The Emperor of Eternity

The Companion Chronicles is one of Big Finish’s most celebrated ranges.  The original remit of stories featuring the first four Doctors (then, unrepresented in any of BF’s other ranges) saw various companions narrating tales of adventure and derring do.  That remit fairly quickly transmuted into featuring all the Doctors and the format was experimented with from fairly early days.  The Emperor of Eternity, though, is more of a ‘traditional’ Companion Chronicle and features Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.  Watling has only featured in two Companion Chronicles to date (and indeed, has not featured anywhere else in the Big Finish canon – even The Rosemariners (a Lost Stories release) which, as far as I was aware originally featured Victoria, was released by Big Finish with Wendy Padbury playing Zoe).  Neither of her stories seem to be particularly celebrated – the first, The Great Space Elevator, is enjoyable enough, but nothing special.  I wasn’t expecting great things of The Emperor of Eternity but, to be fair, I was pleasantly surprised and found myself quite enjoying it.

What is a little odd about this, is the fact that the story is highly reminiscent of Marco Polo – and we all know how much I didn’t like that story…  Aside from the China setting, it features assassins, an Emperor and a tussle in the throne room.  The 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive in Ancient China having narrowly avoided a meteorite.  Horrifically, said meteorite has ended up crashing into a Chinese village, killing its population.  After encountering some locals, the Doctor is declared a god and taken to meet Emperor Qin Shi Huang who, as explored in the 10th Doctor comic strip, craves immortality.  Jamie and Victoria follow, foil an assassination attempt and escape back to the TARDIS.  The ending, in particular, is quite a lot of fun and quite exciting.  I’ve often commented on how my mind wanders a little with single voice audio and, to be fair, it did a bit during the earlier parts of the story; but the ending started to really grip me and it all builds to a rather satisfying conclusion.

Deborah Watling’s narration serves the story well, but Watling’s voice has aged considerably and, of all the regulars employed by Big Finish, she sounds the most different to her time in the show.  Yes, William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Maureen O’Brien and others from the black and white era have clearly aged, but Watling’s voice seems to have suffered more than those and she really cannot imitate how Victoria used to sound in the 60s, even though she makes a concerted effort.  It is thrown into sharp relief by the presence of Frazer Hines as Jamie, who provides the second voice for this release.  Having two ‘famous’ voices in one release was, if I remember rightly, the principal selling point of this release.  Up to this point, the Companion Chronicles had featured one companion accompanied by a ‘back-up’ voice – often the villain or an antagonist; or the character the companion is telling the story to; and sometimes both of those at the same time.  Here, we simply have Hines performing Jamie’s lines.  What’s a little odd is that Hines isn’t required to provide the Doctor’s lines, this duty being performed by Watling.  Hines had already shown how marvellous his Troughton impression is in the second ever Companion Chronicle: Helicon Prime.  I have no idea why Hines wasn’t asked to do it here as it would have made an incredible difference to the listener’s engagement in the story.  Maybe it was financial – Hines doesn’t actually have a huge amount of lines and I guess his part may well have been recorded as an addition to a production he was more central to and extra lines for the Doctor would have required a greater fee.  Maybe the production team saw this as Watling’s project and therefore wanted to give the lion’s share of narration to her.  Whichever it might be, it remains a shame this story doesn’t benefit from Hines’ talent at bringing the 2nd Doctor back to life.

Historically, we have the presence (in yet another story) of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (who spends part of the story disguised as a wandering monk).  Meng, his ‘second in command’, also features (although he is presumably not the alien version as featured in the 10th Doctor comic strip, The Immortal Emperor!  Huang’s desire for immortality is a matter of historical record and the story also features his terracotta army (also seen in The Immortal Emperor).  Most disturbingly, a Chinese village was indeed wiped out by a meteorite at this time and the surrounding populous were massacred when an anonymous person inscribed on the rock that the Emperor would die.

The Emperor of Eternity is not the greatest of the Companion Chronicles by a long shot, but it is a fun tale, and (as the interview extras point out) it is good to have Victoria featuring in a purely historical tale – something which had been phased out by the time Watling joined the show.  The lack of Hines’ Troughton performance does jar, as it is so common place now in Big Finish 2nd Doctor stories, but Watling does a good job and I do actually think it would be nice if she returned to do some further adventures – particularly with the advent of the Early Years range which, without her, could be find the Troughton-era set stories a bit limited to Jamie/Zoe releases.

Again another really strong Jamie Victoria and 2nd tardis team and honestly it’s a good one but didn’t really click with me this listen