The Monthly Adventures #068 - "Catch-1782" by Alison Lawson

We’ve been on a bad streak with the audios recently. From disappointing finales to underbaked scripts to whatever the hell The Game was trying to be, it’s been a while since we had something truly great and the air’s starting to get a bit stale around here. And then came Catch-1782. With a cover that intrigued me, looking like an atmospheric, winter-set ghost story, and a plot involving time travel mechanics, which I usually adore, it seemed like it could be a break from the mediocre run I’ve had to endure. I was wrong.

On a trip to visit her uncle, Mel is caught up in an accidental burst of temporal energy and flung into the past. The Doctor quickly attempts a rescue mission but realises a horrifying truth: saving Mel means diverting the course of history.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

For a show whose entire premise relies on the mechanics of time travel, Doctor Who explores the concept surprisingly rarely. When it does however, you can end up with stories like Turn Left, which is why I often find stories messing around with paradoxes and time loops and other similar shenanigans a joy. So, is it any wonder I was so looking forward to Catch-1782? Right off the bat, the premise is golden. Mel has been flung back in time and has become wrapped up in her own family history, meaning that if she were to leave she may never have come to exist. Great idea, rife with possibility and it’s not something I’ve seen before. However, the story truly doesn’t deliver.

There were a few aspects I thought were genuinely great here, for instance, the period setting is wonderfully put together and Hallam House feels decently realised. Past that, I also appreciated its attempt at an interesting side cast. Our characters all felt like real people here, which is always a nice touch, and some I outright loved, like Mel’s charmingly humble Uncle, John. However, even here I have a few problems I’ll get onto in a bit.

As for the story itself, I have some glaring issues. I could tell where every single plot beat was going from the very beginning. Is Mel going to become Elena Hallam? Yep. Is Mrs. McGregor going to replace Mel when she leaves? Yep. I was not once shocked and at no point felt an ounce of tension because I already knew exactly how it would pan out. Of course Mel’s not going to become Elena Hallam but with such an obvious solution directly in front of me, there was basically no possibility of it ever happening and therefore no reason to become invested in what was happening. Also doesn’t help that the script has so little drive, meandering along at such a slight and insignificant pace.

I also noticed that the concept just wasn’t thought out very well past the initial premise. For one, we have moments like Mel lamenting on how there’s no way to get home after she’s already realised that McGregor can take her place, which clearly shows this story was published a couple drafts short. There’s also the detail of Mel’s ghost walking around Hallam House in the future, which is never addressed or explained. One line about timelines or time bleeds would’ve been fine but it’s just dropped by the end. There are a couple other kinks I think should’ve been ironed out, like whether or not it wants to portray Henry as outwardly villainous because it wants to portray him like a man with a mental illness but then also has scenes of him right out threatening Mel with violence for not loving him, which I personally feel zero sympathy for.

On top of all that, I think the script can be a little devoid of emotional weight at times. The dialogue for one is very wooden and unnatural throughout and prevents me from getting invested in the character dynamics, especially in the later parts when our cast just begins to outright state their point in their character arcs for the audience. However, it is undoubtedly worst in the ending, which is an overly sentimental string of exposition that completely makes light of the rest of the story. Just to recap, in this audio, Mel is sent back hundreds of years in the past, is trapped with an insane man for six months, all the while being constantly drugged and the ending might as well be a shrug and a wink without any deliberation on the untold amount of mental damage this experience has probably had on Mel. Also, this is the second story in a row where Six has accidentally abandoned Mel somewhere for months, he really ought to stop doing that.

Catch-1782 was disappointingly generic. With a slight script that had far less to say than it thought it did and a constantly declining sense of urgency and a constantly growing sense of levity, I failed to become invested throughout. I’m becoming tired of this sort of story, one that’s less bad and more unimpressive, slipping through the cracks into relative obscurity. There are worse stories but Catch-1782 is at the end of the day an entirely forgettable experience.

5/10

Pros:

+ A unique take on a time travel story

+ Excellent period setting that’s well realised

+ Has an interesting, if flawed, sidecast

Cons:

- The plot was predictable and tensionless

- Full of holes in logic that make it feel like an early draft

- Hokey at times despite a disturbing premise

- The dialogue was often wooden

It is actually insane to me that the story kind of brushes past the (very understandable) intense concern Six has upon realizing Mel was drugged out of her mind, helpless, and essentially trapped in a household with a possessive, intensely not okay man for actual months. Sure, Mel doesn't have any memory of anything that might have happened, but it's still horrific to think about.

It's such an insanely terrifying implication to tuck inside of an otherwise pretty average Doctor Who story.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: The Juggernauts

This is such a bizarre story - I'd almost call it a non-story. There's no real conflict. Mel is sent back in time to the 1700s and she loses her memory. Based on historical records she's fated to die at the house. This seems like a really interesting premise right? You might be thinking, what time-travel shenanigans will be needed to get her out of this mess? Well the historical records weren't true, they were just made up. There never were any historical records, it was just speculation. To resolve this big issue all it takes is for the Doctor to realise "maybe those rumours were just... rumours" and that's it.

It's also a bit of a weird story for Mel. In the 1700s she runs into this man who recently lost his wife. He takes her in and cares for her and eventually becomes really obsessed with her. It's revealed he's not a nice man at all and just wants to marry Mel and the worst part is the Doctor genuinely considers allowing this. Notice how I said the Doctor, not Mel. She doesn't really get a choice. She doesn't get many choices at all actually. She's just not much of a character in the story. Beyond living at this house for 6 months she doesn't actually do anything in the story. And at the end, when she finally gets back to the TARDIS, she basically shrugs off the 6 months of believing she was stranded in the 1700s, no memory of her life and constantly being "treated" with laudanum. This should be a traumatic experience and she just... doesn't care.

I enjoyed the vibes, and the setting but other than that it was a really strange story.

Next Story: Thicker than Water

A gently paced story that takes quite some time to become eventful. Eventually Mel gets thrown back in time and trapped in her own family history. It’s good, clean fun propped up by superb character acting, but my God - it moves slowly. It’s a nice change of pace from some of my more recent Big Finish which has new ideas flying at you every minute, but I’m glad this is not typical of Big Finish’s output.

The best element of this play is seeing the master of the house (Henry Hallam) slowly be revealed as a possessive maniac. It is a very unusual kind of peril for a companion to find themselves in. Hallam’s cruel response to his housekeeper’s affection is the highlight of the play and reveals how damaged he is.

It’s all very polite, safe and unsurprising, but at the same time an enjoyable ride.

It's my, ehem, triumphant return to the Main Range after a month and a half of absence. And this is kind of a meh story. There's some interesting ideas here, but ultimately the ending was a pretty weak cop out to a rather interesting question that challenges the "can't change history" philosophy that I hate about this show.

There's a lot of technobabble nonsense to get the plot going. It doesn't really matter. The point here is that there's a reception for the anniversary of a scientific institute that Mel's uncle works and lives at. They're burying a time capsule to commemorate it, but uh oh, what's this? There's something already buried there? It turns out that the experimental metal they're working on was buried in the ground for hundreds of years in a box from the late 1700s. And then Mel gets yanked back in time through technobabble by the experimental metal. For reasons. Who knows. Doesn't matter.

Mel ends up showing up at this same mansion during the late 1700s, but it's inhabited by a distant ancestor of hers. She becomes confused and distraught because, again, technobabble nonsense. The point is that she's super unwell, has no idea what's happening, and is in an on again off again coma for six months. They treat her with laudanum, which is apparently an insanely powerful painkiller that makes her even more confused and tired.

And then the Doctor shows up six months later because more technobabble and it turns out that Mel is supposed to become Elanor, the second wife of Henry Hallam, a distant ancestor of hers. Henry is super infatuated with her and he thinks her name is Nel, short for Elanor. Naturally Mel doesn't get a say in this. Can you imagine women getting a say in who they marry? You know, in general? Wild.

This is where I said, lol f**k you Medicinal Purposes. Preserving history just for the sake of preserving history is a dangerous road to go down. In that story, the Doctor lures a boy who trusts him absolutely to his death for the sake of preserving history. That's evil enough, but what if it was supposed to be Evelyn who died according to the history he knew? What if, according to history the Doctor had read, there was an old woman who was a stranger who was killed, and that was supposed to be Evelyn? Would he have gone through with luring her to her death? Because, given how evil that story was, I can easily see him doing it.

There's a similar situation here. Would the Doctor willingly leave Mel here in this time period against her will and force her to marry this man she doesn't care for just to preserve history the way he remembers it? Absolutely he would as presented in the story. That's f**ked up. Mel is consistently NOT a character in this story. She is an object. A ball to be passed back and forth between the characters. She's going to be forced to marry Henry because it's the 1700s and what other choice does she have? No, she's going to be forced to marry Henry to preserve history the way everyone remembers it, because what other choice does she have?

There's something to be said for the grandfather paradox as well. If she doesn't marry this man, does that mean her family would never have existed? This is some Back to the Future stuff. If she doesn't have kids with him, then she doesn't exist. But does that matter? If you're faced with the choice of either you marry and have sex with a man you don't love and is kind of insane versus you don't exist, which would you chose? I would imagine a lot of people would choose the later. But, of course, that's not a discussion here. That could be an interesting discussion in this story, but like the rest of the story Mel has no agency here. She's not allowed to choose for herself or even think about the possibility of another option. She realizes that she has to marry Henry and that's that, it never even occurs to her to choose anything else.

Thus the ending itself is kind of a cop out. The housekeeper loves Henry and is the one who marries him. I don't know why considering he attacked her and is really violent and hateful towards her at the end, but sure. (I also can't help but hear Mrs Baddeley in her voice. "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without my plum pudding!") It neatly solves the whole problem. It makes the story not have to confront the philosophical implications of how evil not changing history for the sake of it truly is. So with that ending in mind, it's just kind of fine. It's not nearly as interested in chewing on the ideas that it presents as it is knocking Mel out and having a bunch of men discuss her fate. Not the worst story, not nearly as bad as Medicinal Purposes which embraces the evil of that idea, but not that great either.