The Crumbling Magician

a fun story very interesting I love what they do with it having continuity being a physical villian too and David Warner being a companion and before that a doctor the very rare moment of playing both

 After taking a break from Doctor Who for a bit, I couldn’t have chosen a better story to come back with. Also, I’ll give my rare spoiler warning. This story is something you should experience yourself first. So shoo. Go listen.

While in flight, the Tardis crashes into another force within the time stream. This leaves our party badly wounded. They wake up in a time-hospital, run by an AI called Continuity. This AI, however, is not as friendly as it might first appear…

There’s a lot of great stuff to talk about, but let’s start with our main cast. The hospital is a place for people who have wounds and illnesses related to time. Which, in our case, means Polly. The crash has caused Polly to experience timeslips, where she’ll randomly warp to other points within her recent timeline. These slips are very useful in the storytelling. We warp back to the crash, where we see what actually happened. We warp back to the near future, where we see Continuity’s true nature. And sometimes, we warp to the hallway, just so we can get some travel time out of the way. It’s an easy enough concept to get your head around, but it adds an element of uncertainty to the story, which I can appreciate.

Ben, meanwhile, got off pretty lightly in the crash and is back on his feet pretty quickly. However, before he can look for the others, he comes across a young boy called Allie Kay. Allie is in the hospital for a similar time-related accident. He did not get off well. A crash has caused the 8-year-old boy to rapidly age into an old man. Without knowing it, this young child is old enough to be someone’s grandfather. Ben quickly becomes very protective of him, which in turn makes him a real hero in Allie’s eyes.

And last but not least, we have the Doctor, who is in the worst state. He is unconscious while his old, aged body has taken yet another hit. While he’s healing, he’s not getting up anytime soon.

This might sound like a lot of exposition, but it is necessary to get the full picture. This entire situation is basically a chess match, with pieces spread across the board. And our AI is in charge.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Evil AI, we know the drill. It tries to kill with everything around it. WOTAN, HAL 9000, yada yada yada. But it’s not that black and white. Continuity is not just another force fully set on killing. She’s a medical AI. Her programming is meant to save lives. She can’t just take out the scalpels and go to town, she has to follow very specific rules and routines. This makes her very manipulative, as she has to convince her patients that taking their lives is the best option. Basically trying to force them into euthanasia.

And while a bit grim, this works really well. The strict rules make for an interesting opponent. She harms Polly with a botched surgery that is “within the margin of error”. She shows young Allie his face. She angers Ben so he has to be sedated. It’s manipulative in a very precise way, which makes her stand out.

She even moves past the generic motivation for her actions. When confronted with the why of her actions, she mentions the generic “I see all information in the universe and people are bad”, but that is nothing more than a ruse. Her real reason is far more emotional. Her constant care for the injured, sick and depressed has hurt her. Why keep going if all those people die? Yet her programming does not allow her to kill herself, so she lashes out at her patients. It’s tragic, yet also clearly evil.

One of her moves leads to her downfall, however. In one of her manipulations, she transfers the Doctor’s consciousness to Polly’s body. Continuity has woken up the Doctor.

And I’ll be fair. I don’t fully know why she would do that. I can think of some reasons. Maybe the timeline forced her into it. It happened in the future, so she has to do it. Maybe she can’t harm him in any other way because his unconscious body can’t consent to any medical procedure. Maybe it’s just a cry for help from someone in need. In any case, she has just created her own greatest opponent.

Waking up the Doctor allows us for one more piece of character insight. The Doctor is now trapped in a young body. He is no longer burdened by his aging physique. This leads to some deep conversations between Continuity and the Doctor. She describes him as the titular “Crumbling magician”, the man who knows all the tricks, but can no longer preform them. She tries to lure him in: Would he not prefer keeping this young body? Would he not curse himself for going back to that aged prison? Is the life of one feeble human worth it?

This, right here, is where I feel the Doctor could go next. Lately, I’ve wondered what another First Doctor Season could’ve been like. What if Big Finish decided that this incarnation could do with another ride? And this is my answer. The Doctor is locked away in this aged husk, yet he would never give it up if it would harm others. Never cruel, even though cruel seems so appealing. The stories you could tell. But more about that in a little bit.

The Doctor eventually destroys Continuity after some brilliant conversations about hope, heroism and optimism. When it is time to leave, one big question remains: What will we do with Allie? Ben has promised he will care for him. He will help him and be his hero. It shows incredible character on his part. And so they leave with their new companion Allie on board. On to their next adventure.

And it is at this point I’ve come across something less pleasant. We’ve come across our first loose plot thread. Release-wise, this is the last First Doctor story in all of the Companion Chronicles. This leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste.

A continuation of any kind seems incredibly unlikely. Big Finish have shown no further interest in the Companion Chronicles, Elliot Chapman has stopped voice acting for Ben and David Warner, the voice of Allie, has sadly passed away. It seems that this is the end of this storyline.

Which is such a shame. The character work on display here is absolutely incredible. Some of the finest we’ve had up till now. I would not have minded a full range with this cast. I would’ve loved to discover what it could bring to the table. Maybe someone, somewhere, will one day pick up where this story left off. The beauty of Doctor Who is that nothing is ever off the table.

Until that point, however, we will just have to take this story for what it is: A masterpiece. A great setting, great villain and phenomenal exploration of our cast. An absolute must-listen.