It’s the telegram Constance never wanted to read:
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU LT-CMDR H CLARKE LOST IN ACTION. CLASSIFIED OPERATIONS.
Those classified operations concerned a top-secret military project code-named ‘Quicksilver’. A project based in Vienna. A project with alien connections.
But bombed-out Vienna is not what it was before the war – with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. It’s not the time nor the place for a happy reunion. As Constance Clarke is about to discover…
And as the Doctor is about to discover, too!
QUICKSILVER
After two decidedly subpar entries, the final installment in this Colin Baker trilogy is Matt Fitton’s “Quicksilver,” a story that unites two separate audio eras and provides a potentially interesting dynamic going forward. As a character piece, it’s very good; unfortunately, the story isn’t very interesting.
We were introduced to Constance Clarke as she wondered what had become of her husband Henry (Matthew Cottle), and then we promptly forgot all about that plot thread while Constance and the Doctor went off and had adventures. Now it’s time to address it again, and while it’s a bit anticlimactic to resolve the entire thing in one story, Matt Fitton does a generally fine job in his writing. While Henry has become involved in an alien conspiracy, that element has surprisingly little to do with his disappearance, which came about when Henry fell in love with a Romanian woman, Ana (Kate Kennedy), on an intelligence mission. And since the story largely takes place a few years after the war, it has been several years since Henry has seen Constance – but only a matter of months since she last saw him. The inevitable confrontation is written well, but feels unsupported: we learn a lot about how they married young, the difficulties of marriage within the service, and so forth, but it would have been much more effective had we learned any of this prior to this story. Instead, what we get feels honest but unearned.
The other significant development in “Quicksilver” is the return of Lisa Greenwood as Flip, last seen plummeting toward Earth at the end of “Scavenger.” An alien race finds Flip’s wedding invitation outside the TARDIS and uses it as a clue to track down the former companion and use her as a bargaining chip against the Doctor. This is one of the best ideas in the story, as it makes Flip’s reintroduction feel organic instead of forced. In previous reviews, I made no secret of my dislike of the character: she’s often presented as genuinely stupid, something I cannot imagine the Doctor would tolerate in a traveling companion. Fortunately, Fitton avoids that problem, showing her as a quick-witted, compassionate person, regardless of her formal education. I also very much enjoyed the pairing of Constance and Flip – one a buttoned-up woman from the 1940s, the other a very modern young woman with only the slightest sense of decorum. As you might expect, they don’t particularly like each other at first, but by the end they are starting to get along – Constance acquiescing to the nickname Connie is an interesting start. I hope that when we return to this pairing in future stories, we actually see their relationship grow and encounter some difficulties – if the next story with this TARDIS crew shows Constance and Flip laughing and carrying on like old friends, it will be a crushing disappointment.
I like the idea of encountering former companions, as it’s something that has barely ever happened on television. Russell T. Davies and Barry Letts were the only Doctor Who producers to create a regular cast outside of the Doctor and companions, but there’s no reason not to explore the idea on audio. The only danger is avoiding the sense of retreading old ground, and here we don’t have that problem, as neither Constance nor Flip starred in a large number of stories before this.
I don’t have much to say about the plot of “Quicksilver,” as it’s a combination of postwar spy intrigue and “aliens bring interstellar war to Earth” without much to distinguish it. Fitton keeps it exciting, but everything interesting about “Quicksilver” happens between the characters. The production is quite good – Jamie Anderson directs and Jamie Robertson provides the sound design, with both working quite well. Overall, “Quicksilver” is an improvement on its immediate predecessors, but it’s not a classic by any means. It wraps up Constance’s outstanding plot, brings an old companion back into the fold, and creates a potentially interesting new dynamic going forward. It’s worth a listen, in other words, something I wish I could say more often about this range.
Recommended.
7/10