The Doctor’s Tale

In 1 word: Generic. In more words:

This story feels like the epitome of all problems that the historical stories can to have. If you were to play “bad trope in a pure historical” bingo, this story would win.

This story takes place in 1400. During the overthrowing of king Richard. The party arrives when tensions are high, but the news is yet to break.

As said, this story hits a lot of tropes along the way. Clearest of all is the bad characterization of characters. They have very little personality traits or drives. I talked about this in my review of “The Phoenicians” as well. If you want a historical drama, you need to have good, understandable characters. Otherwise the drama won’t land. We need to relate to them through personality, since the difference in time period makes them somewhat unrelatable. This story gives them some small personality traits, but never goes deeper, even though it clearly has the time to do so.

Another pitfall it hits, is the assumption that every listener know exactly what this period in history looks like. I assume the writers do research before writing, but we were not there for that process, so it wouldn’t be wrong to take us by the hand a little. Granted, I’m not English. So my knowledge is of these events is comparatively low.

In the TV show, I don’t think the knowledge gap in writer-watcher knowledge is reasonable, since the show’s primary target audience is children. For audio’s, I suppose that’s less true, since these are general for older audiences. I get that it can be hard to go into deep discussions of the society if you have to establish it from the ground up.

Still, there would be a difference between giving some knowledge and no knowledge, and I feel this story gives you almost nothing. And that can feel alienating. And since this story has no real deep discussions, I don’t see why we couldn’t have a bit more background. Tell us what makes this setting special. Why is this a historical turning point? That would make the story stand on its own a little more.

The last noticeable pitfall, is the distraction with side activities. The main focus of the stories often gets shoved aside for little side adventures, that aren’t all that relevant. I’m all for having some fun in the time period, but not at the expense of coherency. We really don’t need a scene where Ian goes hawking, for example. It’s neat, and sort of fun, but it is distracting us from the main plot. And if stuff like that happens a few times, the main story gets very muddled.

Character wise the story does not have much either. Vicki gets some time with someone the same age, which is fine, but not too special. The others don’t get anything noteworthy.

And that’s a bit of a shame, since Barbara’s love for this period and the Canterbury Tales is mentioned a few times. Even compared to Ian’s obsession with Sir Francis Drake from last season. But very little is done with that, most of it happens off screen. The lack of a voice for Barbara doesn’t help either.

And that’s “The Doctor’s Tale” really. Structurally, it’s okay. It does the trick. But it hits every roadblock a dramatic historical can hit in this show. It also has very little that makes up for it, if anything at all. So this one is a dud. “The Dark Planet” might the most basic a sci-fi story can get, but “The Doctor’s Tale” is the most basic a historical story can get. You could listen to white noise for 2 hours, and you have a very similar experience.