The Mouthless Dead by John Pritchard
The TARDIS arrives in 1920s England, the Doctor, Jamie, Ben and Polly finding themselves in a wintry dusk beside a railway line. The station nearby appears deserted, but there are figures watching from the shadows, all of them waiting for a dead man’s train…
The Story of Extinction by Ian Atkins
Civilisations rise and fall – and few planets have seen this happen more often than Amyrndaa. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria join a survey team to find out why on the planet where everything is suited to creating life, nothing lives for long…
The Integral by David Bartlett
When tempers fray in the TARDIS, the Doctor struggles to help Jamie and Zoe resolve their differences. Arriving at Aspen Base proves a welcome distraction; but the isolated facility is under siege. Can Jamie’s belief in right and wrong withstand the perspective changing power of the Integral?
The Edge by Rob Nisbet
The Edge is the galaxy’s scientific hub of experimentation, theoretical breakthroughs and invention – just the sort of place to interest the Doctor and Zoe. However, a secret lies hidden in The Edge laboratories. Jamie instinctively knows that something is wrong, and it doesn’t take long for him to be proved right….
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE MOUTHLESS DEAD
A year after the impressive William Hartnell box set, the Companion Chronicles returned for another round, this time featuring the Patrick Troughton era in the equally imaginatively titled “The Second Doctor Volume One.” The first story in the set is “The Mouthless Dead” from John Pritchard, and it’s a good, if labored exploration of post-war grief.
The first thing that jumped out at me about “The Mouthless Dead” is that it’s much more like an Early Adventure than a Companion Chronicle. Every main role is cast: Frazer Hines voices the Doctor and Jamie, Anneke Wills returns as Polly, and Elliot Chapman, last seen in the Early Adventures, plays Ben. There’s a minimum of narration, usually only to bridge the gap between scenes. And there’s no narrative frame at all – it’s a “real time” story for all intents and purposes. Fortunately, it’s also a very thoughtful story, one that rejects the embrace of traditionalism and nostalgia in order to tell its own unique tale.
World War I was an epochal event, one that forever changed how war was both fought and viewed in Western society. Setting a story in postwar England, one of the nations most affected by that conflict, provides a wealth of material for a story rooted in the emotions of the survivors. “The Mouthless Dead” is centered around the train carrying the remains of the Unknown Warrior to his final resting place in Westminster. Along the route, a signalman stops the train because of something on the tracks: ghosts of long-dead soldiers. This could be a simple story of a haunting, but Pritchard introduces two interesting concepts: first, the viewer determines the form the ghosts take. Jamie sees fallen men from a Highland regiment; Ben sees burned and drowned sailors; and so forth. Second, we learn that the ghosts are a physical manifestation of national grief amplified by the damaged TARDIS, symbolized by a young woman who believes she lost her fiancé on a battlefield in France. It’s unusual for a Doctor Who story to deal this directly in metaphor – we don’t get the usual attempt at a scientific explanation, as Pritchard simply lets the impact of the story speak for itself.
I really like the characterization in this story. Ben and Jamie bond over their shared experiences in the military, and there’s a great moment when Jamie asks the Doctor how he perceived the ghosts and the Doctor completely dodges the question. Polly gets a lot to do as well, though it’s a bit eye-rolling to have so much of the story turn around a woman pining over her lost love and then have Polly be the one left to comfort her. The production is fantastic as well, capturing the eerie, haunting feeling of the script. Overall, “The Mouthless Dead” is a solid start to the box set. While the metaphor is definitely on the nose, it’s still rewarding to hear a story confident enough that it doesn’t need to rely on played-out characters and tropes and instead blazes its own trail. This is what we listen to the Companion Chronicles for, after all.
Recommended.
7/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE STORY OF EXTINCTION
The second story in the Second Doctor Companion Chronicles box is “The Story of Extinction” by Ian Atkins, a tale about the power of storytelling and how it impacts lives and relationships. While it occasionally drifts toward being too obvious, some deft character work helps rescue it from any issues.
We’re back to a more traditional Companion Chronicle format, with Victoria, now elderly and residing in what sounds like a retirement home, suffering a burglary – but unable to report the crime to the police because the only thing taken was a piece of alien technology. Instead, she tells the tale of how she came to possess the alien paper in the first place, and that’s your framing device. I should say from the outset that Deborah Watling’s performance is much better than we’ve heard in her earlier appearances in the range: yes, her voice has aged considerably, but here you can actually hear the echoes of Victoria from season 5. The story also incorporates Frazer Hines as a secondary narrator: Watling sets up scenes as though introducing a flashback, while any narration taking place “within” the broader narrative is handled by Hines. After close to ninety Companion Chronicles, it’s refreshing to know they’re still finding new ways to narrate stories.
This is a deep story, with a lot going on, but it’s essentially about the power of storytelling. Some of the material engages with this on a literal level: we see creatures made out of paper, who generate words on their surfaces and fold themselves into other forms in order to attack. But we spend considerably more time with the idea that words can have consequences, dealing with everything from disappearances to conflicts as the result of linguistic manipulation. I often bemoan the huge focus on traditional storytelling in Big Finish Doctor Who; “The Story of Extinction,” on the other hand, would be wildly out of place in season 5. It’s thematically powerful and almost defiantly introspective; there’s very little in the way of outright action and to describe it as “base under siege” would be a significant misrepresentation.
I also love how Atkins seeds the scenes of Victoria teaching Jamie to read throughout the story. The thematic links are obvious, and even without that these are sweet scenes that let us see the softer side of the recurring characters. Some of the aforementioned obviousness comes through by the end, though, as Jamie’s letter is the first thing he’s written on his own and it ends with Victoria declaring that words can be the most powerful things of all. This had me shaking my head – a largely subtle story doesn’t need to end by whacking you over the head – but it’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme. Apart from all of that, I appreciated the appearance from the seventh Doctor in the beginning; of course he would be the one who would eventually come back and finish cleaning up a mess.
I want to listen to this story again, as I believe it would reward multiple listenings, and I rarely say that about anything. Atkins has crafted a strong, intelligent, and unique Doctor Who tale, one that takes the elements of its era and uses them to do something completely new. If the Companion Chronicles continue beyond this box set, I hope Atkins gets another one of them.
Highly recommended.
9/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE INTEGRAL
The third story in the Second Doctor Companion Chronicles box set is “The Integral” from David Bartlett, a story that attempts to draw a contrast between the Doctor’s companions and only partially succeeds. While I appreciate what the author was going for, I think the final result was more than a bit patronizing.
The idea driving “The Integral” is a great one. Constant exposure to a violent, immersive video game has damaged the minds of players, leaving them in a confused, erratic, and anger-driven state. The company behind the game has funded a treatment facility to control the victims’ emotions using a combination of a pacifying machine and an alien race, the Integral, who can help control emotions. Add the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, and you have a base-under-siege tale: when the emotional suppressant fails, a horde of angry, uncontrollable people start rampaging through the facility.
Unfortunately, the execution doesn’t measure up to the concept. The story contrasts Jamie’s thought processes with Zoe’s, demonstrating Jamie’s close-mindedness by giving him the belief that every single alien race in the entire universe is out for blood and conquest. This is supported by the statement that every single alien race he has encountered on his travels has been hostile; this might be a satire on the sameness of Troughton-era plotting but I’m not sure that comes across if so. But is this actually believable? This can’t be set too long after “The Dominators” – did he already forget about the Dulcians? It’s also patronizing: the plot turns around the idea that Jamie, being from the 18th century, lacks the capacity for nuance and understanding different points of view, especially from the perspective of someone like Zoe, who sees nothing but. There’s a way to do this idea carefully and subtly, but this is not it. Of course, there’s an attempt to balance the scales: Jamie knows how to harness his raw emotions and direct them toward a productive goal. Rather than eliminating anger entirely, he argues, inspire people to channel it. While this is certainly true, there’s no reason why Zoe shouldn’t also know it – and as a result it comes across as the sort of story where the primitive person doesn’t understand the modern world but has a much better grasp of the human spirit than we modern folk.
The other problem is that the story isn’t written particularly well. This is a much more traditional, narrative-driven Companion Chronicle, but there’s almost too much narration. It seems as though Wendy Padbury never stops talking. She does a fine job, of course, but she had to be exhausted by the end. Perspectives also switch throughout the story, with some parts in first person and others in third person, and it comes across as a mistake rather than a deliberate stylistic choice. The themes also come and go: unlike the preceding story, nothing is carefully woven into the script. Instead, the story veers wildly between obvious lecturing and traditional plotting.
Overall, “The Integral” is a letdown after the first two stories of the set. “Jamie learns that not all aliens are evil conquerors” isn’t much of a hook, it doesn’t treat the characters with much respect, and the idea behind the plot is wasted. It’s not a reason to avoid the box set or anything like that, but it’s not a reason to buy it, either.
Mediocre.
5/10
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE EDGE
The fourth and final story in the Second Doctor Companion Chronicles box set, as well as the final Companion Chronicle to date, is “The Edge” by Rob Nisbet. Much like the preceding story, it’s about the differences between Jamie’s intelligence and the intelligence of people in the future, and while it’s a more fluid story, it still doesn’t have much to say.
The plot, typical of the Troughton era, is quite simple. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe land at a research facility set on an asteroid in the middle of a nebula, and once there they discover the machinations of a mad scientist trying to bend physics to his will. When the Doctor and Zoe are captured, it’s up to Jamie to save them by… bashing every control panel in his vicinity into broken pieces with a fire extinguisher. That’s about the extent of the plot, which isn’t very rewarding, but fortunately that’s not what the story is about.
Instead, the story is about Jamie himself. Oddly, this is the only story in the box set with one companion actor – Frazer Hines – and the story spends its time with Jamie while the Doctor and Zoe go off and get into trouble. I like the setup where the three travelers are presented with a series of logic puzzles to test their readiness to enter the secret research facility, and Jamie doesn’t even bother attempting the tests because he knows it would be futile. But he doesn’t stay bored for very long, as his natural inquisitiveness draws him to follow a suspicious waiter and gets him into trouble right alongside his companions. This all works very well and demonstrates that Nisbet has a strong grasp of Jamie as a character, ably supported by Hines’ own narration.
The problem comes in the sections following that, in which Curtis (Robert Whitelock), the director of the facility, cannot tear his attention away from Jamie, so baffled is he by Jamie’s different thought processes. In Curtis’s world, logic governs all: if something is logically impossible, it should not be attempted, no matter the stakes. So when Jamie struggles to free his friends against impossible odds, Curtis merely watches, fascinated, to see what happens next. The problem is that the story doesn’t do enough to show why Jamie’s reactions are so unusual. We don’t see enough of any other characters for Jamie to feel truly out of place – and if Curtis is just a megalomaniac, it robs the story of its meaning. Also, the scene where Curtis watches Jamie’s violence just feels odd: Curtis says that there’s nothing Jamie can do that will stop his project, only delay it. Yet mere moments later, Jamie is threatening to tear out the dimensional stabilizer from the wreck of a machine and Curtis suddenly feels threatened. Was he bluffing before? It certainly didn’t sound like it. Did he forget where the stabilizer was?
“The Edge” is the most reminiscent of a “traditional” Companion Chronicle of any story in this box. One companion actor, one guest star, and a large amount of narration coupled with real-time dialogue scenes. There’s no experimentation with a framing device, just Frazer Hines narrating from the start. Nisbet has a good ear for narration, and he gives Hines some good prose to recite that never sounds strange coming from the mouth of a man from the 18th century. Hines is fantastic as ever, and Whitelock provides a fine guest turn. The production is solid throughout: Lisa Bowerman directs all four stories in the box set, while the sound design is handled variously by James Callaghan and Richard Fox and Lauren Yason, and the music comes from Benji Clifford. Overall, “The Edge” is a solid conclusion to a solid box set. The first two stories are clearly superior to the last two, but all four are quite listenable. It’s not up to the standard of the First Doctor set but that would be difficult to do. Hopefully this isn’t the end of the Companion Chronicles, but if it is, “The Edge” and its surrounding box set is a pretty good way to go out.
Recommended.
7/10