy to forget the details of the Conglomerate, so fortunately there’s lots of ham-fisted expository dialogue to catch the audience up. It’s still an intergalactic mega-corporation whose tentacles extend into almost every facet of society, and Cuthbert is still the mysterious CEO with no apparent personal history. “The Pursuit of History” goes into his background, and reveals that he is quite literally a self-made man: he has engineered his own success through time travel. We saw this sort of paradox in “The Paradox Planet” two-parter earlier this year, but that story was actually good.
The Laan, who have been enslaved by the Conglomerate to power their Quantum Gateway, kidnap Romana and take her into the far future. She spends the story on a Conglomerate station pitted against Mr. Dorrick (Toby Hadoke), Cuthbert’s assistant. (There’s also a blue alien of some kind, but I can’t remember the character’s name or species and I have no interest in listening to any of this a second time to find out.) Romana believes she is superior to everyone on this space station, and she expresses this by condescending to every single character like they’re in preschool. I like Lalla Ward, and I like Romana, but I don’t like this arrogant, obnoxious caricature that has appeared in her place. Yes, the Doctor and Romana were arrogant know-it-alls in season 17 – but they were also witty and likable, something Briggs apparently overlooked.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and K9 wander around 1850s Yorkshire in pursuit of Romana and come face to face with Cuthbert and a bunch of regional accents masquerading as characters. The problem with Cuthbert is simple: if he has no history, he’s not a character; he’s just a manifestation of greed, much like his company. The story briefly entertains the idea that the Conglomerate has actually done a lot of good for its business partners, but we don’t spend much time on that idea because it’s subtle and therefore unwelcome in this script. Also unwelcome in this script are things like believable dialogue and characters finishing complete sentences before being interrupted.
There is very little to like about this story. There’s a brief interlude at the beginning with a parrot, voiced like a Monty Python reject, that’s probably setting something up, but I don’t care. None of the characters are interesting at all. David Troughton’s in it, and with literally no setup whatsoever we find out he’s the Black Guardian at the end. Briggs directs well enough, and I’d like to comment on Jamie Robertson’s sound design but I don’t remember much of it, so consumed was I by slamming my head repeatedly against the wall. This had been the best Fourth Doctor Adventures series by far, but since we can’t have nice things, here’s “The Pursuit of History.” You can keep it.
3/10