1. The Trial of a Time Machine by Andy Lane
After colliding with another time-ship in the vortex, the TARDIS materialises on Thrantas where it is arrested and forced to face trial. While Chris and Roz investigate the crime scene, the Doctor must defend his most loyal companion against a society where guilt has no meaning.
2. Vanguard by Steve Jordan
The planet Vanguard was once ravaged by a war between its peoples: the Dauntless and the Intrepid. Now, robotic titans stalk the desolation, searching for survivors. Their mission: to end the war for one side or the other. But which side will the Doctor take?
3. The Jabari Countdown by Alan Flanagan
Arriving on a mysterious island, stranded with a group of mathematicians, the Doctor and his companions find themselves on the fringes of the Second World War. Trapped with only each other and an unknown threat, the group must work together to solve a puzzle greater than just one world’s war.
4. The Dread of Night by Tim Foley
When a grieving household offers the TARDIS travellers shelter from the weather, the Doctor, Chris and Roz find themselves exposed to even less hospitable conditions. A sinister presence stalks the house, plaguing its inhabitants… and only the truth can free them.
THE SEVENTH DOCTOR: THE NEW ADVENTURES: THE TRIAL OF A TIME MACHINE
Since we can’t have nice things, Big Finish cancelled the Novel Adaptations range due to poor sales. This is a shame, as it was arguably their best Doctor Who range – but at least we have something of a replacement with a new range of The Seventh Doctor: The New Adventures box sets. Featuring the late New Adventures crew of the Doctor, Roz Forrester, and Chris Cwej, this set features four original hour-long stories, supposedly in the style of the novels. The first of these, “The Trial of a Time Machine” by Andy Lane, is a solid gesture in the right direction but ultimately nothing spectacular.
This story is about different systems of justice and whether they afford legitimate outcomes to those who come under their influences. In case you weren’t clear on this point, the Doctor and companions have a relatively obvious conversation about the Adjudicators and their methods. Chris and Roz are proud of their careers in law enforcement, viewing the law as a way to enforce the universal rules of morality. But the Doctor disagrees: he feels that all morality is relative to the place in which you find yourself. He even hedges a bit on murder – and while that’s not entirely surprising coming from this most utilitarian of Doctors, it’s not really borne out in the story itself. Hopefully we’ll see some legitimate disagreement between the Doctor and his companions as this set continues that isn’t confined to a philosophical debate.
The central conflict is quite imaginative. Lane has dreamed up the planet of Thrantas, a civilization that has developed time travel but not faster-than-light travel. They can only travel backwards in time using ships guided by intelligent beings at their cores. Thus, they achieve long-distance space travel by placing the crew in stasis, having them travel at sub-light speed over thousands of years to their destination, and then have them travel back in time to the target. When the TARDIS lands on Thrantas, it lands simultaneously with a cargo ship – and as we’ve seen in the TV series, this is bad. The resulting collision throws the cargo ship far into the future, severely damages it, and kills some of the crew. Because Thrantasian time machines are sentient beings, they are responsible for their own collisions – and so the TARDIS is put on trial for the destruction of the cargo ship with the Doctor as its lawyer. Thrantasian justice is based upon the rulings of a central computer that is capable of looking both into the future and into the past. This computer passes judgment based on the impact on society of the act in question: if the benefit to society outweighs the harm done, the accused goes free. If the harm outweighs the benefit, the accused is punished in the same proportion.
Because the accident showed no benefit and killed multiple people, the TARDIS is easily found guilty. Naturally, the Doctor circumvents this by freeing the being at the center of the computer, upending the entire Thrantasian justice system and forcing them to start from scratch. As a result, a mistrial is declared and the TARDIS goes free. This is usually the point where you find out that the accident didn’t really happen, or was misinterpreted, but not in this story: the collision actually killed seven people and there are zero consequences for the TARDIS crew. Is this really a triumph for the Doctor? He’s justified in overturning the system because it relied upon slavery to function, but does that mean he gets a mulligan on accidentally killing people? The story doesn’t grapple with this question at all, which is almost inexplicable. Instead, it rapidly ends and just as rapidly moves on – it feels like an extra 10 minutes were lost in the editing bay. As for the slavery element, there’s a wonderful scene at the end where the Doctor wonders if the TARDIS is with him by choice or by force, and the question is notably left unanswered.
The characterization is largely good. Roz and Chris are excellent, of course, which you would expect in a story penned by their creator, though the strong bonds of absolute trust between them and the Doctor feel out of place in a New Adventure. Maratuk (Liz Sutherland-Lim) and Sydyck (Vikash Bhai), the Adjudicators’ counterparts, are drawn similarly well. The script seams show with Forsetti (Mina Anwar), however, the “court reporter” – she pops up in the story exactly when the Doctor needs someone to talk to, and vanishes just as abruptly without adding anything. This isn’t inherently bad, as endless scenes of the Doctor talking to himself grow tiresome, but the editing could be better.
Overall, “The Trial of a Time Machine” is a solid, if unimpressive, start to the box set. It’s thoughtful, with good characterization, but the writing is sloppy in places and it doesn’t grapple with its own themes nearly enough. Still, if this is the best we can get to keep the NA flame burning, I’ll take it.
6/10
THE SEVENTH DOCTOR: THE NEW ADVENTURES: VANGUARD
I have to say, I’m almost impressed. I figured the first New Adventures box set would at least try to replicate the feeling of the novels prior to settling into a groove of cranking out generic Doctor Who stories – but here we are in the second story and we’re already back to boredom and cliché. Yes, it’s “Vanguard” by Steve Jordan, and it’s utterly disposable.
I’m not going to pretend that the NAs were unimpeachable works of genius. Yes, there were a few masterpieces. Some of them were even awful. But most NAs were truly ambitious stories, with young, imaginative authors trying to take Doctor Who to new places and styles. Some were poorly written, some collapsed under the weight of their own efforts, but with rare exception you could never say that a New Adventure wasn’t trying. Even “The Pit,” widely accepted as the worst of the lot, is wildly ambitious and wide-ranging. My point is that something like “Vanguard” would never have been published in that range in a million years. Too broad and too deep for the small screen? This is notably shallower than the small screen.
The TARDIS lands on the planet Vanguard in the aftermath of a war between its two peoples: the Dauntless and the Intrepid. The robots they built to fight the war are still fighting while the few survivors hide out. The Doctor, Roz, and Chris must stop the fighting and save the remaining people. Of course, they are separated early on and have to engage with three separate storylines. Chris is put through the physical wringer. The Doctor journeys into the fantastical realm of his own subconscious. Very NA, right? No – everything is terribly, terribly bland. None of the characters are interesting: Blue (Connor Calland) and Green (Olivia Morris) are straight out of a book of clichés, the robots have been seen in a million other sci-fi stories, and Contessa (Sara Powell), supposedly the most complex of the lot, gets an interesting background that the script completely fails to engage with. There’s a brief discussion of mercy at the end of the story, but instead of surprising you it goes exactly where you expect. The day is saved, everyone is fine, time to leave. We haven’t learned anything about anyone, we haven’t done anything memorable. This is surprisingly similar to a terrible Fourth Doctor Adventure.
Which brings me back to my initial point: why are you even making these stories if you’re not going to try? Why take one of the freshest, most imaginative periods in the history of Doctor Who and reduce it to this derivative, sub-Star Trek nonsense? Why have Roz Forrester if you’re going to write her this wildly out of character? It’s a real shame. God, I hope the next two are better.
3/10
THE SEVENTH DOCTOR: THE NEW ADVENTURES: THE JABARI COUNTDOWN
The third story in the set, “The Jabari Countdown” by Alan Flanagan, still doesn’t feel much like a New Adventure, something that’s becoming a trend in this New Adventures box set. Fortunately, it’s a well-written, well-produced story, but there’s still very little that marks it apart from the rest.
I love the setup: the TARDIS materializes in the hold of a ship carrying a group of mathematicians and traveling to a mysterious island. World War II is raging, and everyone assumes they’re helping the war effort – and they’re not wrong, in a way. On the mysterious island is a mysterious house, and once they’re inside the mysterious attacks start. It’s all very Agatha Christie, and the Doctor, Roz, and Chris are perfect matches for that setting. Sylvester McCoy takes a playful approach to the Doctor, feigning ignorance while working everything out as the smartest person in the room. Yasmin Bannerman is confident and in control as Roz, and Travis Oliver really brings out Chris’s sense of childlike wonder and open-mindedness. The guest characters are all well drawn, especially Janine Duvitski as the dotty old grandmother with hidden depths and Leonie Schliesing as an Austrian mathematician turned actor. The only weak spot is Rupert Young, who doesn’t really connect with his character, making Fray sound broad and unconvincing – not that the script helps very much in that regard. But this is why the story otherwise works: great characters with fine performances.
Some elements, unfortunately, don’t always hang together. There’s a beautiful scene where Chris kisses Eleanor (Franchi Webb) to show that he is untroubled that she is a trans woman – but it doesn’t quite come off because the script hasn’t shown any romantic interest between them to that point. This extends to their goodbye at the end of the story – it feels like the sort of thing we’d see in the classic series, where a companion would bid a heartfelt farewell to a guest character that seemed far in excess of their actual on-screen relationship. This detail can fit in an hour-long episode, too – it’s just a matter of priorities. There’s also a surprising lack of detail when it comes to motivation – we don’t learn very much about the Jabari despite their name being on the cover, for example. And while there are some thematic links connecting the characters – they’re not all just mathematicians, they’re all alone or abandoned in some way – they don’t tie together in a satisfying way.
I keep coming back to the fact that these stories don’t feel much like New Adventures. “The Jabari Countdown” is a reasonably good, quasi-modern Doctor Who story that happens to feature two companions who were previously found only within the written word. There’s nothing seriously wrong with it, but nothing about this is ambitious or boundary-pushing. So who’s the target market for this set, exactly? I don’t think it’s me, and I adored the NAs as much as anyone. Worth a listen, but nothing special.
6/10
THE SEVENTH DOCTOR: THE NEW ADVENTURES: THE DREAD OF NIGHT
After “The Jabari Countdown,” a story about a small group of people trapped inside a threatening house menaced by supernatural forces, the set closes out with “The Dread of Night” by Tim Foley, a story about a small group of people trapped inside a threatening house menaced by supernatural forces. They’re not identical – the prior story went for a murder mystery feel while this is much more outright horror – but they’re similar enough to raise an eyebrow. They’re also similar in another way: they don’t feel much like New Adventures.
I’m not being overly critical, mind you: “The Dread of Night” is good, easily the best story in the set. Foley’s script keeps the cast small: only the TARDIS crew and four inhabitants of the house. The horror elements are of the creepy, psychological variety: it’s just as important to know why something is stalking the residents as it is to know how. And the reasons are revealed through slow explorations of the characters, using techniques that are well-known for a reason: set up one character as the obvious villain only to reveal something much different near the end, and so forth. Rhian Blundell and Elaine Fellows are both excellent as the sisters Isabel and Annabel, while Melanie Kilburn’s nurse Hooley is much more than she appears at the start. And the regular cast is excellent, particularly Sylvester McCoy: he really embraces the mysterious elements of his character and gives a fantastic performance. The production is great as well, especially Scott Handcock’s guiding hand as director and Joe Meiners’ sound design. This story is rich with atmosphere: there is a definite sense of creeping dread that never tips into the outright horrific.
Regarding the box set overall, it is unfortunately nothing like I expected. The novel adaptations were understandably cut down from the source material, but they captured the tone of the NAs quite well: ambitious, boundary-pushing stories that provided harrowing emotional experiences for their characters. The stories in this box set, though generally good quality, really don’t feel anything like the NAs. These are very typical Big Finish Doctor Who stories – in fact, this one in particular is quite similar to another Sylvester McCoy story from 2006. Which again begs the question: who is the target audience for this? It’s not really NA fans, since these stories aren’t really like NAs. It’s not really the classic series audience, since despite McCoy’s presence these stories feature companions that have never even been mentioned on television. And it’s not really the new series audience, since these stories are quite traditional in plot and structure even if they have one-hour running times. As a result, I don’t expect this range to last very long, and that’s a shame.
In any case, “The Dread of Night” is recommended.
7/10