The Transit of Venus

Amazing Ian story set after the Sensorites where the doctor is at his breaking point honestly such a fun place to take a story

A very promising start, but it falters in the latter half and has some weird inconsistencies. (How did Barbara and the doctor switch places? How did Susan suddenly gain superhuman swimming abilities?)

The Setup is good. Ian and the Doctor are alone on the boat that is about to discover Australia. Sure. That can work. Meanwhile Barbara is MIA and Susan is stuck on the bottom of the Ocean. That’s an amazing premise! It can go loads of ways! How are they going to solve this?

Then Ian gets weird ‘visions’ while on the ship and the story decides to throw away all focus on the stakes it just set and put all the eyes on those vision. And frankly, while neat, they are not that interesting. We start having a routine of showing a vision, then Ian being confused, going to the doctor, who waves it away. Repeat. It diminishes the whole.

It also makes the doctor feel out of character. The first doctor was stubborn, yes, but audio seems to paint him only in the light that the first episode puts him in. Stubborn. Old. Grumpy. Will never change his ways.

Compare that to what was actually on screen, and you’ve done this doctor a huge disservice. It get that it is not helped by the 3rd person perspective in stories either, but the doctor became a lot better than this. He talked it out with Barbara in Edge of Reality. He has had heart to hearts in multiple stories, and generally did not boil down to just a grumpy old man. Hopefully later audio’s pick up on that.

Last thing about this audio story is that I don’t like is its resolution. It basically sorts itself out without any characters making an effort. This just leaves it as the story where Ian is delirious on a boat. Could have been way more.