Review by Cavan Gilbey
Not to sound hyperbolic, but in recent years I have realised the Third Doctor Adventures are my favourite of the solo Classic Doctor ranges, actually of all the solo Doctor ranges now that I think about it. There’s always been an appreciation for interesting slow burn stories, especially more recently with a pair of excellent serials spanning over six and seven episodes respectively. So when this was announced, I was initially very optimistic; who doesn’t want to see Jo get one last bit of reconciliation with her Doctor? But then it was revealed we are getting three hour stories, and my face suddenly looked like I had a dinner plate lodged in my mouth. The hour long stories work fine enough for the New Who Doctors, they were designed to work in that format and thus end up suiting them better. Hell a lot of the Classic Doctor kind of work here, but I think the Third Doctor is by far the least suited overall. If he is the suave spy that he is often characterised as thanks to his frequent conspiracy and mystery based narratives, then surely we need something bigger than hour to get the most out of him. And that is was really hold this boxset back from getting anything higher than a 7/10 for me, I just don’t feel like I get enough out of the concepts presented by the writers here. The scripts are good, but are damaged by having those missing episodes. Which is a shame because this reunion should have felt bigger than it ended up being.
Before we get into any of the stories, I have to say that yes Treloar and Manning are firing on all cylinders here. There’s a real warmth and friendliness to every line of dialogue here, The Doctor especially feels less abrasive than his television counterpart here. The chemistry at this point feels perfect, and Manning knows exactly when to bring a sterner voice through with this more mature characterisation of Jo. From the moment they first reunite, you can tell that both performers are going to treat this like it’s a swansong for both characters and thus act their hearts out here.
The first Story of the set is Supernature by Matt Fitton. Arriving on the Isle of Wight, Jo Jones and her friends have arrived to investigate a series of bizarre events involving the birds of the island. The lighthouse, now a research base led by Ms Frost, seems to be the epicentre of all the danger. Jo is ready to get to the bottom of this, and so is her oldest friend.
This is a simple story to open up the set with; there’s an over reaching scientist who wants to exploit alien tech to make weapons. That’s as classic as you can get for sci-fi tropes, and Fitton’s script doesn’t really have any aspirations of doing anything particularly nuanced or new with it. Which is fine if you want to focus on the characters and their arcs, but he doesn’t really do that either. Frost is stock evil scientist, Al is stock obnoxious influencer, Malcolm is the typical unbelieving local who is destined to get bumped off, and I won’t lie I couldn’t tell you what Dr Lorna’s character was outside of ‘the nice scientist.’ The narrative itself feels pretty played out, it’s a psychic weapon from some crashed spaceship. I reckon you got that from the bit early on in Part 1 where one of the characters mentions a crashed ancient spaceship.
What do you want me to say? You’ve heard this story a million times, the most this does to differ itself is get it over and done with quickly. The selling point is that first moment where The Doctor and Jo reunite, its great and plays nicely into the slightly out of order nature of their relationship. After that, you may as well just skip to the next one.
The performances are all fine, a bit flat across the board really but I’m chalking that down to it being quite hard to get into material as shallow as Supernature. Viv May in particular I think is given the short end of the stick here as they have to play a one-dimensional obnoxious character, not a lot you can do with that and I’m sure they will do better in future stories.
4/10
Next is The Conservitors by Felicia Barker. Arriving on the planet Viltris in the far future, Jo and The Doctor find a society who are graded on every single aspect of their existence. Its all done in the service of saving the people from themselves, or so they are told by Premier Maldon. A rebellion is on the rise, and our time-travelling duo are at the very heart of it.
A bit of step up from the previous story, but its another story you’ve heard before countless times. It’s The War Machines, it’s Spare Parts, it’s that classic government controlled robot narrative that has been modernised relatively effectively by Barker. The idea of parliamentary overreaching is one that is particularly prescient at the moment and The Conservitorsdoes draw on some pretty bleak imagery of riot police doing anything but serving the public. A that stuff, even though its hardly nuanced, is effective. The Doctor being injected with suppressive nano-machines is a great concept, one that would have been explored better in a four parter where he might have had more time to be under this control.
Barker’s writing style often hits too close to the descriptive, which for an audio drama is kind of the equivalent of not breaking the rule of 180 degrees. There’s a particularly bad moment near the beginning of the story where Jo just has to describe these robots in great detail and it begins to feel more like Barker’s background in the prose Short Trips is taking over. Her dialogue near the end, where the leader of the rebellion and the leader of the government are waxing lyrical, is really quite good and might have had even more resonance had we actually got the sense that this is a society in a state of authoritarian decay.
Once again all the performances are fine, its another case of what can you do with these high concept low space scripts. Poppy Miller and Gary Turner are the highlights here, especially during those moments in Part 2 where the pair of them are having quite well done ideological debates. One final note; Big Finish, if you have a character who is a teenager, please just hire a teenager. Don’t hire someone to essentially do a Kevin the Teenager voice because it just pulls the audience right out of the narrative as we wait for them to inevitably start complaining about how their parent’s hate them and are embarrassing them in front of their friends.
6/10
Finally we have The Iron Shore by Lizzie Hopley. Arriving on the sea-planet of Mercator, our pair are quickly brought into the cursed life of Callis. But this curse is not a simple matter of being unlucky or dammed, because there’s something sinister lurking in water. Something very, very hungry.
This is the first, and I suppose only, story of the set that I really quite liked. Not loved because I think the hour long format still holds back what could have been a great cosmic horror story that touches on the same atmosphere as things like Shadow Over Innsmouth or The Abyss. But it is the one of the trio that is best suited for this format, I’m going to chalk this down to Hopley being the one with the best experience of writing these hour long episodes. Although I will not excuse the use of one of the worst Doctor Who tropes; the Doctor is dead, no honestly he is for real this time. Opening a story with that especially puts a bee in my bonnet since we know the Doctor isn’t dead, and so the ultimate stakes of the story end up being a bit low because we know our hero will inevitably live.
The horror elements are really well implemented, I love the idea of the this ancient psychic squid (Red Dwarf memories anyone?) initially being mistaken for being lost and scared. But no, it just wants to play with its food, it enjoys hunting and doesn’t really want to stop or do anything else other than hunt. The idea of it latching on to DNA and family trees is pretty original for this type of creature, and the moments where it enters the mind’s of characters are pretty effective in scaring you. I also like that this isn’t a force that the Doctor can actually deal with, he admits the creature is too intelligent. All he can do is briefly contain it until he can dump it elsewhere.
The cast is great in this one, the characters feel more fleshed out here than in the previous two stories. Tom Alexander’s Callis is a man who has this hopeless shadow following him, he’s treated like a ghost as people fear what his name reminds them of. Alexander really captures the emptiness of him well and you can’t help but feel sorry for him. Merileen, played by Paksie Vernon, is another one which is drawn quite well. She represents this idea of cultural guilt, a symbol of this society’s prejudice and fear that have irrationally arisen. Veron plays this with a sense of subdued sadness that is quite compelling.
8/10
I think I would have liked this boxset a lot more if it was the traditional style of Third Doctor Adventure volume; two four episode serials with enough breathing room. Because that’s the thing holding this set back the most, none of these stories really feel like they hit the true potential they are worthy of because they are shackled with this shorter run time. The Third Doctor probably just isn’t suited for this format, especially when Big Finish have given him two long releases recently. I’d say pick it up on a sale, but the other better sets would most likely be on that same sale and I can recommend them more enthusiastically.
6/10
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