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TARDIS Guide

Review of A Ghost of Alchemy by dema1020

30 November 2024

This review contains spoilers!

All told, this is a pleasant enough audio, all about the Fourth Doctor and Leela meeting Marie Curie.

As an Eighth of March special release, this is pretty on point. We have a script by Louise Jameson, who clearly knows the Fourth Doctor and talks about in the behind the scenes stuff how comfortable she was writing for her old ass friend. Tom Baker is a bit of a strange choice for an Eighth of March story, but I do think it works more than it doesn't.  This was a doctor whose companions made a big impact, and many of them go on to be some of the more important women in the whole franchise.

The story is fun and has a lot of pointed statements about Marie Curie. Some of the stuff hinting at her future was very well done. There are some fun performances like Curie and even President Harding and his wife were both pretty well done. Some of the cast's American accents are pretty over-the-top - I don't love whoever played Curie's doctor, for example - but by and large this was a pleasant listen. There's some good action around a train with great special effects even if it leaves Baker just shouting Leela's name repeatedly (a rough habit I've seen before in Wrath of the Iceni). Leela has a lot of fun moments in this audio (not surprising given the nature of the writer of A Ghost of Alchemy while Baker is able to put in a very energetic performance in spite of his advanced age, which was impressive.

So it was a pretty good experience, even if it wasn't perfect.