The Macros

The first series of Big Finish’s Lost Stories range concluded with this story from the writer team of Tony Rudlin and Ingrid Pitt – yes, that Ingrid Pitt. Ingrid ‘Queen Gallelia and Doctor Solow’ Pitt. Ingrid ‘karate chop a Myrka’ Pitt.

It’s more or less the most interesting thing about this story because, otherwise, it’s a very run of the mill ordinary Doctor Who story.

The 6th Doctor and Peri arrive aboard a ship but just like the first episode of The Space Museum, no one can see or hear them. The crew also seem to be in a time loop and the ship itself is covered in a strange green rust. It is revealed, fairly early on, that the ship is the USS Eldridge – the infamous ship at the centre of The Philadelphia Experiment, an alleged attempt to develop the facility of invisibility to the Allied war effort in 1943.

Here is the kernel of a fascinating Doctor Who story – a classic example of Doctor Who explaining a real life mystery. The USS Eldridge disappeared and was never seen again – although the official story was that the ship had been renamed and given to the Greek Navy. Unfortunately, The Macros, squanders this premise and instead shifts the story to a generic alien world with a generic dictator and generic world-invading ambitions.

The world of Capron with its mad, dictator Presidenta Osloo is such a pointless waste of story it just frustrates every time the action shifts there. The disintegrating Eldridge and the two characters aboard who haven’t been stuck in the time loop – the Bosun and Professor Tessler (responsible for the experiment itself) are constantly shunted to the sidelines so we can spend time with the thoroughly boring Presidenta, her generic stepson and his rebellious girlfriend. To be fair, the cast make the very best of what they are given and Linda Marlowe is suitably scenery-chewing as Osloo but the plot is just so dull it really does make me wonder why they couldn’t have thought of something more interesting to do with the Eldridge plot.

The extras reveal that the reasons for this may have been two-fold. Firstly, this was a last minute replacement for the planned finale of the season, the fabled The Children of January. Secondly, the original script was lost in a hard drive crash. It seems that this story was rewritten ‘from memory’. I wonder if Rudlin and Pitt could only remember the bare bones of the two parallel plots and ended up leaning into the simpler, more straightforward ‘mad dictator’ plot rather than the intriguing ‘solving a historical mystery’ plot. It’s a real shame.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, are really good of course, and this audio seems to be working towards softening the relationship which seemed to leap in dynamics on screen between Season 22 and 23.

Historically, the Philadelphia Experiment is an interesting mystery. Based on the alleged observations of merchant sailor, Carl M Allen, it is an event denied outright ever happened by the US Navy. The alleged event involved not only the USS Eldridge being made invisible for a short time, but it also being teleported briefly before returning to the harbour. The actual story around the USS Eldridge is fascinating with elements of conspiracy theory, Einstein’s unified field theory and sailors being melded with the ship after teleport! There is so much story in the mystery of the Eldridge and The Macros just uses them as a backdrop.

Even the mildly interesting element of Capron being in a micro-universe is never explored much beyond the Doctor having to do some macguffiny TARDIS stuff to ‘adjust’ people as they travel between the two worlds which seems to solely be to provide a cliffhanger to Episode 1. It isn’t even used as a way of incapacitating Osloo when she travels to the Eldridge. The Doctor has the prime opportunity to not adjust her body to the new universe which would have stopped her right in her mad, generic tracks. But he doesn’t and she just goes outside to rant and rave a bit before they all have to return to the TARDIS because the Eldridge is disintegrating.

There’s also a little side trip to Washington in 1943 which ends up being a dead end, plotwise, which again could have been quite interesting. The inability of the Doctor to return the Professor and Bosun to their own time does add some tension but the ultimate solutions for them didn’t really work for me. The Professor is betrayed by Osloo after she promises him sanctuary and dominion if he helps her invasion attempt. Unsurprisingly she reneges on her word and he ends up dead. The Bosun, bizarrely, ends up in a retread of the conclusion to The Leisure Hive, alongside Osloo herself.

There are many parts of The Macros that could make an interesting and absorbing Doctor Who adventure but in this script none of them gel and the most interesting parts end up treading water on the sidelines until the characters briefly spend some time in them. Historically, the details are thin on the ground and beyond being told this is 1943 and the brief visit to Washington there isn’t really a great sense of time and space.

Frustrating.