The TARDIS lands in the city of Tromesis on Earth – but it’s a world far from the one that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe recognize.
The buildings are ruined, the streets deserted. And against the devastation they see a ghostly mirror image of another place – the city as it was before disaster hit.
People vanish here, and huge metal birds attack from the sky.
Can the Doctor find the future, in a place that doesn’t have one?
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE APOCALYPSE MIRROR
For the sixty-seventh regular release in the Companion Chronicles range, Big Finish turned to Eddie Robson for a season 6 story. While “The Apocalypse Mirror” has a very good conceptual hook, it doesn’t hold together nearly as well as it should, adding it to the list of curiously weak stories in the back half of the seventh series.
Robson is one of the most consistent writers in Big Finish’s regular stable, and he can normally be counted upon for thought-provoking material. “The Apocalypse Mirror” is another example of this: the idea of a ruined city mirrored in time by a beautiful version of itself, with people apparently passing between the cities for no discernable reason, is quite intriguing, and the way Robson introduces this in a mysterious first episode is skillful as well. I also like how the story overturns a very traditional Doctor Who trope: when the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe arrive, they meet oppressed people on the run from a tyrannical government – but it turns out that government is actually trying to help people! They help people by moving them to the better version of the city, but the people in the ruined city don’t know this – they just see people disappear, and dismiss the government’s explanations as propaganda. It’s a very believable way in which the social order could break down that doesn’t rely upon obvious clichés.
Unfortunately, the actual resolution is difficult to take seriously. The alternate, better world exists because scientists constructed a “sympathy engine” that actually created it out of the hopeful thoughts of the people in the ruined city. And that’s how you transport to the new city: by believing in hope, rejecting pessimism, and allowing these thoughts to carry you over. On the one hand, this is an uplifting message – but on the other, it’s nonsense like “The Secret” writ large. You can’t wish things into existence, or wish your way into a better life, but that’s exactly what happens in “The Apocalypse Mirror.” It’s like a child’s fable: if we just convince everyone to believe and hope as hard as they can, the world will be saved. And like a child’s fable, it’s utterly unrewarding in dramatic terms. We end up with Jamie making an appeal via hologram to the entire population, and while it’s implied that he is successful, the extent is unclear. “The Apocalypse Mirror” absolutely requires a strong, memorable guest character, through whose eyes we can see a shifting perspective – and no such character is present. It’s all abstract, in other words.
The casting for “The Apocalypse Mirror” is strange: it’s Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, but Padbury only plays Zoe and Zoe is hardly in the story. So it’s left to Hines to do every single voice, and this becomes obvious in places. His Troughton impression in particular seems to suffer, and as the story goes on the Doctor and Jamie start sounding more and more alike. There’s also no framing device, something that the range seems to have abandoned. Fortunately, the production is quite strong, as director Lisa Bowerman and sound designers Richard Fox and Lauren Yason combine to create a creepy, threatening atmosphere, especially in the first episode. Overall, “The Apocalypse Mirror” doesn’t quite work, but I admire its ambition.
Recommended.
6/10