Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Chronicles

#1.03. The Other Side ~ 8/10

◆ An Introduction

Cinemas are magical places that transport you to different worlds; often by assaulting your ears with loud speakers, whilst your eyes are glued to an IMAX screen. The last time I visited one was when I watched Oppenheimer with my mate Andrew, and I can still remember feeling my chair shake during the nuclear testing scenes.

Cinemas are magical places filled with shadows, and become beautifully sad when they’re abandoned. But they can still transport you to different times, as the Doctor and his friends are about to discover…

◆ Publisher’s Summary

Rose has invited a new friend on board the TARDIS, against the Doctor’s better judgement. But when the Time Lord tries to take his unwelcome guest home, a temporal tsunami cuts the journey short. The travellers find the source of the disturbance inside an abandoned cinema. Will Adam Mitchell help or hinder when the Doctor and Rose discover what is lurking on the other side of the screen?

◆ DISCLAIMER

Bruno Langley became a convicted criminal only a couple of months after this story was released, which is why I’m separating the art from the artist whilst writing this review.

◆ The Ninth Doctor

Someone has finally written this incarnation well, after two lacklustre episodes that bored me into a coma! One of the high points from this episode was the banter between the Doctor and his companions; you could easily imagine the lines being written for Eccleston.

Briggsy has finally gotten to grips with this impersonation and manages to deliver a pretty good performance.

Nine is the Doctor’s lucky number. 1922 is a lot slower than he remembers it.

◆ Rose Tyler

Rose has been given a fair amount of material in ‘The Other Side’, including being swept backwards in time to the 1920s, when the cinema was a busy little dance hall. Handcock does a great job with her.

I have to take my hat off to Briggsy, because his impersonation of Billie Piper has improved tenfold since the previous episode. He sounds a lot more comfortable in the role, and the accent sounds a lot more natural too. A really good performance.

◆ Adam Mitchell

It was a strange choice to bring back the “failed companion”. An arrogant genius who was promptly booted out of the Tardis when he attempted to change the course of human history; refusing to take responsibility for his actions or realise what could’ve happened had he succeeded. Adam only existed to make Rose look better, which he managed to do by consistently being the most aggravating person in the room. Scott Handcock attempts to make him a bit more likeable in ‘The Other Side’, and gives him a chance to actually impress the Doctor.

Langley’s performance is honestly the best of the episode, a fact which leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth for pretty obvious reasons.

He really has to work harder at the questions. Twenty-four hours ago, Adam had been in a position of authority; responsible for cataloguing an array of alien artefacts, documenting what they were, and where they came from. More than that, his opinion had actually counted for something.

◆ Temporal Erasure

The Bygone Horde were casualties of the Time War that were erased from existence. The memory of them survived and they were left as echoes displaced from time on a plane of non-reality. It was in this reduced state that they banded together and became the Horde. They planned on resurrecting themselves – returning to a plane of existence – by emerging on Earth and sacrificing the human race.

I found the Horde to be an interesting antagonist, but they greatly reminded me of the people made of anti-time from ‘Neverland’.

◆ Sound Design

The voice of the Bygone Horde is rather impressive; this menagerie of low, rumbling voices coming out of the cinema’s decaying speakers. It’s somewhat reminiscent of how the 456 communicated with humanity during ‘Children of Earth’.

◆ Conclusion

“The veins that shape reality are bleeding. Once the wound is opened, we shall flee this non-existence.”

A temporal tsunami knocks the Tardis slightly off course, and the trio find themselves at a dilapidated cinema in the Midlands. Anomalies have been plaguing this site for decades, because a collection of echoes erased by the Time War are attempting to return to reality.

Scott Handcock delivers the most enjoyable story so far, in this release… which isn’t saying much, given the previous two episodes were nothing short of terrible. I was really interested in the Bygone Horde, despite their obvious similarities to the anti-time people from ‘Neverland’; they could easily return in another script and be greatly fleshed out.

A solid plot paired with fantastic performances all around. ‘The Other Side’ could quite easily slot into Series One, which is very high praise indeed.

Lots to say about this one. This was my first taste of Briggs' impression of the Ninth Doctor and I have to say he really knocks it out of the park. In spite of Bruno Langley now being a convicted criminal, I was able to enjoy his (what I guess will be one-time) return. I've always thought Adam Mitchell was a bit of an interesting figure in Doctor Who history as the "failed companion" - who pretty much exists just to have made Rose look better.

It's interesting having a story, here, that humanizes him a bit and smooths out some of the kinks in his tenuous relationship with the Doctor. With all that in mind, the story rather refreshingly focuses on a rather basic plot of our time travellers being stranded from the TARDIS and needing to work their way home. Though, personally, the story works better for me when it is just a simple "Time Tsunami" rather than a plot by villainous aliens. The aliens are pretty interesting but they don't become part of the story until later into the game, by which point I was more invested in our main characters working their way back to the TARDIS and into the present. If the story just stuck with that stuff, I would probably have liked The Other Side even more. Effects aren't much to write home about and don't really add much to things, either.

Still, it's a fun story for fans of the Ninth Doctor era, as Big Finish perfectly recreates the tone of Series 1 here. I would recommend it to said fans of the Ninth Doctor (and pretty much only them, unfortunately). For fans of the larger franchise that don't really care for Rose or Adam, or for casual viewers, there's definitely better options out there before coming to this particular story.