Separated from the Doctor after an accident, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa are salvaged by an ancient race of collectors known as Dar Traders. A new adventure with the Fifth Doctor as told by his companion, Nyssa.
Separated from the Doctor after an accident, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa are salvaged by an ancient race of collectors known as Dar Traders. A new adventure with the Fifth Doctor as told by his companion, Nyssa.
Ghoulish!
Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles – The Darkening Eye
Written by Stewart Sheargold
Starring Sarah Sutton as Nyssa
Thank the Lord for Big Finish! Since 1999 they have done a great job in recapturing and expanding on 80’s and 90’s Doctor Who. Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann have all had their era’s opened up and made epic. This is in no small part due to the contributions of many of the actors who played their television companions willing to reprise their roles as well.
In 2007 Big Finish launched The Companion Chronicles, a short series of single disc, two handed talking books, which proved to be an effective bridge in providing ‘live action’ adventures for the first four Doctors, three of whom are no longer with us, and the other unwilling (as of the present date) to reprise the role for Big Finish. In 2008, due to popularity, the range was expanded to one release a month and with 12 slots a year Big Finish have had the luxury of expanding the range of the series to incorporate other elements that may not be feasible within the main range such as stories set within the New Adventures timeline, and stories like this one that feature regular actors who are also unavailable or unwilling to reprise their respective roles.
Season Nineteen is a personal favourite of mine. Alongside Season Eighteen (another personal favourite!) it remains considerably under exploited when it comes to the Doctor Who expanded universe. There were only ever two full length novels written from this season, so despite the abundance of fifth Doctor/Nyssa audios in the main range it makes for a refreshing change to have a story set within the season that precedes them.
The story opens with a post – Terminus Nyssa recounting an old adventure with one of her patients. The story sees the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan arriving on a disintegrating spaceship during a space war. The three companions are quickly separated from the Doctor but are ‘rescued’ by the Dar Traders, an alien race fascinated by death, and who are in some way able to capture this moment for their own ends. They take Nyssa to the moment of death to analyse her experience, and find that, as a Trakenite she has certain ‘immunities.’
As a consequence she is asked to investigate a recovered artefact that is so far eluding the Traders ability to analyse it. It is a black metal container from an alternative dimension containing an assassin. This is the ruthless Damasin Hyde, who is searching for the power source to fuel his craft, namely the life energy of a Time Lord. There follows a couple of stabbings, and a couple of trips to the ‘threshold,’ culminating in a rather dark conclusion.
Stewart Sheargold stories tend to be dark, creepy affairs and this one is no exception. The Dar Traders are a fascinating alien race, not necessarily evil in themselves, but whose obsession with death is genuinely unnerving. I have to confess that I don’t fully understand the trading process that they describe, but they are compelling enough for me to listen to the play several times and hopefully find out.
The imagery conjured up by Nyssa’s journey is very evocative – the disintegrating space ship with it’s ripped walls opening up directly to space, the premonition and scenes where she finds herself on the alien planet, lying in Tegan’s arms with autumn leaves blowing around her and the scenes in the ‘grove,’ where Nyssa is at peace, are all quite stirring and beautiful to listen too.
Sarah Sutton gives a lovely reading. She has a distinctive voice – clear, charming, yet detached and you can believe she is a scientist from another world. Her versions of the other characters are all pretty good too – pauses in just the right places for instance with the Doctor, or a nice Australian tint for Tegan, as opposed to the Les Patterson impressions she sometimes gets with other readers. The writing for the regulars is spot on, Tegan is abrupt but fiercely loyal, Adric is condescending, and the Doctor is vulnerable, yet brave.
All in all this is a good, strong addition to the range. It’s a little bit complex, but that’s no bad thing as it’s interesting enough to deserve repeated listens. More please!
4/5
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE DARKENING EYE
With the Companion Chronicles started in part to provide Big Finish with a means to tell stories involving the first four Doctors, it was a reasonable assumption that all the stories in the range would be from those eras. That assumption was broken by the sixth release in the third series, Stewart Sheargold’s “The Darkening Eye,” which features Sarah Sutton narrating a fifth Doctor story and demonstrates that the range can go to any era to produce a successful story.
While Peter Davison was a regular Big Finish participant, at that time neither Janet Fielding nor Matthew Waterhouse were, so “The Darkening Eye” enables BF to present a Season 19 story with the crowded TARDIS. Of course, Sheargold immediately runs into the biggest problem with that season: not enough for the cast to do. Despite the fact that he writes the Doctor out of most of the story, Tegan gets virtually nothing to do, staying in the background and occasionally yelling “Doctor!” or “What is it?” in Sutton’s affected Australian accent. Adric is his usual arrogant, oblivious self, while Nyssa deservedly gets the lion’s share of the action. This is where Sheargold is at his best: through the narration, we’re actually able to get into Nyssa’s head, and we’re able to see her as a character rather than the cipher she so often became on television. There actually are emotions here about the death of her father, about the fate of her people, and they make it compelling listening for fans of the character.
The framing device is also effective. Sheargold sets it on Terminus, after the departure of the TARDIS, and uses the story as a way for Nyssa to reassure a man dying of Lazar’s Disease. I’m not sure how reassuring it actually is, of course, but the last line is brilliantly effective even in the face of the man’s disbelief. The Dar Traders, from Sheargold’s “The Death Collectors,” reappear, giving the story a grim sense of finality, hinting at Adric’s eventual fate and constantly reminding Nyssa of her past. Sutton’s narration is surprisingly great as well: her precise intonations mesh well with the tone of the story, coupling with Sheargold’s prose to give the story an almost ethereal feeling at times.
I’ve complimented Sheargold’s scripts in the past for being thoughtful and intelligent, and “The Darkening Eye” is certainly both of those – but I’ve also criticized them for being somewhat flat and lacking in incident, and “The Darkening Eye” is both of those as well. Even at two episodes, the story drags somewhat, and the structure frays around the edges: Adric getting stabbed and then recovering almost instantly is clearly something added for no other reason than to enable a cliffhanger. Damasin Hyde doesn’t hold together very well as a character: a man blessed/cursed with eternal life/death who crosses between worlds and is best suited to work as an assassin? The prose isn’t fantastic, either – though there are several wonderful images, like Tegan comforting Nyssa in the forest, it also punctuates almost every line of dialogue with an explanatory “said [character],” which disrupts the flow of the drama. And while I very much enjoyed Sutton’s narration, she’s asked to do too many voices; Derek Carlyle could probably have been employed to play at least one more character.
The production is largely successful, particularly the supporting sound design from David Darlington. Overall, “The Darkening Eye” is a guarded success. It’s a grim story with a lot to say about death, but as a piece of drama it’s too inconsistent to achieve greatness. Still, it’s a unique take on the fifth Doctor’s era and worth a listen.
Recommended.
7/10