The Doctor doesn’t normally need money, but when the TARDIS is immobilised and a fine has to be paid, a loan from a bank in the sky seems the solution to his problem.
But then the Selachians arrive, and the Doctor and his companions find themselves as hostages in the middle of a heist.
Death seems an absolute certainty. But the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben have outwitted death before…
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE SELACHIAN GAMBIT
The eighth release in the sixth series of Companion Chronicles is “The Selachian Gambit” from prolific Doctor Who novelist Steve Lyons. It’s a lighthearted, largely inconsequential story, but it spends enough time in the presence of a fun TARDIS crew to be entirely worthwhile.
There’s not a great deal to say about the plot of “The Selachian Gambit:” it’s a bank heist episode. The Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie visit a bank in order to get money to pay a parking fine when Selachian robbers in search of the contents of the vault raid the bank. The usual tropes apply: there’s a hostage negotiator, a person (the Doctor) on the inside trying to prevent a disaster from ensuing, the villains threatening the bank manager to open the vault lock, and so forth. There’s a Doctor Who twist, of course – the vault is dimensionally transcendental – but that doesn’t alter the plot from its clichéd course. You’ve seen this movie before, in other words – heck, you even saw a Doctor Who bank heist episode recently in “Time Heist.”
If you’ve seen it all before, you’ll need other elements to make the story entertaining; fortunately “The Selachian Gambit” has those. This is an early season 4 story with a crowded TARDIS, and Frazer Hines pulls triple duty, playing Jamie, the Doctor, and Ben. There’s quite a bit of full-cast material here along with the narration, and Polly is separated from the other three about halfway through, so there’s quite a bit of Frazer Hines playing almost everyone in a scene. He’s talented enough to make it work, although as with every other time his Troughton impression gets extended airing, it grows less convincing with each passing minute. Anneke Wills is along to play Polly and some of the supporting parts – and even narrate her own segments of the story – which lends the story a great deal of period authenticity. And even though half the cast isn’t actually there, there is a palpable sense of affection in the performances: you can really visualize the actors enjoying the hell out of recording this. That more than anything else elevates the production from feeling generic.
There really isn’t any framing device on offer – it’s just first person narration from the two companions. It’s structured quite well, which is unsurprising from an old hand like Lyons – the story builds to appropriate peaks throughout. But given just how clichéd it is, there isn’t much more to say about it. The title and marketing copy makes it seem as though the Selachians will play a significant role, and while they are indeed the villains of the piece, they could be any generic warmongering alien race and nothing would change. Frankly, I never found them that interesting in the novels, but here they really are just indistinguishable heavies.
Kudos as usual to the production, from director Lisa Bowerman to sound designer Alistair Lock. Overall, “The Selachian Gambit” is a solid Doctor Who take on a traditional bank robbery story. It’s a fun way to pass an hour, and there’s not much more to say about it than that.
7/10