Time and Relative - ★★★★☆

Time and Relative is very unique; a story that stands out even within the timeframe in which it's set - just before An Unearthly Child, when Susan and her grandfather are already in Totter's Lane, London. It is narrated in the first person, from Susan's point of view, with the book simulating a diary. And it is not unfair to look at the narrative as a children's adventure, in that 80s and 90s movie vibe. It is a coming-of-age story from several perspectives, too.

Navigating the complicated feelings of school life in Coal Hill, life in London takes a sinister turn for Susan when a species from Earth's past awakens from a deep slumber - and intends to reclaim the planet and start a new ice age. This plot manifests itself in a simpler, magical way at first - it is almost April and it is still snowing in London. And the snowman in the schoolyard just moved.

There are two worlds in Time and Relative, which stood out to me the most while reading. There is a playful reality, which comes from the youthful, innocent and intense perspective of the main characters. And there are glimpses of a crueler world. This manifests itself in several ways - in the several mentions of harassment throughout the text; in the racism committed against Malcolm, a six-year-old child who Susan sometimes babysits; in the domestic violence that Susan's best friend at school, Gillen, suffers from her father. In the absolute fear that Gillen has of him, and in the neglect of all the other adults around her.

But it is also in the imperfections of its protagonists. Susan memory of her past life is incomplete and she does not yet feel free from the influences of the old-fashioned beliefs from that past. Like anyone, she wants her friends to like her. When a boy looks at her with admiration, she cannot tell if it is reciprocal. At several times she is hurt by the people around her, no matter how much she understands the circumstances. And all these feelings and sensations are completely new.

In the same way, Gillen wants to be more of an adult than she is. It's a way of trying to escape the violence at home, both metaphorically and literally. This whole subject is very sensitive to her, and there's a moment that I found particularly raw when she gets angry with Susan about what would actually be the "right thing" to do in their situation - relying on an adult. Her relationship with her father has made her lose any trust in authority figures, and all the characters seem bent on proving her right.

On the other hand, John has an admiration for his father that borders on the irrational and also reveals an unpleasant side of these relationships with authority figures - when the massacre begins and the situation calls for the intervention of an adult, the boy's father shows himself to be completely useless and alienated. At this moment, the hierarchy of the relationship practically reverses, with John assuming responsibility for his father's safety. The entire universe of Coal Hill School is built to amplify the flaws and shortcomings of adults regarding these children and the feelings of injustice, loneliness and ostracism that are not very uncommon in this phase of adolescence. It is no coincidence that the main drama of the three protagonists involves paternal relationships, the most central of which is Susan's relationship with her grandfather.

The conflict between those two also exists in two worlds, being a metatextual conversation about the unknown past of both. Especially in the terms in which this was presented during the First Doctor's era in the 60s; just like the audience at the time, Susan does not know the name of their home planet, or even if it was actually a planet. Her memories are trapped, hostages to History itself. And the Doctor is also trapped in the mold of the classic series and the non-interventionism that marked this phase of the character.

In a way, I find the conclusion contradictory to his development from now on; as much as letting the Cold kill all the humans on the face of the Earth was not an option, I have my doubts as to whether this isn't exactly what the First Doctor, at this point in his life, would have done. And not because he is still under the effects of a Time Lord brainwashing, as the text suggests, but because it is in fact the philosophy he believed and preached at the time. Or, if he would've intervened, it would be to preserve the status quo - they know of Earth and humanity in the future, letting it go extinct would contradict their own personal timeline. Despite this caveat, I think it is a very satisfactory conclusion to this story in itself, using the imagination and childlike innocence that guided the narrative as fuel for the construction of a better world.

What the characters often saw as flaws or immaturity is what saves the day - and guides the First Doctor towards the slightly more heroic figure he would become in the distant future. If I disagree with the circumstances in which this is presented in this story, I equally approve of the first driver of this change being the wonder of a child's mind - nothing could be more authentic to the Doctor. This coming-of-age fable is also his.

The conclusions for Gillen and John are not so pleasant, with both of them distancing themselves from Susan at the end of the story - which was natural after all the negative feelings that manifested amidst all the violence faced by the three, including enormous paranoia on John's part and even a death threat on Gillen's part. With his father's death, John goes to live with his mother; and Gillen plunges even deeper into precocious maturity, trying to leave behind the events of the last few days. Despite being much more alone than she started the novel, Susan comes out more confident than ever in who she is, the person she wants to become and that her trust in her grandfather is not in vain. It is by far one of the best stories the character has ever had.

TARDIS Report #1: The names Gillen and John are a nod to the First Doctor's lunatic comics, in which he traveled with two new grandchildren with those names. Inconsequential, but cute.

TARDIS Report #2: I found it curious that with two books in the Telos Novellas with the Doctor and Susan pre-An Unearthly Child, one of them is extremely focused on the Doctor and the other on Susan, to the point that the other barely appears or is more of a shadow cast over the narrative.

Losing the Audience - ★★★☆☆

A historical set in the fifties that tells Susan and the Doctor's encounter with two radio actors, Max and Maxine, a divorced couple that are still friends with each other. It's a story that deal with the world post World Wars and the PTSD of the survivors - through Max. But it's also one of those conspiracy narratives that unravels terrible secrets lost to time when fan of the Max's show start to disappear... They're being murdered. The culprits are aliens that alied themselves to Britain against the nazis with the promise to get a part of India, but were betrayed and imprisoned up to the day the right frequencies at the radio station made it possible for them to escape.

These are aliens from another dimension, one with physics different to ours, and they are affected by sound, radio, waves. That's how they were imprisoned, and that's how the Doctor saves the day, killing them all. Honestly, my only problem with this story is that I though this should be longer. An two hour audio or a regular book. There are a lot of good ideas that don't have enough time to breath and reach their true potential.

It's really easy to picture how it would work. Part one of four would be an horror piece focusing on the public of the radio show being killed while Max tries to make sense of what's happening - maybe Susan goes with him, behind her grandfather's back. There is enough room in a longer story for other people to believe it was Max who killed these people, which this story briefly implies could've happened. You could make him doubt himself, and link it to very obvious untreated war PTSD. One of the cliffhangers could be the Doctor and Susan in the audience just when a murder is about to happen.

There is some really interesting implications about the aliens in the story. They are not necessarily malicious, even though they don't follow anything akin to our moral code. They are killing the audience believing they are nazis, since they didn't figure out yet that they were betrayed and it has been years since the war ended. Are they truly in the wrong here? Most incarnations of the Doctor wouldn't say so. Not One though, not at this point, and that's why I find his cruel atitude towards them in the end very in character. I honestly believe the only thing in his mind in this situation would be to not disturb Earth's history; he would be picking sides, which a kind of cruelty by itself.

That's implied in this story - the characterisation is on point -, but a longer story could elaborate on this dubious morality of the First Doctor and perhaps even built some conflict between him and Susan.

This story has a lot of potential - but as it is, it's a nice 6/10.

An Unearthly Child - ★★★½☆

"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?"

The first episode is a character masterpiece. Susan's introduction is eerie and haunting, there is something in her eyes and demeanor that let you know, far beyond her words, that's she is otherworldly. Ian and Barbara are charismatic from the get go, and I think it was a smart decision to tell this story from their perspective. It sets a tone about the role of a companion throughout the series that is true to this day. And of course there is the Doctor, which is truly the antagonist at the beginning. It sets up character development that we will see flourish in The Daleks and The Edge of Destructions; but also brings up some beats that go on long game.

There is a longing in his words as he tells Ian and Barbara that he and Susan are exiles from their home that is not usually associated with the character. He is not yet the adventurer he's bound to become, and it's impossible to negate Ian and Barbara's role in it. And of course, we'd see more direct consequences of running way later in the series. Susan doesn't want to leave London 1963, says that the last six months have been the best of her life. It's a glimpse about the kind of life she longs for herself and the stability she can't have with her grandfather. Susan is almost never, in TV, as opinated as when she tries to tell the Doctor that if he leaves he'll do so without her. Of course, it doesn't work in her favor. Ian at one point claims the TARDIS is alive, which will be relevant soon enough.

This is not an amicable version of our longterm protagonist. Not yet. He is arrogant, dismissive, selfish. He makes choices for his own amusement that put the others in the danger, including the granddaughter he swears he is trying to take care of. He is cold and he can't admit when he is wrong. And that's the side of him that shows itself the most in An Unearthly Child. He is also the first character in-universe (by release date) to say "Doctor Who?". It's not what's implied, but I think I prefer to have Ian and Barbara unintentionally giving him his name than some of the alternatives.

We do see a glimpse of another side of him, though, in parts two and three. He is sincerely sorry for getting them captured by the tribe and putting everyone in danger; and while he is still arrogant and unhelpful at times he does recognize Ian's value and tries to help Barbara calm down. It's not enough to change his demeanor towards them, not yet, and him trying to kill Kal only to be stopped by Ian is a step back. But there are other nice moments for the TARDIS team, as when the Doctor proves that Za killed the old woman or when Ian recognizes the Doctor as the leader of their tribe.

Parts two to four are a letdown from part one though. I have watched An Unearthly Child many times by now; the tribe's politics was not an aspect that grabbed me the first few rounds but that have grown on me as a pretty decent plot. So what's the problem, then? For me it's the acting. It's not bad by any means, but most of the characters that are not our regulars, if not all of them, are highly unlikable and a very cartoonish take on "caveman". All the maneirisms in the dialogue are honestly tiring at times.

There is also some signs of the screamonger Susan will become. It's somewhat justified, but it'll become irritating fast. In contrast, Barbara also have two dispairing moments in this story, but it feels truer to her character because of three reasons; one, it's her first trip in the TARDIS; two, it doesn't become a staple of her character and three, it's followed by her deciding they must help Kal, acting for the first time as a moral compass for the characters.

I don't love the caveman part of An Unearthly Child, but it's a really good pilot for a series I love that already shows many reasons why I love it; one of its strongest traits being a fantastic cast of recurring characters. It's ★★★½☆ for me.

The Time Witch - ★★★☆☆

Brimo, the titular character, have a lot of potential. It's not the intention of this story to do so, and therefore that's not the perspective that I look at The Time Witch; but it's easy to read the openning pages and question if her punishing was fair. It doesn't seem so. Anyone in her position would have gone mad. There is a longer version of this comic that put the morals at the center and builds an engaging character piece; but that's not the version that exists.

It's innofensive.  Imaginative enough, given its premise, and very fun to read; but in my opinion we see a better realised version of this concept later on DWM publication, with a much stronger character conflict played out (that chapter in The Glorious Dead, if you ever read it you'll get the comparison). I still love the art and my favorite part is the guardian of Brimo's dimension; I love his design.

This is the start of doom for Sharon. On its own the decision to age her could lead to interesting stories; but I know that what follows is just weird. The weirdest "coming of age" ever.

Indian Summer - ★★★★★

I love this short trip. It's a tale about Suresh, a Indian boy that just started working in a hotel that has a haunted table at its restaurant. We see his life throughout the decades and many of his meetings with the ghost; as well as a mysterious girl that appears every few years looking for her grandfather, but who doesn't seem to age.

It's a character piece, primarly. It has a lovely protagonist and his relationship with the hotel itself is heartwarming. Suresh loves his life and it's contagious. I also adore the relationship he develops with the ghost, even before they can talk. Every scene is a just a little snipet in his long, wonderful life, but it tells us so much about who he is.

Obviously the ghost is the First Doctor. He and Susan got caught in some time and space shanenigans and now he is lost in the flow of time. He's holding himself to the big events, and that's why he only appears when someone is close to death. I love the atmosphere of the story before we know that's what's happening; it's pretty obvious it's the Doctor from the get go, but what if whatever happened to him is the cause of all these deaths?

Susan has a small role in the story, but this time that doesn't bother me. Even if she doesn't appear much, she has a more active role. She doesn't solve anything, sure. But she tried!

I love the characters. I love the plot. I love the writing. I love the setting. I still have a lot of short trips to go through, but I can't see any beating this one for me.

Bide-a-Wee - ★★½☆☆

It's barely a story, but it had potential to be a great one. We see the Doctor and Susan taking a vacation from their travels on Earth. Susan is out with newly made friends and the Doctor is enjoying his time in a local inn.

We find out, just as the Doctor, that one of the guests have been messing with time and the town is perpetually stuck in the 1933 when a couple from the 1999 arrive, shocking the guests with their marriage (and child), since the man is white and the woman is not. Their little boy seems to be the only member of the family to notice there is something wrong going on.

It has a very small scale though, and the solution is very simple. Not that I wished to overcomplicate this, but there was potentional for this one to be a full fleshed out story focusing on the ill effects of being permanently - or so it seems - out of your time. It seems like hell.

Plus, the antagonist - we can barely call him that - may or may not be the Monk.

The Sleeping Blood - ★★★☆☆

The Sleeping Blood is an atmospheric story with a strong theme but not enough time. The first part is very engaging because it is structured like a horror story. The Doctor fell ill after being infected by an unknown disease by touching a wild plant on a planet he and Susan visited, and now they are traveling in search of a cure. He is taken out of the game very early in the plot when his health worsens and so the focus goes completely to Susan. Caroline Ann Ford's performance is confident and emotional, perfect for the structure of the Companions Chronicles, and the core of the narrative is a moral conflict that arises for the character at the end of the story.

That's part of the problem. For most of its running time, The Sleeping Blood is a good character study for Susan who, for the first time, must stand on her own and save her grandfather, while maintaining a tense atmosphere with horror elements. She spends about twenty minutes alone exploring this abandoned research station where the TARDIS has landed and the entire time you, and the character, have the impression that someone is watching her. The first time I listened to this audio, I thought it was going to unfold into a hunting story following the footsteps of Predator. That's not what happens. At one point, Susan will come across a military team that is there after a local criminal who has threatened the lives of important politicians, the Butcher. The horror elements continue from there but take the form of a more traditional serial killer story, albeit with the twist that he kills remotely.

The sci-fi part is interesting although a little contradictory. There's kind of a medical museum in this building that Susan landed in where she goes into to find antibiotics. It is also established that this planet, called Rua, has long abandoned this traditional model of producing medicines and now most diseases are cured through nanotechnology. And of course, at a certain point it is revealed that the Butcher has been killing his victims by hacking this nanotechnology present in the blood of practically everyone who lives on Rua. This raises the stakes of the story because, as he demonstrates during a scene, he can kill the characters at any time. I think Rua's world-building is very well done and tied together; What's a little weak are Susan's motivations. Nanomedicine was apparently child's play for her on Gallifrey, but she insists on looking for an antibiotic the entire story – shouldn't it be an outdated technology for her? Besides the obvious: there was NOTHING in the TARDIS that could help the Doctor? In the end, this doesn't matter because it's just a justification to isolate Susan from the Doctor for most of the duration of this audio and give her a reason to explore this planet alone, but it's still a small problem I have with the plot.

But as I said, the real argument of the plot only emerges at the end, when she discovers that Butcher, who is actually called Gomery, was doing all that to try to democratize access to medicines, especially those based on nanotechnology, after the death of his grandmother. It's an interesting debate of public health versus capitalism and how even the most well-intentioned of people (one of the soldiers Susan knows) can be co-opted by the system to reinforce it, but I think this discussion is a bit too on the nose – and comes too late. We barely spend time with Gomery, so when a flashback begins showing him talking to his dying grandmother in the hospital it seems like the story is trying to make you emotional – but it's very artificial. Yes, an elderly woman dying because she doesn't have money to take care of her own health is sad, but you only addressed it in the last five minutes. I understand that this is positioned at this point in the plot precisely to end it with a feeling of injustice, that Susan unintentionally perpetuated a cruel system on this planet. It is also to draw a parallel between the antagonist and Susan, both motivated by love for a grandparent, but the key difference here is that I, as a listener, know and care about Susan and the Doctor in a personal level. The story tries to make me care in the same way about Gomery and his grandmother, but it doesn't work in so little time. Therefore: it's an interesting premise that does not have room to breathe.

There are several interesting moments of characterization for Susan and they are the real reason why this story is worth listening. Her guilt at the end, all the questioning whether she should have interfered in that situation, the feeling of injustice that takes over her, the resilience she shows to save her grandfather, even her impressions about their trips and what her stay in the TARDIS has been like – there are moments, she says, when she feels completely suffocated in there. There is even a cute suggestion that it is the TARDIS itself that takes Susan to Rua knowing that she will get the cure for the Doctor there; since the TARDIS lands there without Susan piloting it and she assumes it was her grandfather – it takes place before The Edge of Destruction so they both still don't know that she has a certain level of sentience. The direction is also very good, with impeccable sound work. The plot, unfortunately, does not reach its full potential.

Frayed - ★★★½☆

Frayed é a story that shines through its characters.

Tara Samms, the apparent author, is actually a pseudonym for Stephen Cole, an author with a considerable number of contributions to the Doctor Who universe but with whom I have a complicated relationship - in my experience with his writing, his stories range from fun to total disaster. Frayed landed, for me, in the author's better output.

In half of the chapters, we follow the Doctor's arrival at the Refuge, a research facility on a distant planet occupied by humans, which is being attacked by strange creatures, 'humanoid' foxes that appear to be made of dust. He and Susan are separated at the beginning of the story, and the other half of the book is dedicated to a dream world that bit by bit reveals the true nature of the Refuge.

Readers well versed in Doctor Who will quickly recognize Frayed for what it is: a simple base under siege; one of those stories in which the Doctor and company are trapped with a group of characters being attacked by an external threat that wants to dominate the place they are in and, often, not leave any survivors in their path. Another person might be frustrated with this aspect of the book, after all it's nothing that we haven't seen hundreds of other times in the sixty years of the series - but it's understandable why this trope is recurrent in Doctor Who: it makes for very entertaining and fun stories. I personally love a good base under siege.

Where Frayed deviates greatly from what is expected from Doctor Who, however, is in the rather graphic depictions of violence. From injuries on the "battlefield", to very bloody descriptions of foxes killing Refuge employees - there is a moment, for example, in which one of them rips off a character's arm and blood gushes over another -, to very surrealistic moments that take place in the aforementioned "dream world". But it is in the thematic connections between the characters that the book really comes to life.

In addition to our recurring characters, the First Doctor and Susan, we have a range of Refuge workers - including the facility leader, Moseley; librarian Webber; the medic Juniper; the cook Salih and the retired military woman, Cass. Each of them shows a different aspect of life in the Refuge under attack; what happens when ordinary men and women are put into a war zone. And bit by bit, it investigates and reveals different aspects of human nature based on the decisions of these characters throughout the plot.

Moseley gradually breaks down throughout the book, as more of the employees are killed by the enemy and as it becomes obvious that Earth will not send help. He feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he is a very sympathetic character also for his flaws. Cass is that very common 'problem character' archetype in Doctor Who, that despicable figure who you know is in the story make everything worse at the most inopportune moment. But I think it is one of the most effective executions of this archetype, the text very convincingly justifies her excesses through her ego, her almost unhealthy obsession with recognition and the violence encouraged by a thirst for blood closely linked to the military mentality. Webber keeps the First Doctor company for a good part of the story and I thought it built a very good dynamic, with him being the most rational person left in the Refuge and allowing the Doctor to navigate the narrative without unnecessary obstacles.

But the most interesting of these characters is Jill, the central figure of the dreaming chapters. As the Doctor quickly discovers, the Refuge was a genetic research facility. At the time this story takes place, it is possible to easily carry out complete genetic mapping during pregnancy. The Refuge was part of a project to genetically treat children who presented genomes associated with a predisposition to commit crimes - or, what in practice turns out to be, a prison for "future criminals" which is quite cruel - and extremely eugenic - although it tries sell itself as a shelter for broken children. Some of them, like Jill, have different degrees of telepathic abilities. Recent events since the fox attack have caused her to be somewhat distraught while being connected to the dream chamber - where surgeries are performed while children are "awake", in induced dreams - and Jill's imagination has taken over the virtual interface.

One of the Refuge employees to whom Jill was very attached, Olmec, dies before the start of Frayed, and therefore the chapters in which we see the girl's dreams are quite symbolic of her grieving, very painful and very confusing, which mixes with stories - Mayan myths - that Olmec told her. The gods and myths are intertwined with the pains of her past, of the abandonment from her mother - who committed suicide - to the physical and verbal violence she suffered in the Refuge or things that she shouldn't have known about, but that were inevitable due to the his telepathic abilities. She discovers, for example, that the Refuge creates babies without brain activity, just their bodies, to remove organs or parts of interest for surgeries on the children; which disturbs her and manifests itself in her dreams in the form of a strange baby that wanders around.

My favorite scene happens towards the end of the story, when Susan - who ended up trapped in the dream chamber with the children - helps and observes Jill trying to get Olmec - who had been seriously injured, induced into a coma and no longer presents significant brain activity - regain consciousness. What Susan soon realizes is that the Olmec that manifests itself in the interface is nothing more than a manifestation of Jill's desires - for a safe haven, for someone to love her, to protect her, to take care of her. It's a cruel scene, cruel as life often is, and that's why it's very beautiful and got to my heart.

There are other unique aspects to Frayed, the most notable of which is that this story is set up as the Doctor's first encounter with humanity. In what it purports to be, it's quite effective, but it's worth mentioning that I read this story as part of my project, Project: Blue Box, in which I'm going through the releases of the Doctor Who universe in chronological order - from the Doctor's point of view - and that this story necessarily takes place shortly after The Beginning, where the Doctor and Susan already meet humans and hear about Earth. This type of divergence is expected from a universe as large as the expanded universe of Doctor Who and it is the type of inconsistency that I think is healthy to just ignore and enjoy the original intention of each work.

What is really peculiar, though, is that this story also sets itself up as when the Doctor and Susan "earned" their names - which once again conflicts with The Beginning - and although I can see some people disliking this idea, since the way in which this happens can be a little anticlimactic, it works for me. It's very simple, happens by chance, and although there's nothing grand about it, it's precisely the type of choice that falls very much in the mold of the classic series in which the beauty of the narrative is often found in the accidents of life and History, with a capital H, than in epic plots of enormous proportions that sometimes the new series trivializes.

Finally, I want to highlight that the First Doctor is very well characterized, still being a grumpy, selfish old man, without a shred of mercy and who thinks too much kf himself, but without going overboard and risking becoming a caricature. Frayed's most palpable flaw is Susan, because although I really like her scenes - there is in particular a fantastic dialogue between her and her grandfather in the last chapter - she takes on a very secondary role in the plot, which I find intuitive on the part of the authors who usually write pre-An Unearthly Child history, but it's always a shame. I think we all like it when she takes on a more active role and shows sides that aren't very common in her time on TV.

The Exiles - ★★★☆☆ 

This is one of the takes of the first moments in the TARDIS after the Doctor and Susan's departure from Gallifrey; it doesn't really contradict The Beginning but fitting this one there is a little contrieved. You can justify that by Susan's own word in The Beginning though, that everybody remembers things differently.

I like it. It's not a fully fleshed out story, it feels more like a scene you never saw of Susan exploring the TARDIS for the first time and her feelings and thoughts regarding the ship and being an exile. This one is part a terror anthology, and that's tied in this story both by the atmosphere of the narrative - Susan is a little bit afraid of the TARDIS - and her meeting kind of a ghost. It's the coolest moment, I love it.

She is trying some new clothes and sees a man behind her in the mirror; it's implied it's a vampire. When she tells her grandfather later, he responds saying that the TARDIS doesn't exist in a traditional flux of time and there is not exactly a present, past or future for the ship itself; and that Susan must've seen a glimpse of its history (I interpret it as being a ghost from its past). It's creepy, it's mysterious, I love it.

The Longest Story in the World - ★★½☆☆

This is barely a story. It's more a frame story for the rest of the book. It's also really weird. Though we are never explicitly told, we can infer we are being told of the Doctor and Susan's days on Gallifrey. But it's a very different take. Space and time travel is nothing but delusions of Susan's, perhaps a glimpse of the future by implied psychic abilities.

The narrator is not reliable, I assume, since the frame story is a girl telling a Caliph "the longest story in the world", so she is not killed. 1001 Nights, obviously. Because of that, this story doesn't actually have and ending. Perhaps there is some payoff by reading the other short trips in the book, but by itself is is uterly bizarre.