Quinnis - ★★★½☆

Fair warning that this review contains spoilers not only for Quinnis itself, but also for the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller adventures - season four.

This is truly a great horror story. Still traveling alone through the universe after fleeing their home planet, the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, ended up in a parallel universe – more specifically, in a village on the planet Quinnis. Parallel universes tend to be a trap in sci-fi stories like Doctor Who because there’s nothing you can tell in them that couldn’t be done in your main universe; oftentimes this takes away a bit of the weight of the world you’ve been building up and the apparent novelty ends up disappointing. In the same way, there’s nothing in Quinnis that couldn’t happen in the series’ main universe, but the direction, acting and script do an impeccable job of characterization and world-building that makes you feel like you’re actually in a place where the rules are different.

This is true in many ways, but perhaps the most interesting is the cultural aspect. The people of Quinnis are marked by absurd levels of superstition and are devastated by a drought that seems to be going on forever. The most precious thing anyone can have in a place like this seems to be, from the start of the story, water. At first, the arrival of the Doctor and Susan there is seen with great disdain, as a bad omen. At a certain point, this changes, when the Doctor jokes that he could make it rain without any difficulty and is taken seriously. He is soon co-opted by the leaders of this city, but this turn of events never seems optimistic. Susan becomes more isolated than ever in a hostile environment; the favor of these people is as fleeting as the wind and there is always danger lurking. As the two realize in the first few minutes, the man who was previously responsible for making it rain was thrown to his death when he seemed to have become of bad luck himself. It is under these circumstances that she befriends a local girl, Meedla, played by Tara-Louise Kaye – she is the only character in this story that Ann Ford does not voice, if I'm not mistaken.

It's been dry too long. The rains are late, but they will come soon. And that's when it all changes. The land will burst with hungry life. The misery will tear the world apart, and no one will tell the tears from the rain.

Meedla is a disconcerting character, it’s clear from the first moment she appears that there’s something wrong with her. She’s probably my favorite version of that old trope of the weird kid from horror stories. It’s easy to predict that she’s a Shrazer, a kind of local monster that people believe brings bad luck, but that doesn’t bother me – the fun of the story isn’t who the villain is, but how she's tormenting Susan. One of the elements that are explored in the TV series about Susan is precisely how she felt alone and wanted real connections, she wanted friends. And that’s exactly what Meedla takes advantage of as Quinnis unfolds. Susan’s loneliness and how easily she trusts people. One of my favorite moments in the story is at the end of the first part, when the rain finally reaches Quinnis – and even that turns out to be a bad omen, with the town almost being flooded – and Susan realizes that she’s being followed by the Shrazer. At one point the monster is captured by one of the traps that were set up there, but when Susan turns around it is Meedla who is trapped. She helps her friend, disoriented, but it is no use – she is swept away by the rain and, although it does not take long for her to realize who she really was, Susan carries a certain regret for her “death” until the end.

The sound work is impressive. I love the rains, it really seems like the city is about to be devastated, that you too will be swept away by the water. There is no way to characterize the monster visually, of course, but this is compensated by the noises it makes. It's chilling, with Meedla's voice mixing with the strange sounds of birds. Every time there is a chorus of a crowd, you can feel the depth of the sound; be it in a more ritualistic scene or after the death of a character, when the women of the city come together in collective mourning, wailing loudly. And although I can't explain why, there is something very effective in a nightmare scene with Susan, in which she believes that the Shrazer has invaded the house she is in. All these elements, bit by bit, build a very vivid image of Quinnis, almost like a cursed city in which you are trapped alongside the characters.

Meedla ends up being a remarkable character not only because of the horror setting but also because of the effect she has on Susan, who, even as an adult, according to the narration, seems to harbor some regret over the circumstances of this friendship – it is debatable whether Meedla had any genuine affection for her, but that does not prevent Susan from feeling pity or wanting to help her, despite everything. Almost against her own instincts, at several moments Susan helps her or prevents her from getting hurt even when she already knows Meedla is the Shrazer, that she is a murderer and that she was feeding off all the misery that was tormenting the city and Susan herself. And in these touches of characterization, this is a story that says a lot about who Susan is. Another positive point about Quinnis – and one that is common with another Platt story featuring the two of them for the Companion Chronicles, The Beginning – is that the script balances the Doctor and Susan's screen time well and in the end, although you have a very psychological story focused on the companion, you also feel like you've discovered a little more about her relationship with the Doctor.

There are also some cool little details about this story; the first is that Susan mentions in one of the first arcs of the first TV season some places she and her grandfather have visited, one being Quinnis. I find it fun when these little lines are expanded upon in the supplementary materials; the same thing happened with a band she listens to in An Unearthly Child – John Smith and the Common Men - in a much later Fifth Foctor story. The second is the setup for this release, which is structured as Susan talking to her husband, David, who has already passed away. Interestingly, both the real plot and the setup are well positioned in the timeline; the first takes place right before she and the Doctor go to London, 1963, when she enrolls Coal Hill School; while the other takes place between An Earthly Child and Relative Dimensions, stories in which she – and her son, Alex – meet the Eighth Doctor. Not only that, but a little fish she gets from her grandfather in Quinnis ends up being very relevant in that second story.

Perhaps my only problem with this audio is precisely the characterization of the Doctor and Susan regarding their trip to London. The Doctor says, twice, once at the beginning and once at the end, that Susan needs stability and friends her own age and things like that – I never felt, on TV, that this was a feeling from the Doctor but rather a desire from Susan, but in this story the behavior of the two is reversed. Evidence of this is his lack of goodwill when she threatens to stay alone in London during An Unearthly Child and that his arc throughout the travels with her is precisely to realize that she has grown up and needs to leave the nest.

I really like Marc Platt's writing. He disappoints every now and then, but as a rule a story of his is almost always a guaranteed good story. Quinnis is one of them.