Review by Jacob Licklider
In the Night is the second of the Fifth Doctor sets with 2023 being the first year that the Fifth Doctor Adventures have decided to avoid doing a year-long story arc, meaning that this set is another standalone without prerequisites, released in the same month as the very prerequisite heavy Purity Unbound. In the Night has an interesting premise, both stories essentially take place over the course of one night, though the first plays around with the time scale in general, and have themes of discovery of historical pasts in some very different ways. This is balanced with the first story, the four-part Pursuit of the Nightjar being an example of “future” history concerning itself with a myth the Doctor is familiar with from their childhood, while Resistor is more concerned with the past of the Earth, though a past that would have been contemporary had it been a televised story. It’s a set that like Conflicts of Interest before it, despite eschewing perhaps the better format, creates two incredibly complementary stories that allow some very interesting introspection and exploration.
Tim Foley’s Pursuit of the Nightjar is a story that excels because it has the time to explore the more complex concepts in the four-episode runtime, despite being a story that even with the extended runtime becomes slightly more confusing. The Nightjar was a historic ship that the Doctor first became aware of after leaving Gallifrey, Susan buying him a model of the ship while in the Garazone system of all places, something that he always meant to investigate. Foley excel at making a story like this work, the early travel through the Time Vortex being a wonderful setting for a story that Big Finish and the show proper hasn’t really explored, only tangentially with the effects of early experiments. There is an echo of The Aztecs here as well as The Time Meddler with the Doctor having to face the facts that history itself does not change, but it’s actually very easy to change recorded history with its own ripples. There are two ships total, both captains being at each other’s throats as established in these pre-credits dialogues that are genuinely wonderful to listen to with stellar performances from Fenella Woolgar and Paul Thornley. Foley also does an excellent job of using this TARDIS team in particular, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton really working as two companions who have been displaced in a story that’s largely about finding one’s place in the universe. Davison also embodies this childlike wonder as the Doctor, but really struggling with the choices that have to be made, the former being something the Fifth Doctor actually embodies in some more of the interesting ways. This is a story that’s really the highlight of the set with this being one of Foley’s swan songs before a break. 9/10.
Resistor is the smaller story of the set from Sarah Grochala, a writer who has excelled at writing historical settings and while this is technically a contemporary story for Tegan, it only works because Grochala clearly understands the political setting of Warsaw, Poland in 1982. This ends up being one of those stories about outsiders in the world, the Doctor of course landing off-course as is typical for this era, originally intending to get them to Yugoslavia. The title Resistor feels like it has a double meaning: the punk scene of the early 1980s is a general theme throughout with the wonderful sequence of Peter Davison as the Doctor having to play the drums in a punk band, but it also feels like a reference to the electrical term for something that can take an amount of resistance in a circuit. Grochala’s script is one that feels as if something is generally bubbling under the surface throughout, just getting ready to come to the top and explode with resistance. It’s a pseudo-historical story, Grochala using the alien race of the episode to explore the authoritarianism of the Cold War just as the west is to generally about to adopt, but sadly where this one fails ever so slightly is the fact that it’s only two episodes. Grochala does a wonderful job with these characters and this idea, but it feels genuinely as if the end of the first episode should be the setup for a three parter which would make it perfect. 8/10.
In the Night is one of those box sets that I can highly recommend, though perhaps it will work better for you if listened before the previously released Conflicts of Interest as what is slightly bringing this set down is that the two parter that ends the set is far more suited as a three parter. The lack of time is hanging over the sets head since the Fifth Doctor got this brilliantly paced two three parters already this year in a format that sadly is not become a more prominent format for the three disc sets. Still Davison and company are as ever in top form, relishing in the chance to deepen characters that tended to be underwritten on television. 8.5/10.
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Review: Doctor Who – Conflicts of Interest
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