We return to the company of the 6th Doctor and Evelyn as they arrive in what they believe to be 19th century Edinburgh.  On learning the time and place, the Doctor is eager to meet the infamous graverobbers, Burke and Hare but soon discovers that all is not right and that, although Hare is up to dastardly deeds, no one seems to know who Burke is.It soon transpires that a time traveller, under the guise of Doctor Robert Knox, is manipulating time within a bubble as a show for alien tourists.

Medicinal Purposes is a brilliant 6th Doctor story and one of my favourites.  It is dripping with atmosphere and after a couple of releases for which I struggled to get a sense of time and place, Medicinal Purposes has it in spades.  When thinking of why this is, I realised that what this story has that the others have been missing: regional accents.  Medicinal Purposes is full to the brim with Scottish accents.  It immediately places you in the story.  The fact that a lot of the actors go for fairly rough sounding tones (the old woman murdered in the first (and third!) episodes; Burke; and even to some extent Mary and Jamie) places the story firmly in the rougher part of town and this is contrasted by Leslie Philips gentrified and suave performance as Knox, who spends most of the story in the more well-to-do part of Edinburgh.  The soundscape also helps the sense of place: the pub scenes are bustling and loud; Knox’s home/TARDIS is filled with ticking clocks – an early clue to his true identity.

The characters are well written and well acted.  Special mention has to be made of David Tennant’s performance as Daft Jamie.  He is superb.  A mentally and physically disabled character like Jamie could be horrendously overplayed or caricatured, but Tennant manages to make Jamie seem odd but endearing.  Evelyn’s reaction to him is, to be honest, a little nasty and it’s another occasion when I don’t think the writer has her characterisation right (I didn’t like her characterisation much in 100 BC).  I can’t see someone who shows such compassion in stories such as Doctor Who and the Pirates, being quite so horrible about someone with obvious mental or physical disabilities.  In fact, Evelyn’s characterisation is something I have a bit of an issue with in this story.  The writer seems to ignore the fact she is a history lecturer.  I know this isn’t her period, but she is written as being almost wilfully ignorant of anything related to Burke and Hare, rather than, at least, having a basic general knowledge – something I would find far more believable in a character of Evelyn’s implied education.

Jamie is also given some lovely lines, particularly about how other people in Edinburgh ‘drift in and out’ as only he can perceive that something isn’t quite right with reality.

The other performance of note is, of course, Leslie Philips as Knox.  I am undecided about Knox.  On the one hand, Philips is clearly having a whale of a time as this immoral time travelling doctor/businessman/carnival showman but on the other I think his performance sometimes tips to the hammier side of hammy and it takes the edge off what is, otherwise, a fairly grim and gritty story.

The beginning of Episode 3 plays a clever trick on the listener, being an exact replica of the opening to Episode 1 but exchanging Burke for Knox.  It is so similar that I thought I’d messed up transferring the audio files to my mp3 player!

Historically, this story introduces us to William Burke and latterly, William Hare.  Within the context of the story I am a little confused as to whether we are meeting the real thing or whether these are alternative versions trapped within Knox’s sideshow.  Indeed, the nature of how Knox is delivering the ‘Burke and Hare Experience’ to alien tourists is left a little vague.  Robert Knox is also a historical figure, along with Mary Patterson and Daft Jamie, but this Knox is an imposter so, as far as this audio is concerned, we are left without a clear picture of what the real man was like.  Mary and Jamie were both victims of Burke and Hare’s murder spree to gain bodies for the real Knox.  There were many other victims but these do not feature in the story and we do not actually witness either of the murders: Mary is dead by the climax of the story but offscreen and more tragically, Daft Jamie is returned to his rightful place and time (after a quick trip to the future) to fulfill his historical destiny.  We also witness the execution of Burke, betrayed by Hare (who was offered the chance to give ‘King’s evidence’, meaning he escaped prosecution).  (And here, I have a confession, that I’ve just had to swap around Burke and Hare’s names as I had got muddled as to which was which in both the context of the story and the real history).  We also have a anachronism as a clue for the Doctor to realise Knox is a time traveller when he mention Jekyll and Hyde, a novel not to be written for a good many years after.
The presence of Burke and Hare allows the story to ruminate on the morality of body-snatching.  The Doctor goes into quite a long speech about how medical science would never have advanced as it did without the machinations of people like Burke, Hare and Knox and how whilst he cannot condone the murders, he can see how the ends, ultimately, will justify the means.  It is an interesting point of view for the story to take and it is a topic perfectly suited to the more alien and colder 6th Doctor.

The only problems I have with the story are, as mentioned, the slightly off characterisation of Evelyn and also the slightly vague nature of exactly how Knox is manipulating the time bubble and allowing alien tourists to view the events in Edinburgh.  The atmosphere, performances and dialogue, however, are superb and contribute towards an excellent story.  It is unsurprising that Big Finish returned the story’s writer Robert Ross to pen a further 6th Doctor and Evelyn story…it’s just a shame it ended up being Pier Pressure (but that’s a review for a different day).