MR 038: The Church and the Crown

The Doctor faces his arch nemesis. A cat!

I love how the Fifth Doctor is the most easy to bully Doctor. He not only gets made fun of by Peri, he also gets bullied by a cat in the opening scene. I swear he'd be the Doctor to get shoved in a locker.

The story itself isn't all that interesting though to be honest. It's a pure historical, but I feel like pure historicals themselves aren't all that interesting. It usually comes down to a matter of either:

1. Interfering in history is bad in and of itself or;
2. Our interfering in history is actually A PART of history and so it's totally legit.

And both explanations are pretty dumb obviously. This story goes with option 2. The Doctor seems to think that his interfering to stop an invasion of France is legit because it was always "supposed to" happen. That his interference is actually a "part of history." Which is, unsatisfying as an explanation obviously. But more than that, the obvious question is why? Why is this history where you interfere to stop an invasion of France really "supposed to happen"? According to whom? The Time Lords? Destiny? God? Aren't you an atheist? Don't you disagree with the Time Lords trying to control all of history? Ridiculous. Peri even asks him why he's doing this as if she knows his reasons are complete bs.

Anyway, the actual story here is just that Peri looks like Queen Anne, ala Androids of Tara so she gets kidnapped because they think she's the queen, again ala Androids of Tara. Yadda yadda we've heard all this before. It's just a plot by an English guy to divide France between the Cardinal and the King to weaken it for invasion. Whatever, very exciting.

What's more interesting here is the character interactions. It's Erimem's first trip outside of her time and she's having a great time. She gets to pretend to be a princess and basically bluffs her way into the King's court, which is hilarious. Erimem and Peri prove that they can work together quite well and that they uplift the Fifth Doctor and make him more interesting. Peri gets to prove that she is absolutely the Fifth Doctor's best companion. Her personality just kind of leaps out at you with how quick witted and just fun she is. Way back when I first listened to these stories, the only time I found the Fifth Doctor himself interesting was when he was with Peri and Erimem and we definitely see why here.

The Doctor also gets to introduce the phrase "one for all and all for one" to the musketeers and he's very excited about it. Nicola Bryant also gets to play Queen Anne too which is nice since she looks like her, much like any other doppleganger episode. She's good in the part.

Otherwise it's pretty C tier coded, but there's some nice interactions between the principal cast. And Erimem gets properly invited into the TARDIS at last. As well as her cat who gets one last scene to bully the Doctor at the end.