The Sixth Doctor, it has consistently been said, was rejuvenated by Big Finish. An incarnation traditionally loathed by fandom (and by fandom I mean those fans who don’t like any change) it took Big Finish to allow Colin Baker the opportunity to show fans how wonderful his Doctor could have been on TV were it not for behind-the-scenes issues. One of the main reasons for this reinvention of the character was the introduction of Dr Evelyn Smythe.

Evelyn is the type of companion that fandom has mooted for years – an older companion. Professor Rumford, of The Stones of Blood fame, has often been cited as an example of how an elderly companion might work. She is immense fun and it is easy to see elements of her character as inspiration for Evelyn. As I understand it, the New Adventures, at one point, came very close to having an older male companion called Tom (who would have eventually turned out to be Bernice Summerfield’s father). In the event, however, it was Roz and Chris who joined the Seventh Doctor. And so it fell to Big Finish to finally pick up the baton and run with it proper. Evelyn is the result, and a wonderful one she is too thanks, in no small part to the performance of Maggie Stables.

The Marian Conspiracy is a very strong debut story for Evelyn. The entire story revolves around her personal family history and allows her profession of university history lecturer to be a driving force in the story.

The Doctor takes Evelyn back to Tudor England to investigate a nexus point centred around her family tree. In doing so, they become embroiled in religious conflict in and around the court of Queen Mary I.

As a pure historical story it also proves that Doctor Who can still pull these off very successfully. I still think it’s a shame the TV series shies away from straight historical stories as, generally, they are considered the pinnacle of Doctor Who fiction across all media – from the Hartnell era (The Aztecs, Marco Polo), to the books (Sanctuary, The Plotters), to the audios (The Fires of Vulcan, The Council of Nicaea).

The Sixth Doctor is a perfect fit for a Tudor based historical. The only other Doctor I can imagine hobnobbing with royalty quite so freely is the Third, but that would probably have come with a side order of arrogance. His scenes with Queen Mary are wonderful as he tries, in vain, to convince Mary of the errors of her ways.

It is these scenes, and those with Sarah Whiteside, the Queen’s lady in waiting, that focus on the religious conflict of Tudor England. A message of religious tolerance runs throughout the story as we see how the Protestant religion is treated under the reign of the devout Catholic, Mary. The hypocrisy of how under Edward Protestantism was the legal religion and how, with a change of monarch, Catholicism is the true religion is examined in a dramatic and interesting way. Sarah’s problem of a now illegal marriage to a member of the clergy is touching and ultimately tragic as she is forced into effective house arrest and her husband is executed. This conflict between Protestants and Catholics is something which features heavily in the next story of this marathon, The Massacre and the treatment of religion in these stories may become the feature of a separate post.

Evelyn, as a time travelling novice, drives the rest of the plot (both literal and figuratively). Her initial mistake at raising a glass to Queen Elizabeth is, of course, the Doctor’s fault for not arriving in the correct time, but her continual gabbling about future events – Mary’s non-pregnancy, Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne – and her innocent prattling about her ‘poisonous’ pills leads to various problems that the Doctor has to extricate her from.

Historically we obviously have the presence of Queen Mary I, played superbly by Anah Ruddin. The rest of the characters, however, seem to entirely fictional. The local Protestant common folk, George, William and John (played by Gary Russell) are fairly stock characters but are accompanied by the rather arch Reverend Thomas Smith (played by Dalek operator Nicholas Pegg) and the borderline Allo Allo accented presence of Barnaby Edwards’ (another Dalek operator) Francois de Noailles. Francois, as the French Ambassador to Queen Mary is presented as a historically accurate character, with both the Doctor and Evelyn commenting on how his story plays out when Elizabeth comes to the throne. However, my research whilst finding historical figures with the same name – including one who was a French Ambassador at around the same time; doesn’t seem to match up with the man being present at Mary’s court in 1555. Maybe, for once, Wikipedia is not being my friend and actually Jacqueline Rayner has done some proper historical research.

Jacqueline Rayner is one of the strongest writers for Big Finish (and indeed in the novels produced by various companies). It was, after all, her adaptations of New Adventues into the early Bernice Summerfield audios that secured the Doctor Who license for Big Finish. The Marian Conspiracy is a strong and involving script which includes some cracking cliffhangers (the end of Part 3 where the suggestion that the Doctor will end up marrying Lady Sarah and becoming Evelyn’s ancestor is brilliant), intelligent dialogue and an interesting central message about religious tolerance. It also introduces a brand new, and unusual, companion with confidence setting up a character who is still going strong today (and even crossed over into the novels at one point).

A fascinating, entertaining and wonderful visit to Tudor England.