The Marian Conspiracy

Well Neverrats, here's your long awaited. The Marian Conspiracy is a story I've had my eye on for awhile now as I've heard quite a bit about it. This is the first Big Finish story to feature their own original companion: Evelyn Smythe; a history professor. Now this run of stories between Six and Evelyn is really hyped up by a lot of fans. It's often talked about how well the two work together, how Six's characterisation gets improved, how good their stories are etc etc. And The Marian Conspiracy is generally considered to be an example of this; kicking off the run really well and being the first properly great story in the Main Range. But does this live up to the hype? I would say, maybe? Just about? This story is rather good. Evelyn is good, she plays off Six well and has some great moments of dialogue, she is a tad stuck up though; works well in a dynamic with Six specifically but is a little tricky on general likability. Speaking of, lets talk about Mr. Stuck Up himself, Six. They have reworked his character here and my god it is so much better. Long gone is the screaming ego maniac, here we get a character actually resembling Doctor Who. They still keep the traces of theatrics and egotism while injecting the character with the compassion, wisdom and kind nature that should always be forefront. Really happy about this and Colin of course plays it brilliantly as he always does. This story is very strong on dialogue, there's some absolutley amazing interactions here, particularly with The Doctor and on the theme of morality; I like how intention vs consequence is explored as a sort of mini theme. Outside of that though, this is story is just alright. It's a fine 60s-esque historical, has a pretty basic plot and makes ok use of the setting. I can see how this could be a springboard for a really good era and dynamic, just going foward I'm hoping for slightly more warmth between The Doctor and Evelyn, however given that this is there first story so I wouldn't expect that off the bat. Overall I would definitely say this story is kind of overhyped but it's still pretty good and it's fantastic dialogue brings it up to an 8/10 / 4 stars.

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

Previous Story: The Hunting Ground

And with this, I've finally made it to the 6th Doctor and Evelyn. I've heard nothing but good things about this TARDIS team making this one of my most anticipated parts of my timeline watchthrough. While I've only listened to this first story, I can safely say that I understand the hype. For starters, Maggie Stables is fantastic as this new companion Dr Evelyn Smythe. She has excellent chemistry with Colin Baker from the moment they meet and she's the perfect counter to his obnoxious and arrogant Doctor. I love that we finally have a companion who's willing to call the Doctor out on what he does. Her being a history professor is also very unique, we haven't really had a companion knowledgable about history since Barbara.

As far as historicals go, this one is very reminiscent of the early ones in the 60s. It really takes time at the beginning to immerse you in the past, with lengthy scenes of the Doctor in the Queen's court and Evelyn at an old-fashioned English tavern. I really enjoy how modern things interact with the past in this story, Evelyn's painkillers being mistaken for poison or the historical characters being fascinated by a zip to name a few examples. It's stuff like this that really brings a story to life. I like the perspective this story has on historical figures like Queen Mary, it doesn't portray her in a black and white way like so many other historicals do when it comes to controversial figures. When you take a step back, the plot is actually quite simple. The things that really make this story so good are the character interactions and relationships. I really wish more stories were like this because it's honestly fantastic.

Let's just say I haven't been this eager to continue my timeline watchthrough since I broke out of the black and white era and began colour.

Next Story: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

15.01.2022

Two for two for Six (24246, heh). The new companion, Evelyn Smythe, is an excellent addition and in just under two hours became one of my favorite companions in all of Who. Six is excellent here, making a great Doctor and an improvement over his depiction in the show.
The setting is great, Queen Mary is depicted as human who is wrong instead of a monster, which I love as the point of the story. The rest is a detour, which isn't really exciting, but gets the job done.
3.5/5

I loved this story, I don't think I've actually watched any pure historicals (at least, if I have I don't remember them well at all), and I've occasionally wondered how exactly they work compared to the the usual sci-fi fare

This flawlessly showed me how they work, just spectacular, The Doctor interacting with the court and era was fun, but Evelyn Smythe is undoubtedly the star of the show here. A perfect introduction to an amazing character, I love her back chatting the doctor, I loved her having favourite historical figures, I loved her love of coco, all just spectacular

The Sixth Doctor, it has consistently been said, was rejuvenated by Big Finish. An incarnation traditionally loathed by fandom (and by fandom I mean those fans who don’t like any change) it took Big Finish to allow Colin Baker the opportunity to show fans how wonderful his Doctor could have been on TV were it not for behind-the-scenes issues. One of the main reasons for this reinvention of the character was the introduction of Dr Evelyn Smythe.

Evelyn is the type of companion that fandom has mooted for years – an older companion. Professor Rumford, of The Stones of Blood fame, has often been cited as an example of how an elderly companion might work. She is immense fun and it is easy to see elements of her character as inspiration for Evelyn. As I understand it, the New Adventures, at one point, came very close to having an older male companion called Tom (who would have eventually turned out to be Bernice Summerfield’s father). In the event, however, it was Roz and Chris who joined the Seventh Doctor. And so it fell to Big Finish to finally pick up the baton and run with it proper. Evelyn is the result, and a wonderful one she is too thanks, in no small part to the performance of Maggie Stables.

The Marian Conspiracy is a very strong debut story for Evelyn. The entire story revolves around her personal family history and allows her profession of university history lecturer to be a driving force in the story.

The Doctor takes Evelyn back to Tudor England to investigate a nexus point centred around her family tree. In doing so, they become embroiled in religious conflict in and around the court of Queen Mary I.

As a pure historical story it also proves that Doctor Who can still pull these off very successfully. I still think it’s a shame the TV series shies away from straight historical stories as, generally, they are considered the pinnacle of Doctor Who fiction across all media – from the Hartnell era (The Aztecs, Marco Polo), to the books (Sanctuary, The Plotters), to the audios (The Fires of Vulcan, The Council of Nicaea).

The Sixth Doctor is a perfect fit for a Tudor based historical. The only other Doctor I can imagine hobnobbing with royalty quite so freely is the Third, but that would probably have come with a side order of arrogance. His scenes with Queen Mary are wonderful as he tries, in vain, to convince Mary of the errors of her ways.

It is these scenes, and those with Sarah Whiteside, the Queen’s lady in waiting, that focus on the religious conflict of Tudor England. A message of religious tolerance runs throughout the story as we see how the Protestant religion is treated under the reign of the devout Catholic, Mary. The hypocrisy of how under Edward Protestantism was the legal religion and how, with a change of monarch, Catholicism is the true religion is examined in a dramatic and interesting way. Sarah’s problem of a now illegal marriage to a member of the clergy is touching and ultimately tragic as she is forced into effective house arrest and her husband is executed. This conflict between Protestants and Catholics is something which features heavily in the next story of this marathon, The Massacre and the treatment of religion in these stories may become the feature of a separate post.

Evelyn, as a time travelling novice, drives the rest of the plot (both literal and figuratively). Her initial mistake at raising a glass to Queen Elizabeth is, of course, the Doctor’s fault for not arriving in the correct time, but her continual gabbling about future events – Mary’s non-pregnancy, Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne – and her innocent prattling about her ‘poisonous’ pills leads to various problems that the Doctor has to extricate her from.

Historically we obviously have the presence of Queen Mary I, played superbly by Anah Ruddin. The rest of the characters, however, seem to entirely fictional. The local Protestant common folk, George, William and John (played by Gary Russell) are fairly stock characters but are accompanied by the rather arch Reverend Thomas Smith (played by Dalek operator Nicholas Pegg) and the borderline Allo Allo accented presence of Barnaby Edwards’ (another Dalek operator) Francois de Noailles. Francois, as the French Ambassador to Queen Mary is presented as a historically accurate character, with both the Doctor and Evelyn commenting on how his story plays out when Elizabeth comes to the throne. However, my research whilst finding historical figures with the same name – including one who was a French Ambassador at around the same time; doesn’t seem to match up with the man being present at Mary’s court in 1555. Maybe, for once, Wikipedia is not being my friend and actually Jacqueline Rayner has done some proper historical research.

Jacqueline Rayner is one of the strongest writers for Big Finish (and indeed in the novels produced by various companies). It was, after all, her adaptations of New Adventues into the early Bernice Summerfield audios that secured the Doctor Who license for Big Finish. The Marian Conspiracy is a strong and involving script which includes some cracking cliffhangers (the end of Part 3 where the suggestion that the Doctor will end up marrying Lady Sarah and becoming Evelyn’s ancestor is brilliant), intelligent dialogue and an interesting central message about religious tolerance. It also introduces a brand new, and unusual, companion with confidence setting up a character who is still going strong today (and even crossed over into the novels at one point).

A fascinating, entertaining and wonderful visit to Tudor England.

MR 006: The Marian Conspiracy

Oh wow, this is more like it. This is genuinely fantastic, the first I would call a classic. Jacqueline Rayner is the goat, as we all know. I don't think I've met a story from her that I disliked. It's amazing how the quality has jumped so dramatically from the first five. Is it any coincidence that the first really good one is the Sixth Doctor? No, no it isn't. The first halfway decent story was also a Sixth Doctor story: Whispers of Terror.

And what a companion Evelyn makes as well. I always considered her my favorite companion, and in her first story we immediately see why. A college professor with a no nonsense attitude: she's on top of everything the Sixth Doctor is doing. She doesn't let him go on ranting, she's just as belligerent and sarcastic as him, she can rant just as much as him when she gets on her history subject. She's great.

And what a great story to start her out on. There's apparently something wrong with time where Evelyn is starting to fade out because her distant ancestor, an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, doesn't exist. The Doctor figures out what's going on and then Evelyn insists on going with him, packing a bag before he even has a chance to say no.

The twist, though, is that this story is about Queen Mary and not Queen Elizabeth. Evelyn accidentally praises Elizabeth, which is treason in Mary's England and gets wrapped up in a potential plot. While the Doctor gets invested in the court of Mary and gets to know her.

The whole point of the story is that the protestants and the catholics both wanted to burn the heretics, but that we see Elizabeth as good and Mary as bad because England was never Catholic again after Elizabeth became queen.
It turns out that Evelyn's ancestors were involved in the plot to assassinate Mary and that the Doctor and Evelyn beg for the mother's life, thereby saving the child, Evelyn's ancestor.

The ending has a Fires of Pompeii feel to it where the Doctor says they can't save everyone, but Evelyn gets him to save just the two Protestants she met. And their families.

Just as before, Evelyn forces her way into the TARDIS as a proper companion as well. They have a good talk at the end where the Doctor says he's caused people to die, but not intentionally trying to kill them and he isn't sure if that's the same thing. Evelyn is glad to hear that he doesn't intentionally cause people to die or she wouldn't want to keep travelling with him. Which the Doctor is surprised to hear because he didn't invite her in, but Evelyn will not be moved. She is going with him. And she'll find a good place to get coco and make her chocolate cake.

This is definitely the first banger in the MR and the first I'd recommend to other people, even if they didn't know anything about Doctor Who. It's that good. And that's because Evelyn is that good. She's the first of the BF original companions, but certainly not the last. She started a fantastic trend and I can't wait to keep hearing her stories.

The Monthly Adventures #006 - "The Marian Conspiracy" by Jacqueline Raynor

Over the course of however many years it’ll take me to complete the Monthly Adventures, we’re going to be talking a lot about its collection of original companions. If I had to level one praise with Big Finish’s take on the Doctor’s friends, it would be how unique they are. Starved of any companion other than a twenty something from a low income family in contemporary London, I gloriously embraced the pharaohs and the engineers from the far flung future that Big Finish offered me, all beginning here, with the esteemed Evelyn Smythe flung into Tudor London for a rare pure historical that, personally, I find to be a little too highly praised.

Following the interruption of one of Sheffield University history professor Evelyn Smythe’s lectures by a mysterious man called the Doctor, the teacher finds herself flung into her own timestream to iron out a wrinkle in time, whilst avoiding a conspiracy to commit regicide.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Obviously, the best and most well known aspect of The Marian Conspiracy is the aforementioned introduction of Evelyn, who is just a delight. Maggie Stables performs her magnificently, instantly making her not only incredibly likeable but a great foil to the brash Sixth Doctor, who has now been recharacterised by Big Finish when they released it wasn’t fun to have a brazen asshole as our lead. As for the story itself, whilst I certainly do have problems with it, it’s great for the fact that it offers an incredibly interesting peek into history. A lot of historicals, especially non-pure ones, tend to simplify events and details to suit the narrative but The Marian Conspiracy instead opts to have a fascinating portrayal of factual history that distinctly grounds itself in reality and uses that to explore incredibly complex themes with incredible nuance. Mainly, the historical figures present are absolutely brilliantly written; it’s very common to see their portrayal in historical stories as either wholly evil or wholly good but, of course, that’s not how it really is. History is complicated and Raynor wants you to know it, never outright villainising the antagonists or glorifying our allies, everybody’s a real person and it’s great. Through this we also get a fantastic exploration of the religious persecution common at the time, getting to see the mentality of both sides of the argument and the utter injustice on display, it’s a truly fascinating listen purely for the conversations between Mary and the Doctor. As for other details of the plot, we have a great third act reveal, which seems to be a commonality in the audios so far, here discovering Mary’s handmaid Sarah to be conspiring in her assassination, a twist I really didn’t see coming the first time around.

However, I still can’t bring myself to love this audio, and I can’t really tell why since I have so many good things to say about it. It’s incredibly fun, that’s for sure, but the story’s just too generic for me, there’s a lot of sitting around and bloated time that I feel work to make the whole thing incredibly empty and lacking in substance. I also have this pet peeve when it comes to scripts that use coincidence and luck to write their way out of problems, though it’s less deus-ex-machinas and more having the only reason the story doesn’t end be some insane chance, like Evelyn just happening to walk into a bar where the resistance against Mary is, then just so happening to talk to them, then just so happening to accidentally get brought into the plot, that the Doctor just so happens to be a part of after attending to Queen Mary, posing as her physician, with absolutely no detail on how he managed to get into the Queen’s living quarters despite whatever security she surely had. They do eventually get found out however, and are locked in the Tower of London, before escaping. They just… escape and we don’t really see how. They knock out one guard, sure, but only 2% of prisoners ever escaped the Tower of London and we have no idea how the man in the technicolour dream coat and the 60 year old history professor managed it. It’s not bad but the script just doesn’t grab me and I find myself overall unimpressed with the narrative.

An unflinching look back at a dark period of history written with some brilliant tact, some great characters and a fantastic, reasonable stand point surrounding the atrocities depicted. It’s a lot too generic in places, and so I don’t think it’s as perfect as some people make it out to be, but Evelyn’s wonderful, Six is entering his best era and Big Finish is just getting started.

8/10

Pros:

+ Evelyn hits out of the park in her first audio, instantly showing her status as all time great companion

+ Offers a very grounded, realistic take on history

+ Deals excellently with themes of religious persecution and the use of religion in manmade atrocity

+ I adore the portrayal of historical figures as morally grey

+ The third act twist of Sarah being Smith’s accomplice was a nice, final reveal

Cons:

- The plot has too much convenience for my liking

- The narrative is far too generic and vacuous

a four parter that didnt drag in the slightest! heard this before but was a nice refresher now that i'm gonna get to hear more of evelyn. her character is phenomenal i love her and her dynamic with sixie immediately, and throughout. a really interesting pure historical, proving yet again pure historicals can work and be entertaining (come on rtd you coward). i really am so excited to hear more of them together!

If the "youngish doctor travels platonically with older companion" dynamic isn't recreated in nuwho I'll be deeply saddened

The Marian Conspiracy was a wonderful listen and an excellent jumping on point if you want to get into more consistently well-regarded Sixth Doctor stories. I love the historical elements of this and Evelyn Smythe is an incredible, outstanding companion - one of the few who has travelled with the Doctor that feels like she is able to hold ground with him and be on his level, to a certain degree.

There's a certain bittersweet element to all this, knowing that we lost Maggie Stables a while ago now, but it makes stories like the Marian Conspiracy all the more special and precious. Stables and Colin Baker are truly outstanding in this audio, and I also enjoyed Anah Ruddin as the Queen. They all do a great job and really make the well done writing around these characters leave that much more of an impression.

The writing and acting around Leaf and George Crow leaves a little more to be desired. The way they repeat each others names got a bit grating after a while, and it was a little less interesting than the religious strife and complex Protestant/Catholic politics that are the focus of the Marian Conspiracy. For the most part, this is a smart and thoughtful audio, reminding me of a few of the Short Trips I recently reviewed that dealt with these historical topics, yet the Marian Conspiracy artfully finds its own little niche and I do quite appreciate this audio on the whole. Definitely one of Big Finish's stronger early outings in the Big Finish Monthly Range.

The Marian Conspiracy feels like a classic Pure Historical adventure. While the plot isn't that complicate, it does provide a compelling story that will make the running time fly by. After all the intrigue, by the end of the story I was satisfied, if not a little sad for PLOT reasons. At first I wasn't sold on new companion Evelyn Smythe, her bossy and grating personality was a turn-off, but by the end of the story I was sold on her. Her temperament is a great match for the Sixth Doctor. The rest of the guest cast did an excellent job, with some of them being recurring names. Overall, this was a great flashback to early Doctor Who story telling.

It is a fabulous step back to the reign of Bloody Mary, the Tudor English Queen. AND a marvelous companion, Evelyn Smythe. Thoroughly enjoyable.

I love the personality of Evelyn; she is charming, sweet, optimistic, cunning, social, and sometimes quite severe character. She is the grandmother character. She is one of my favorite companies. Historicals fell out of favor on the TV show, but the audiobooks had a chance to return them. It fits in the short Marian reign and is pretty educational. Here, we are placed firmly in a period with clearly defined players and co-conspirators. Overall, it was a triumph.