The Time Lady Sartia has arrived on Funderell. Romana’s best friend is in search of the planet’s secrets… but what other dangers await?
The Time Lady Sartia has arrived on Funderell. Romana’s best friend is in search of the planet’s secrets… but what other dangers await?
THE THIEF WHO STOLE TIME
I’m not sure if Marc Platt really sticks the landing with “The Thief Who Stole Time,” the concluding part to “The Skin of the Sleek” and the final episode of the sixth series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. It’s entertaining, as things go, but it doesn’t provide very interesting answers to the questions posed by the first story.
The big question in “The Skin of the Sleek” was about the planet Funderell itself: what was its purpose, and why was it originally put there by the Time Lords? Platt answers this, but the answer is characteristically vague: the planet sits over a convergence of potential timelines and serves as a way to keep them from bleeding into one another. Quite what this means and how it works is not explained, but Sartia (Joannah Tincey) wants the planet’s power for herself so that she can do… something apocalyptic. Platt doesn’t dwell on this, which is a good thing, because a lesser writer would have focused entirely on Sartia as a crazed megalomaniac who wants to take over and/or destroy the universe. Here, she’s unbalanced, yes, but also desperate to be free of the boredom of Gallifrey once and for all. It’s not very rewarding, but at least it’s rooted in the character and her established motivations. It also makes sense of Sartia’s attitude toward Romana: she had to watch as Romana, the perfect student and representative of the establishment, got to travel with the Time Lords’ most famous rebel. So it works, all things considered – it just doesn’t lay out a rewarding conclusion.
Where the story really succeeds is in its world-building, something that Platt really nails down. All of the disparate elements of Funderell are revealed as part of a larger Time Lord plan to keep the planet working. As an example, the people worship Funderell’s Daughter, a massive electric sleek, and keep it in a chamber under their city. But that chamber also contains the backup computer systems operating the planet, and the giant sleek is there to charge them with electricity! It all fits together quite elegantly, a testament to Platt’s skill at this part of the job.
The character work isn’t bad. The Doctor is downbeat and angry, and for the first time all series actually sounds like the Doctor we saw in season 18. Romana doesn’t do as well, though – when she’s not helpless, she’s reactive, and she doesn’t contribute very much to the resolution. The supporting characters work, especially Blujaw (Des McAleer) and Linnis (Alex Wyndham), both the most intriguing and most sympathetic characters. As for the production, it’s quite good, from director Ken Bentley to sound designer Jamie Robertson. But I must point out that, as interesting and different as these stories were to most of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, they still don’t sound anything like season 18 stories. The script would fit in, at least, so I suppose they deserve some credit for that. Overall, “The Thief Who Stole Time” is a solid conclusion both to the story and to the series. There’s room for improvement, but given how these series-ending spectaculars usually go, perhaps I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Recommended.
7/10