MR 082: The Settling

Interesting that we should do a pure historical immediately after the last one. There are no tedious speeches about changing history being bad, thankfully. That would have been hilariously tone deaf. It is, however, a rather dreary and pointless listen.

Despite this being, what, the fifth story with Hex, he's still not a particularly interesting or engaging character. It's a shame, because the other Big Finish original characters have already done a lot to stand out and make a name for themselves. Evelyn, Charley, and Erimem. But not Hex. He's a much more generic character. To be fair, the Seventh Doctor hasn't had very many good episodes so far in general, not just with Hex. His standouts were a satire of Star Trek and Eurovision in Bang-Bang-a-Boom! and LIVE 34 where he took down a fascist regime. Despite Hex being in that one as well, we didn't really get to know much about him either.

So far he doesn't have much of a unique character. He's just been here to suffer so far, I think. Hex has constantly been in horrific situations and he doesn't have that exploration bug like Ace has. He wants to help, as a nurse, but that's about it. Even in this story, which is supposed to be a Hex character development vehicle, he's still very lackluster, which makes the story a bit boring and pointless really.

I will say that I enjoyed the framing device. We see what's going on through the frame of Hex and Ace talking about it in the TARDIS after the fact so that we can see their feelings. But it's just what you'd expect. Oliver Cromwell's reign of terror was horrific. The story doesn't really add anything to that fact. It's just slaughter for the sake of it. I think the story is trying to humanize Cromwell, but it's pretty hard to do that considering the barbarity of his actions.

We see a horrific slaughter where Ace and Hex fight and the Doctor shelters a pregnant woman... and then we go to another town where there's another horrific slaughter where Ace and Hex fight and the Doctor delivers a baby. Hex falls in with Cromwell and tries to convince him to not be so evil, which fails spectacularly when Hex idly says "oh my god" several times in a row which pisses off Cromwell for Hex taking the lord's name in vein. And he gets whipped and runs away.

You'd think that you'd want to leave after something like this. There's no reason for Hex to stay. He's attracted to Ace, sure, but that's definitely going nowhere and it absolutely shouldn't be enough of a reason to stick around after witnessing thousands of people killed not to mention being tortured almost getting killed himself. Hex hasn't really had any good experiences so far at all. He's just been tortured every time he turns up.

And ultimately the conclusion of this story is that Hex is going to stay and do whatever the Doctor tells him. So what did we learn from this story at all? Cromwell is a monster and Ace and Hex were beaten into submission. Woooo. Just deeply unpleasant to listen to. The Seventh Doctor can't catch a W to save his life I swear. Ah well. At least his tv run was pretty decent.

MR 081: The Kingmaker

Fun fact, this story was made directly for me. It's true! If you look at the back of the CD it says "for Slytherin" on the back of it. I will accept this love letter directly from Nev Fountain and accept his proposal of marriage. Move over Nicola Bryant, he's my man now.

I couldn't have asked for a better satire of everything I hate about this franchise. Fixed points in time. Refusing to alter history. Killing people to make sure history stays on course as you remember it. It reminds me of when Klein called out the Seventh Doctor in Colditz. You don't have a principled opposition to Nazism. It's all hollow words. You only care about keeping the timeline the same as you remember it. If you came from the timeline where the Nazis won the war, you'd want to preserve that timeline and change it back if it changed to the timeline where they lost.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We start with the Doctor getting a robot appearing in his TARDIS. One which is demanding that he fulfill his authorial obligations. You see, the robot comes from a time where one publishing house has a monopoly on all written works and at one point, as the Third Doctor, he had signed a contract to write some children's books about his life. Of course he sure hasn't finished them. One only wonders how many robots have been sent to George R R Martin.

Thus he's going to write his book "Doctor Who Discovers Historical Mysteries." The series was originally called "The Doctor, Who Discovers...." but the publisher made a typo. He's going to investigate Richard III and see what happened to those princes who everyone assumes Richard had executed.

Only problem is that he's got himself separated from Peri and Erimem. They're two years in the past. There's a fun sequence where they're passing notes to each other. Peri leaves a note with an innkeeper and then the Doctor writes a note to Peri, making sure to remember to drop it off later (he doesn't remember until he's Christopher Eccleston, naturally).

In the meantime, Richard III, on his way to escort his nephew to be the new king after his brother died, encounters a rather strange man claiming to be from the future. He is dressed all in black, has a little pointed beard, and says his name is Mr. Satan who wants to be Richard's advisor. He has his traveling cabinet taken on a cart which reminds me of the First Doctor story Marco Polo.

Peri and Erimem are in that time as well and they get hired by the innkeeper. The very inn that Richard's entourage passes through. They see the princes and Peri is determined to save them, but Erimem says they must not interfere with history and have to let them die. It's the opposite of when we last had this discussion in Council of Nicaea. Erimem was the one who cared about what was happening while Peri had bought into the Doctor's propaganda. It's very curious to see Erimem be the one to buy into said Doctor's propaganda this time, considering every time we have this discussion it's always the future for her. Indeed, this is the DISTANT future for Erimem.

Peri pulls off a piece of metal and thinks they're robots. They end up getting caught up in the entourage when later they're talking about how the princes must be murdered. A conspirator hears that and agrees, wanting to strike up a rebellion against Richard. The princes dying in his care would hopefully get enough people to turn on him. And so he gets Peri and Erimem into the tower to poison the princes.

I love what we do with this next. Erimem argues that this is a "sacrifice." A human sacrifice to keep the gods appeased. The god of time in this case, presumably. It does a very good job of showing just how f**ked up the idea of killing someone to keep the timeline the same as you remember it really is. I see why the writer had Erimem parrot the changing time bad propaganda here, to show it for what it really is: barbaric.

Meanwhile the Doctor gets captured by Richard after this rebellion has already failed and has some fantastic conversations with him where Richard calls him the hell out. I'm just going to quote some of my favorite lines and dialogue here because it really does speak for itself. Bare with me here because this really is the heart of this story, so we're going to be here for a hot second:

RICHARD: You see, I know about you, Doctor. I might not know everything, but I now the type of person you are. The kind of preachy, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, holier than thou, lily-livered milksop you are. The kind who doesn’t make hard choices, the person who just waltzes into a King’s life to do research on him.

RICHARD: Well, I don’t do jokes. Just ask Bucko over there.

DOCTOR: A bit difficult, as you tortured him and left him to die.

RICHARD: Ah, I take it by your tone you don’t approve. I’m surprised.

DOCTOR: Surprised? That anyone can feel anything for the suffering of others? You call yourself a King? You should be ashamed of yourself. This man is dead due to your neglect.

RICHARD: And that’s a bad thing, is it?

DOCTOR: How can you even ask that?

RICHARD: But that’s my job, isn’t it? To kill him. He betrays me, I kill him. That’s the way the story goes.

DOCTOR: You can’t hide behind fate. You made the original decision, and Time holds you to it. There is such a thing as free will, you know.

RICHARD: Is there? Well, permit me to test a theory. Bucko? Bucko, me boy? Still alive? Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.

(Stafford groans.)

RICHARD: Well, who’d have thought it. He’s still kicking. Well, well. So here’s the thing. I’ve had an attack of conscience. I’ve decided to repent. I'll let him go. That all right? You just have to say the word. Would you like me to let him go? Go on, ask me. Ask me to let him go. Of course you can’t, because that’d be wrong, wouldn’t it? He’s meant to die, isn’t he? You wouldn’t permit me to do anything else, would you?

DOCTOR: I am not the architect of your life.

RICHARD: Oh no, I wouldn’t say architect. More like a god. You see past, present, and future, and make sure we all act according to the rules. In fact, you’re worse than a god. At least a god allows his subjects to repent.

I LOVE this conversation SO MUCH. Richard is 100% correct. The Doctor is a hypocrite for calling out Richard for killing this man, but absolutely would not lift a finger to save him. And the Doctor can't pretend like free will exists when he thinks someone is "meant to die" or is "fated to die." This person dies in the history you remember, so saving him would be a bad thing. It's f**ked up. And Richard knows it. You can't sit there and act like it's bad that I kill him when you want me to kill him too. He does this again a little later in the conversation as well.

RICHARD: Are these bits of pottery yours? Commemorating the happy coronation of Edward the Fifth, King of England, on this day the 24" of June 1483. Oh, that would have been a good bash. Shame how fate makes things turn out.

DOCTOR: Oh, it’s fate now. Is this another attempt to wriggle out of responsibility for your own actions?

RICHARD: We have exactly the same dilemma, you and me.

DOCTOR: I sincerely doubt that.

RICHARD: Oh yes. Civilization as we know it is hanging in the balance, and we have to sort it out. But sadly, there’s some as get killed along the way. But you can’t stop, you can’t worry about them. Who knows, perhaps their deaths might even be useful in the grand scheme of things.

DOCTOR: That is a ridiculous argument. You can’t equate your own petty political ambitions with events which threaten the nature of existence.

RICHARD: That’s exactly what I’m doing.

The Doctor is hypocritical as hell here to say that Richard is trying to use fate to wriggle out of responsibility for his own actions... BECAUSE THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES. It's not me, it's fate. These people are meant to die. This is a fixed point in time. I can't do anything to change it. I can't save these people's lives. We saw this in Medicinal Purposes where the Doctor killed a kid. And we saw this in Scaredy Cat where the Doctor committed genocide to keep history the way he remembered it. It's not my fault. It's fate. I am destined to cause this because that's what history says happened. And continuing with that theme:

RICHARD: For the moment we have two kids in the Tower, still alive. They shouldn’t be there by rights. If I am what my reputation says I am, i.e. a conniving black-hearted villain, I want them dead. And if you are what your reputation says you are, i.e. an heroic protector of the Web of Time, you want them dead too. Stop me if I’m going too fast.

DOCTOR: No, it’s all very clear.

RICHARD: You wrote, PS don’t try to find out who killed the Princes on your own. These are dangerous times. Do you really want to know who killed them? I'll let you into a little secret. You do. You kill ‘em.

DOCTOR: I think I know where this is leading.

RICHARD: Good. I like a quick learner. I’m making it your choice. I’m allowing you to do the right thing. I’m letting you win.

TYRELL: You sent for me, Sire?

RICHARD: Ah, Mister Tyrell. Glad you could join us.

DOCTOR: Wish I could say the same.

(Door closes.)

RICHARD: Oh hush. Now, Sir James, I’ve granted the Doctor leave to be our King for the day.

TYRELL: Our what?

DOCTOR: Your what?

RICHARD: He’s going to order you to execute our two young friends in the Tower.

TYRELL: Our two... what?

RICHARD: Yes, them.

TYRELL: Right. What?

RICHARD: If he doesn’t order you to execute them, then his silence will be your order to let them go.

TYRELL: To let them...?

RICHARD: Go. Yes. Did you get that?

RICHARD: Just do as the Doctor asks. He is Lord God Almighty and his word is law. All right? So, Doctor, the ball’s in your court.

DOCTOR: I can’t change anything.

RICHARD: Yes, you can.

RICHARD: Then your choice is simple, isn’t it?

DOCTOR: I will not be party to this.

RICHARD: Hedge and bluster, Doctor, you are party to this. Come on, time’s running out. Literally. There it goes. Tick tock, tick tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

RICHARD: Last chance, Doctor. He can’t be squeamish here. It’s for the greater good.

RICHARD: He can’t afford to be weak. He can’t have a picture in your head of those two poor defenseless brothers crying out for mercy.

This is so good. When your whole changing time propaganda is reduced to what it really is. Murder. Are you willing to commit murder for the sake of keeping the timeline the way you remember it? Really? I love that line. Don't think about the poor defenseless boys crying out for mercy as they're cut down because they're "fated to die" and thus you're making the right decision to kill them. It's especially effective considering the ending of Medicinal Purposes where the Doctor does indeed kill a kid to keep the timeline the way he remembers. Indeed, this story, this exact scene could be a direct response to that one.

During this conversation, as well, Richard reveals that he's been visited by time travelers all his life ever since he was a kid. Time tourists who want to see the notorious villain and have strong opinions on whether or not he should kill his nephews. It's a premise I've often thought about for a comedy skit. Hitler going about his day while assassins show up from the future to kill him, only they keep failing in humorous ways. The story uses it for humor and also takes it seriously, as good satire does. Richard has been told his history so often that he finds it all meaningless. He's been testing the Doctor here. The Doctor is continuously trying to take his hands off and pretend like he's not responsible. That he's above it all. But really and truly, if he really believes what he does about not changing history then he shouldn't have any problem getting his hands dirty to make it happen. Indeed, believing that history shouldn't ever be changed necessarily requires you to be on board with a lot of evil, you can't really be a good person, as a time traveler, and believe that. And Richard is perfectly fine with watching the Doctor fidget in discomfort at that confliction.

Unfortunately, the story takes the cop out way out of this. The Doctor doesn't need to order the death of the princes, because it's not really them. You see, Richard actually loved his brother and his brother's kids and didn't want to kill them. Nor did he ever really want power. It turned out that the princes were really girls the whole time, the previous king not wanting to stop the family lineage. So Richard declared them bastards and took power for himself, so that he didn't have to reveal that they were really girls the whole time and that the king was deceiving everyone.

The princesses were taken in by their other relative who was hiding out as an innkeeper this whole time. The two princes in the tower were Peri and Erimem who had been disguised as them. The metal part Peri pulled off at the beginning was a cod piece to make it look like they were boys.

I do have to mention, real quick, how Erimem suggests that she and Peri kill themselves to preserve the timeline. They're not supposed to be the princesses and they're interfering in time just by being here, which they can't take back. So if they kill themselves they are no longer changing the timeline as time travelers. I LOVE this so much as well. This is a natural conclusion to the changing time bad argument. You just shouldn't travel through time at all if you believe that, because just by existing in a place you are changing history. Nevermind interacting with it. Erimem is a great vessel in this story to talk about how bad that line of argumentation really is.

It's a bit of a cop out because it wraps this all up nice and neatly without the Doctor having to get his hands dirty. He even mentions the CIA slogan, "the story changes, but the ending stays the same." We then find out the ultimate reveal in the last episode here. Mr. Satan was actually William Shakespeare. Richard was just kind of stringing him along because he was well used to time travelers by now. Shakespeare ended up hitching a ride in the TARDIS. He wanted to convince Richard to actually kill the princes himself so that his play about Richard killing the princes wouldn't be seen as propaganda for the royal family.

The Doctor takes Shakespeare back to his time where Richard sees the play where he's the villain and depicted badly. And we're treated to a fun romp of Shakespeare being chased around by an angry Richard. And then finally Shakespeare and Richard switch places. Shakespeare dies in battle and Richard writes the rest of Shakespeare's plays. The end.

It's a very humorous story throughout with some real meat in the middle there. The humor is very well written and very well performed. Richard III is very deadpan in his delivery, which works very well. The Fifth Doctor's sarcasm is pretty well used here. He's usually quite boring, of course, but this story works very well for him and only really for him. As the Doctor most obsessed with not changing history and the most passive of the Doctors, being chained up to a wall and called out for that bs by Richard III himself works quite well. It wouldn't work as well with any other Doctor, I don't think. Those are the best stories with this Doctor, those where his passivity is key to the story working well.

One of the most interesting things here, to me, is that Richard III is played by someone with a northern English accent, the same accent as Christopher Eccleston. That feels extremely intentional. As if the future Doctor is calling out his past self for these bad beliefs. I love it.

I love this story. I love the comedy. I love the use of the Fifth Doctor here. Rare Fifth Doctor W. I love the sharp wit. I love the satire of the concepts of changing time bad and fixed points in time. I love all of it. This is easily one of the best, if not the best, of the MR so far for me. I'm giving it six out of a possible five slop buckets, and I whole heartly recommend it for everyone to listen to. Even if you don't like the Fifth Doctor. And it should be required listening for every writer the moment they even THINK about inserting the phrase "web of time" into their story.

MR 080: Time Works

Ah, now is this more like it. An actual good story that's not mean spirited and hateful towards time travel as a concept. And yet uses time travel as a key part of the story. It's just so refreshing to not hear the Doctor talk about how he has to kill everyone in this society to preserve the timeline. It's wild that I would even have to say that huh?

I will mention just real quick that I found the dialogue to be a bit hokey. I know that it's an audio drama, so it's necessary that you have to narrate what's happening so the audience knows, but it's kind of in your face in this one. There's a lot of physical movement that has to be explained. Charley in particular seems to be saddled with most of this dialogue for some reason.

Anyway, we do a bit of running around in a frozen world, ala Chimes of Midnight for an episode before the plot can really get going. I'm not a huge fan of this apparently trope at this point. It reminds me of the first episode of Mind Robber where they just run around for a bit before the TARDIS explodes. It doesn't really add a whole lot to the story in my mind. It does get the Doctor back a few minutes before Charley and C'Rizz which, again, doesn't really amount to a whole lot. The main thing is adds to the story is that the characters get to see... the clockwork men.

Mostly this is a classic Doctor Who overthrows a tyrannical government story. Most of the time is spent in the society just watching what's happening. It's a society entirely built on keeping the great "project" going. Everyone's time is catalogued. Anyone not working for a single second is considered a "time waster" and risks being "downsized," their euphemism for being killed. Nowadays, corporations use the phrases "time theft" and "quiet quitting" for things like this. You're standing there on the clock talking to your coworkers for five minutes? That time not working adds up, must be a "time thief."

We see a series of vignettes about what's happening. The Doctor encounters a bin man going about collecting the trash. Then he encounters someone working in a market stall. They don't seem keen on talking to him because he's wasting their time just by talking and asking them questions. I'm so curious why there are even market stalls at all in the first place. How do people have time to go and buy food? Or to eat? They work all day, sleep, and then come back to work some more. All they are is work and sleep, only because it's a biological necessity. If sleep was not biologically required, they would be required to work constantly until they collapse of exhaustion and die. We all know that's what would happen in our own world if that was the case.

The stall owner helps the Doctor who gets in to meet the king. The king is nervous about what is happening. His son is the "idle prince," he doesn't work like the others, but is not downsized. The king is not really in charge, you see. "In between the tik and the tok," as they say, anyone can be downsized at a moment's notice. One second someone is standing there and the next they are gone, disappeared from time entirely. And everyone carries on as if this was perfectly normal and right that they would disappear. They must have been a time waster. If they're not being efficient they deserved it. We need to replace them with someone who WILL BE efficient.

The Doctor already knows what is happening. The clockwork men exist in between the seconds of time. They walk through while everything is frozen and disappear whoever they like before going away and time restarting. Everyone lives in fear of being disappeared at any moment, driving them to work harder lest they too be downsized. The king fears this too. But his son does not work. He does not fear being disappeared because the king has no other children. If the clockwork men were to kill the prince, there would be nobody to take the king's place. Thus the prince is in a unique position to find out what is happening and try to stop it.

The stall owner's brother helps cover for her despite believing it is wrong. He's fully bought into the propaganda, yet he gets downsized for helping his sister who is now on the run. Meanwhile Charley and C'Rizz are brought in for their "job interviews" to see where they could best help advance "the project." C'Rizz gets to meet the source of all this. The "figurehead." It's just an AI, because of course it is. It's so prescient. This is always where corporate culture is going: an AI managing the numbers, making them as efficient as possible. It uses its "organic resources," i.e. the people, to maximize efficiency. All of life is efficiency. It then sends out the clockwork men to downsize anyone who isn't efficient enough.

The previous inhabitants of this planet created this AI to try to save their society when it was on the brink of collapse. It has been many things since. An architect. An innovator. Even a general. It makes me think about what a dystopian tyrannical society based around those traits would have been. Now it is an accountant, managing the spreadsheets to make sure everyone is working. Counting up all the time theft and cutting back on the least efficient resources. It gives C'Rizz a job in the office and downsizes someone else who it thinks won't be as efficient as him. Before Charley can go for an interview, though, it identifies the Doctor as a threat and turns the entirety of the world against him.

Not only can these clockwork men kill someone in between time, they can also implant ideas and suggestions in people's minds, propaganda, that it's up to them to accept or not. The Doctor responds by activating a device that stops all devices that interfere with time in the radius, something he says is mostly used for protection for people working in the time vortex. The result is that the clockwork men are now visible. Everyone sees them. Everyone sees the things that have been keeping them under thumb this whole time. And that's the source of the revolution.

Some people bow down to the clockwork men, seeing them as gods. While some attack them, having lived in fear all their lives. The Doctor gets to see Figurehead which tells the Doctor that it's just there to maximize efficiency. How long with it keep the people enslaved? Until they master space flight? Until they conquer the galaxy? What's the point? Why are we even doing this? To advance society, the Figurehead responds.

It's a meditation on this grand notion of civilization. Civilization exists to advance. There is a straight line from A to B where humanity gets better, technology gets better, we all evolve as a society. This grand myth of history. Civilization is just a game of tech trees. You advance along the tech trees and get a better society as a result. And eventually, one day, we'll reach the end of that tech tree, the end of society, where we've reached the pinnacle of humanity. A lot of video games use this notion. Games like Civilization or Grand Strategy games like those made by Paradox are all about this idea. Indeed, there was a lot of talk about "the end of history" when the Soviet Union fell. Yet history continues and there is no real point to it. It's a narrative of grand design. This is why we are on the Earth. An attempt to give meaning to the chaos.

Naturally, as the arbiter of chaos, the Doctor shuts it all down. He turns off the great clock that has been looming over their society for generations. It stops. Time stops. The work stops. The project stops. The grand game of civilization stops. And the clockwork men stop. They see no future in which they will be needed so they don't resist as they are taken apart. And finally, work without end comes to a close. There is finally time for other things in life besides work.

I quite enjoyed it. I usually like overthrowing totalitarian dictatorships like this, depending on what the dictatorship is about. And here it's about a corporate structure maximized towards the grand narrative of "progress" for the sake of it. That's all we are. Cogs in a machine of progress and efficiency. Shut down the machine. Break the wheel. While the narrative was a tad convoluted and at times it was a bit tricky to know what was happening, it was still good. It could have benefited from perhaps a couple more re-writes to tighten up the script and, as usual with these two hour stories, could have been cut down to an hour or hour and a half. Still, what is here is quite good.

MR 079: Night Thoughts

This is just the era of killing people to preserve history as we know it huh? Why was this plot point all the rage in the mid-00s? This is the third time it's happened now. But unlike the Sixth Doctor, who absolutely did commit murder against a friend; and the Eighth Doctor who went mega-Hitler and committed a mega-genocide; the Seventh Doctor doesn't actually go through with it. Though the episode absolutely says he should have.

There's an old creepy house on an old creepy island where a bunch of scientists are working on experiments together. Only people keep dying in a slasher horror kind of way. First a taxidermist and then a chaplain in the military. It's all very weirdly gory for Doctor Who and that was already kind of a turn off for me before we find out what's happening. I'm not at all a fan of slasher horror films. That's not my thing. If I do horror, I prefer something more cerebral or suspenseful. Not just gore or jump scares for the sake of it, like in this story.

There is very weirdly a kid in this house with these scientists and it turns out she is there because her and her mother and sister came to the house one night. I'm really not sure WHY they were there on the creepy island at all, but sure. The older sister had ravinax poisoning from the island which had been used as a military testing sight before being scrubbed clean. So the scientists euthanized her so she wouldn't suffer and then her mother jumped into a lake and killed herself, a gruesome sight that Ace sees when they first arrive because the body is still in the lake after ten years apparently. Nobody thought to burry it I guess?

Only it turns out that she didn't have ravinax poisoning. It was a misdiagnosis and the scientists are working on a time travel technology to send a message back through time to tell themselves not to kill her. BUT THEN that turns out to not be the case either because a military man amongst this group, Major Dickens, planned this whole thing ten years ago as an experiment to see if he could change the future by having them send a message back and killing her on purpose.

This is where the weird mechanics of time travel come in. Edith, the girl they killed, is now both alive and dead, a walking corpse, for some reason. Because sending the message back in time isn't enough to change the timeline or whatever, just make it confused. So the zombie Edith is maybe walking around and killing everyone.

There's also a weird horror thing going on with bear traps and with taxidermy and eyes. The body was preserved ala taxidermy like all the taxidermy animals. There's a giant bear taxidermy animal that presumably has Edith's preserved corpse inside of it that looks like it's been ripped open. It falls on the woman who came up with the time travel technology.

Before I get to the time travel stuff, I'll also just mention there's a weird sexist thing here that threw me out. The Doctor tells Ace to tend to the wounded person instead of Hex.... who is literally a nurse???? Because he says that Hex is better equipped to fight the military man. Which is very strange considering that's very clearly Ace's role. There was no reason why they did this either, this part could have been done by Hex easily.

Anyway, the time travel stuff very much so turns me off. The Doctor even goes back in time to try to make sure they do kill Edith instead of bring her back to life, which is gross and immoral as the scientists say in the scene. But then he can't go through with it, so zombie Edith is still walking around even with the Doctor going back in time to save her instead of kill her.

The implications of this are that any time we save anyone with time travel, it creates a shambling zombie person in the future where their corpse is buried. And this is... disgusting! Thanks I hate it. It's just very mean spirited and hateful. It goes against everything I like about this show and makes me think retroactively about all the people that Doctor Who has saved over the decades. Every time there's shambling corpses popping out of their graves. No thank you.

It has great atmosphere if you like horror and slasher movies. But I do not and the implications of its time travel mechanics are mean and hateful. So nope, massive turn off.

MR 078: Pier Pressure

I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. There's some interesting stuff going on here, but it's just way too long for what it is. It's not the worst thing I've ever heard like this author's previous story: Medicinal Purposes, but it's not really good either.

On the beach in the past, there was a pier. And on that pier there was a magician named Professor Talbot and his attraction. Only he'd been dead for a long time. But, of course, not really. He's been kept alive by this entity called Indo.

It's essentially a ghost story. The Indo kill and possess a girl named Emily just as they are trying to possess Professor Talbot, but it doesn't work out for them. That's all well and good. The problem is that the story is way too long.

Very little happens in this two hour drama, it definitely should have been an hour instead. There's a decent performance of the real life comedian Max Miller. But there is a funny section of the script where Evelyn and Max are just in the TARDIS playing I Spy, like the script has nothing to do with them. We spend like twenty minutes just sitting around with them. And while it's cute and all, it's time that could have been cut. This story is a great example of why the two hour classic format isn't necessarily a good thing.

The Doctor ultimately stops the Indo by blowing up the power source that keeps Talbot alive, thus dissipating the Indo into the pier where they will be until the pier collapses, apparently. But it's a long winding road to get there.

It's not offensive like Medicinal Purposes was, but there was some stuff that made me raise my eyebrows. The Doctor continually insists that there is some great "evil" under the pier over and over again, even before he knows what's actually happening. That is very odd to me. Doctor Who doesn't usually just assume something is evil out of pocket before knowing what it is. He tries to figure out what's happening and understand it first and then declares it to be malevolent if it turns out to be the case. Very strange. This writer, Robert Ross, has demonstrated a lack of understanding of Doctor Who already so I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case here as well.

Honestly, its worst crime is that it's just boring. And that's the worst thing that a Doctor Who story can be other than fundamentally undermine the entire reason why I like this franchise, like this author's last story. Give it a miss.

MR 077: Other Lives

A comedy of errors (and fetishes) as the Doctor and friends get up to some hilarious hijinks! Well, more like get caught up pretending to be other people.

They go to the grand Crystal Palace exhibition, a huge international exhibition of technology in London in the mid 1800s. The three get separated through a series of hijinks. They told C'Rizz to stay in the TARDIS, but he didn't. Charley meets the Duke of Wellington. And The Doctor gets caught up in an assassination plot against the French ambassador. An assassin tries to shoot the French ambassador and his wife outside the TARDIS, the Doctor pulls them in then goes back out himself, and then the French ambassador and his wife accidentally take off in the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor there without his ship.

The story doesn't really go into detail about where they went. I think they were supposed to have just time traveled directly to the ending, but that's not as fun. Where's the French ambassador and his wife spin off series where they go to a pink planet or something?

C'Rizz naively follows a man named Mr. Crackles who... proceeds to kidnap him, turn him into a slave, put him in chains, forces him to strip naked, and then puts him in a thong. So, you know, super fetishy. He runs a freak show and C'Rizz will be the star attraction. No, not that kind of freak show! The kind where you put people who look weird in cages and point and laugh at them. What did you think I meant?

Meanwhile Charley wanders around on her own and gets mistaken for a prostitute. Yet again, another fetishy thing. The man who thinks she's a prostitute is named Rufus Dimplesqueeze. No I'm not making that up. She ends up sleeping on a doorstep at night and then goes to the Duke of Wellington's house after they shared a nice moment in the Crystal Palace exhibition the previous day.

Might as well do another fetishy thing with the Doctor, although this one isn't so much. The Doctor gets mistaken for another man named Edward who has been traveling for a year. His wife tries to get the Doctor to believe he is Edward right up until the point where she realizes that he couldn't be Edward. Her husband needs spectacles to read the newspaper whereas the Doctor does not.

All three of these characters just exist in these plot cul-de-sacs for awhile. There's not really much of a point to the story here, just allowing the characters to exist and see how they react to living these other lives, hence the name. It's nice. Charley hangs out with the high and mighty, the Doctor has a nice time in a high class house, and C'Rizz gets to see the worst of Victorian London. Seems like he got the short end of the stick here to be honest.

Their plots finally coincide when Charley notices C'Rizz on the freakshow advertisement posters and she has the Duke go rescue him. They then need to impersonate the French ambassador and his wife because everyone is going to think they've disappeared. Which will spark a French revolution in the UK maybe? Kind of a bad look for Charley to be fighting against democracy and upholding the monarchy, but sure. It's not really the main point. The main point is that we get more hijinks as Charley and C'Rizz try to impersonate the French couple, but don't do a very good job of it.

The Doctor then has to impersonate Edward to please his doppleganger's uncle who is none other than Rufus Dimplesqueeze???!!!?!?!?! Yes, we get a nice little "I'm actually him, trust me, lol" scene where they convince Dimplesqueeze that the Doctor is Edward because his wife will lose the house if Dimplesqueeze is not convinced. Yes, I just like typing the name Dimplesqueeze.

The Doctor then sees that the French ambassador and his wife are back in the newspaper, but it's actually Charley and C'Rizz impersonating them at the Crystal Palace. He thinks this means the TARDIS has come back, so he heads off. Only to find that coincidentally the TARDIS has just arrived here at this exact time, fast traveling to the finale with the French ambassador and his wife none the wiser. The end.

The interesting thing here is when C'Rizz is freed, he goes back and cripples and blinds his slave master. He could have killed him and the voices in his head told him to do it, but he didn't. I guess being unable to walk and blind in the Victorian era is punishment enough. Fate worse than death probably.

And that's about it. It's pretty much just fluff, but enjoyable fluff. Except for C'Rizz who has a horrible time. I just don't have that much to say about it. Very cute story.

MR 076: Singularity

I definitely did check out of this one pretty damn quick, but there are bits of it that are interesting. It's a shame about Turlough getting continuously shafted by the main range, though. His stories haven't been great so far.

They land in Russia where they come across a mysterious religious cult, the Somnus Foundation, colloquially called the Sleepers. The Sleepers were originally a research institute that studied sleep disorders, but now they're a full on cult, pulling people in by promising them that humanity will become the "Singularity," embracing their godhood and becoming as one.

It takes a painful amount of time to get there, but we do eventually arrive at what's happening. The Somnus are a species from the far future, specifically the end of the universe, who have figured out a way to displace the minds of people in this time and send their minds back to their bodies in the far future. They're going to try to force all of their minds into humanity and create one giant hive mind. Not quite sure why they want to create a hive mind, but sure.

The big twist here is that they are actually humanity at the end of the universe doing this to survive. Yes, that's right, this is the same idea as the series 3 finale, but way more overly complicated and less interesting. Humanity displacing its own ancestors for survival at the very end.

There is an angle here that the series 3 finale didn't really go for that I find interesting. Humanity has been saved by the Doctor time and time again. Over and over, humanity was propped up by the Doctor's time travel. Humans wouldn't exist without the Doctor constantly interfering in their history. So the humans at the end of the universe know all the Doctors, every incarnation, because he's constantly in human history everywhere. Indeed, they even have a line about how they don't really fear this one because the Fifth Doctor is his more passive persona. They know that he might not like what they're doing and absolutely do blame him for letting humanity die at the end of the universe. By preventing them from displacing their ancestor's minds, the Doctor is the cause of humanity's ultimate destruction, despite also being the cause of humanity's existence at all in the first place.

The series 3 finale doesn't really talk about this angle, but is otherwise a lot more interesting. It's not as complicated, there isn't as much technobabble, and it's easier to just zoom in on the characters at play. Singularity also doesn't use the Master. I also have no idea how the future humans were defeated either, I think my eyes might have glazed over during that part. There's even a whole part where the future humans have to use the TARDIS for some reason and I don't actually know why or how or anything because technobabble. As opposed to the series 3 finale where it's very straightforward why the Master is using the TARDIS.

Ultimately there are parts of this thing that were decent, but it could have benefited from a few more rewrites to make it more interesting and less dull. This is often a problem with the two hour format. Sometimes you can use it to your benefit to expand out the world and make it more interesting, but other times it just feels like padding for the sake of reaching the time limit.

MR 075: Scaredy Cat

Well I was going to make a joke about how this was the shortest main range, but f**k THAT. WHAT THE FUCKING f**k WAS THIS. Nope, absolutely not. I am not having the Doctor become a Nazi, thank you very much.

Most of what happens here does not matter. I mostly checked out through it. They land on a planet that is supposed to be uninhabited only to find scientists doing experiments or some such. There's native life on the planet that they're experimenting on and an evil psychopath mass murderer in the closet who they're also experimenting on. Whatever.

The main thing that pissed me off here was when the Doctor went back in time to find out what was happening. They had seen a ghost girl on the planet so The Doctor and C'Rizz went back four million years to find out what happened. There was a colony of millions of people on the planet that was wiped out by a disease. The Doctor could easily make an antidote to this disease and C'Rizz begs him to help these people, but HE FUCKING REFUSES??!?!?!?!? Nope. Nope nope nope. f**k this. I'm out. This is f**king disgusting.

Indeed, not only does he refuse to save millions of people from dying, because it would create a time loop where they don't come back in time to find out what happened in the first place, he actively PREVENTS C'RIZZ FROM HELPING. C'Rizz tries to save these people by giving them the antidote, but the Doctor MAKES SURE THAT WHAT HE GIVES THEM ISN'T ENOUGH!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! This is the Eighth Doctor. ACTIVELY trying to make sure a genocide happens. Yeah f**k you. Nope. This would be the Doctor who regularly tries to save as many people as possible. He would never, NEVER let millions of people die like this. He would fight to save them, no matter what it took. C'Rizz and Charley need to leave and run away as fast as possible after this. This is just like at the end of Medicinal Purposes when Evelyn should have left and never come back, but even worse. The Doctor didn't just kill one person here, he actively killed MILLIONS of people here.

He then goes forward and shows C'Rizz what he's done. The piles of dead bodies and the one little girl who was immune to the disease, now being forced to live on a pile of corpses. This is beyond evil. And then the story has the gall, the absolutely sheer FUCKING NERVE to do the "C'Rizz is a murderer/no he's not/yes he is" routine that we've done a thousand times already AFTER HE TRIES TO SAVE PEOPLE FROM THE DOCTOR'S GENOCIDE. The Doctor later says that these people dying was a bad thing. f**k the f**k off you EVIL EVIL piece of s**t. And then the Doctor says that C'Rizz isn't a murderer. Like he has any right to say that. He has no right to judge C'Rizz, nor the serial killer. He's done far, FAR worse than either of them in this story.

Nope. f**k this. f**k everything this stands for. This is, like Medicinal Purposes, the logical endpoint of the evil ideology that runs through Doctor Who like a cancer. I wish that I could operate on the whole franchise and remove it. This is the Doctor standing in the face of the holocaust, in the face of the Atlantic slave trade, in the face of every gruesome mass murder, extinction, and genocide in history and saying "No, all of you MUST suffer and die to preserve history as I remember it." It's the ultimate expression of this evil and it needs to end. I will never tolerate it and will always call it out whenever I see it. f**k this story and the person who wrote it.

Slytherindoctor Reviews is made possible by a generous donation from the Doctor Who Foundation and grants directly from the government. All hail Premier Tru-- Jaeger. Bringing you up to date coverage of the latest Doctor Who audio dramas. Truth. Facts. Integrity. That's Slytherindoctor Reviews.

Now the weather. It will be unseasonably warm today with highs in the 80s, make sure you wear that sunscreen. And turning now to traffic, the M9 has been closed down today due to a transport crash. Yes, government sources are confirming the death of Resident Doctor, the leader of the FDP, Freedom and Democracy Party. The government has ruled out any foul play and is blaming the crash on pilot error. The party is in shambles after its landslide election loss to Premier Jaeger yesterday and the tragic death of its leader leaves it with an uncertain future. The FDP have submitted complaints of widespread election fraud by the government, but no proof has been offered as yet and their complaints will likely go unheard. We go live now to Premier Jaeger's victory celebration on the steps of city hall.

This is more like it. So far the Seventh Doctor has had the most conservative stories of the main range. He always had the reputation as a rebel and it felt very unearned, but this is probably the story where he gets that reputation. I feel like most people forget what actually happens in Fearmonger, Flip-Flop, and Dreamtime, but they remember this one vividly. That's absolutely fair. This one is much better than those. No "both sides are bad." No "reject modernity and embrace tradition." No "immigrants want to enslave us actually." The Doctor roundly rejects all of those notions in this story and is the rebel against the fascist government. The story does not attempt to make the fascist look good in any way or say that those who oppose him are bad. The Doctor works to take down the fascist government and that's it. It's refreshingly leftist for a change and I'm so here for it.

Every episode is a different day's broadcast of a radio station: LIVE 34. This is yet another experimental format and it works quite well for this one. A lot of early main range have experimental formats. They don't always work out well. Like The Rapture, the Divergent Universe arc, or Flip-Flop (to be fair, Flip-Flop could have been remembered as a classic if it didn't have a bad moral). While others work out very well like Creatures of Beauty, Natural History of Fear, and Doctor Who and the Pirates.

The first episode has the radio announcer interviewing the Doctor from a transport on the way to the studio, but it was waylaid. He is the head of the FDP and is trying to force the government to have elections after the Premier has suspended them. Indeed, the Premier has suspended a lot of individual rights and freedoms and you can hear him give his reasons for all of it in this episode. It's good set up. It's the barely concealed face of respectability on fascism before we get to the ugly, hateful truth underneath. There's a hint of what's to come here. Blaming immigrants and trying to link the FDP with rebels. There's a couple of explosions, one at a government office and one at a factory with workers in it. The Doctor points out that the factory explosion doesn't make any sense for the rebels since they want to recruit those people, not kill them.

The second episode sees Ace as the media styled "Rebel Queen." There's an undercover reporter who sees the poverty stricken side of town and interviews Ace as she talks about the conspiracies that the government is covering up. They hide poverty from the main three cities on the colony and have travel restrictions so nobody can see the slums for themselves. Nor the death that occurs daily over food. The government comes and collects these dead bodies and nobody knows why.

It's astounding that the government even allows this story to be broadcast. It's also astounding that none of the higher ups at LIVE 34 pulled the plug on this story before it was aired, before the reporter even went to interview Ace in the first place. Normally in our world, a story like this would never be allowed to be played. The corporations that control the media wouldn't want people to see images of poverty in their own country on tv because then they might start asking questions.

Indeed, the next episode starts with the government censuring LIVE 34 and forcing them to pull the broadcast of that episode as well as the mysterious suicide of the reporter who did it.

It then leads into an apparently regular segment on the show where they follow around a working person on their shift to show what that's like. They're following around a paramedic tonight and naturally that is Hex, who I completely forgot existed until Thicker Than Water last story. This feels like how they used C'rizz for his second story in the highly experimental Natural History of Fear. We're using Hex for his second real story in the experimental LIVE 34 (Dreamtime doesn't exist, you can't convince me it does). So once again we can't really get to know him very well. To be fair, this one has Hex actually being himself rather than C'rizz being an aspect of a personality (It's complicated, go listen to it).

The reporter sees that there's ben excavation of dinosaur bones under the hospital. I'm not sure why this was here because it doesn't seem to mean anything to the rest of the story. She then goes to see Hex. They see a mysterious van coming to pick someone up from the hospital before they go off on their shift in the ambulance. Hex almost drives into a massive hole on a call to a lady who fell into a hole in her house. The hole extends out into the road. Hex goes down to investigate the hole which smells like sulfur while the reporter tells him to come back. But the hole is horrifying. It's a mass grave filled with dozens of skeletons, some even kids. They've all been shot and burned. But then before we can properly process it, Hex and the reporter are arrested by government security agents and the broadcast fails.

I'm less surprised that this broadcast happened. It was supposed to be live, after all, and the station wouldn't have had any idea of what Hex was going to find. The government takes over the station completely and the reporter gets fired while the segment gets heavily edited and censored, of course.

The next day we see the results of the election and Ace, the "Rebel Queen" getting arrested and tortured. Which definitely sucks. Ace goes through so much doesn't she? I'm surprised the FDP managed to force an election at all, but naturally the results show an overwhelming 80% victory for Jaeger. The FDP tries to submit claims of election fraud, but what with the communication lines being shut down to avoid outside interference, the Central Colony Commission is unlikely to hear their complaints.

Tragically it seems the Doctor has died in a crash as well, his transport crashing in the mountains between the cities. Oh dear oh dear. What will the FDP do now that their party leader has died. This is when the gloves come off. The fascists believe they are safe. They've won the mandate. And now they can reveal their true colors. They get a confession out of Ace threw torture, getting her to confess that she's linked to the FDP and that it was all a conspiracy by immigrants to strip mine Colony 34 of its resources. Sounds EXACTLY like what Flip-Flop said about immigrants. Except this time it's the bad guys saying it instead of the supposed "heroes." I was absolutely waiting for immigrants to get the blame. That is critical in fascist regimes. The outsiders are always to blame. They're always out to get you. Indeed, Jaeger says the "great replacement" white nationalist conspiracy. Immigrants want to replace the residents of Colony 34 and steal their jobs and lives. Flip-Flop, itself, also advocates for this conspiracy. This is good stuff. Putting this rhetoric in the mouths of the villains is all too prescient considering the fascist age we live in right now.

The Doctor is not dead though. He knew Jaeger would try to kill him and didn't board that transport. He's fifty steps ahead, naturally. They actually did get a communication out to the Central Colony Commission. It turns out that Jaeger isn't really who he appears to be. He's a security agent meant to look like Jaeger because the real Jaeger had a disease that got worse and worse and looked horrible. They needed someone to speak to the crowds. But the security agent Jaeger ended up taking over. They won elections since Jaeger was popular, but there was a sudden energy crisis as the energy resources dried up. Jaeger was going to lose as politicians always do when prices go up. So he came up with a plan. Humans made for a fantastic source of power. So the government dug up bodies from graves, but that wasn't enough. They needed more fuel. They actually invited immigrants in on the promise of good jobs and good lives and then exploited them, killing them for fuel.

It definitely does remind me of how undocumented immigrants come to the US looking for a better life and then they're exploited. They're not quite killed for fuel, but it's close. They're worked half to death in fields and factories and they can't complain. If they complain about work conditions, they'll get deported. Corporations will hold that over their head. If you form a union, we'll just call ICE. And then undocumented immigrants still get blamed for everyone's problems as they always are. Like I said, hatred of immigrants is a vital part of fascism. We get to see that play out quite strongly here in this story.

The Central Colony Commission thus declares the election null because the candidate running wasn't really the person he said he was and the Doctor was officially dead. I wish we had a strong central government that could come and save the US, but unfortunately the US is one of the strongest countries in the world. Nobody is going to stop it. The central government IS fascist.

I do like the reveal that Jaeger is not the real Jaeger, for this story, but it's not so realistic in real life. It's a neat wrap up to the story, of course. We get to see Jaeger dragged off by the crowd and killed, begging for his life. The same crowd that was cheering him on adoringly not five minutes ago. And then.... the story just ends. In real life, however, fascist dictators don't become such because they're impersonating a "real" political. They ARE real politicians. Trump didn't just get into office on a pretense. He ran and his ideas were popular and he won. Simple as that.

Still, despite that one bit, this story does a fantastic job of showing how fascism works. There's even a little bit of 1984 in here when Jaeger brings Ace on stage and the crowd gets the hour of hatred against her. It does a good job of showing the way fascist government suppress any and all dissent, mostly by going after media, and it does a good job of showing how fascists maintain power. By blaming immigrants and generally shifting the focus away from themselves and onto groups that are powerless. Right now, of course, that is undocumented immigrants and mostly trans people.

This is a stellar story, one that is intriguing to listen to from start to finish. It plays with its format and it pays off very well. Every bit and every clue and every scene work to make a cohesive, strong whole. And that ending is phenomenal. Very well done. Well acted, written, directed, and edited. Whoever worked on this should be proud.

Due to the disturbing nature of this week's review, the Central Review Authority, a new branch of the government, has redacted several sections of this text. Rest assured, we here at Slytherindoctor Reviews take this very seriously. We care first and foremost about our readers. So, the writer in question has been fired.

MR 073: Thicker Than Water

Well excuse me while I just start bawling. Excuse me what. This is a proper send off for Evelyn... before we're threw her stories. I'm curious as to why we did this at this point rather than as her last story. Perhaps Maggie Stables was in poor health or something. I remember when I heard that she died and I cried, but it was later than this point in time.

Anyway, the story is about the tension between Evelyn and her step daughter Sofia. Sofia and her friend Sebastian disagree with Evelyn's ongoing research on the Killoran technology after the invasion in Arrangements for War. Evelyn has left the Doctor presumably awhile after that story, coming back because she fell in love with Rossiter. Rossiter is now the most powerful person on the planet, in charge of all three countries which have since united after the invasion. So Evelyn and Sofia are both rather high profile individuals.

Evelyn wants to study the Killoran tech while Sofia and Sebastian want to destroy it. The intro is fun with a live tv debate between them and Evelyn storms out. It's good at setting the stage for the story. Sofia then makes an off hand comment about how she wishes Evelyn were out of the way and Sebastian takes it to heart.

Meanwhile the Doctor and Mel come to visit since Mel says she'd love to meet Evelyn. The Doctor always insists that Evelyn had a calming influence on him and that he's positively mellow compared to how he started and he's not wrong. Poor Peri had to deal with the brunt of it in the horrible season 22.

Only as soon as they show up, Evelyn gets kidnapped and Mel gets dragged along. It turns out the kidnapper is Sebastian who is doing this for Sofia since he loves her. Sofia comes to the rescue with the Doctor and Rossiter himself and Sebastian gets shot.

We then learn that something is not quite right here. This is only halfway through the story after all. Sebastian gets taken to the hospital where he dies after surgery. Evelyn has been in this hospital as well for treatment for her heart condition. But she's been very aggressively of late and had massive migraines which have knocked her unconscious a couple times, including during the kidnapping.

The Doctor and Rossiter uncover a hidden lab underneath the hospital where one of the doctors, Szabo, has been experimenting on Killorans. He's been working with Sebastian, taking the Killoran DNA and putting it into coma patients to see if they recover, which they do. Evelyn was one such patient. Which is why she's been very aggressive and irritable. I'm not a big fan of the biological essentialist thing here, that this species is aggressive because of their DNA, but it's not really the focus so I'll ignore it.

Szabo was trying to create a red herring by stirring up political debate about experimenting on the Killoran technology so nobody would think about the Killorans themselves. It's pretty f**ked. And then he kills himself so he won't be put on trial. It turns out Sebastian had just kidnapped Evelyn to help Sofia, Szabo did not direct him to do that. Indeed, it led to their undoing and Szabo killed Sebastian on the operating table because of it. He even shoved Mel down a shaft when she found out what was going on.

And then we get the really sentimental stuff. The Doctor never really properly said goodbye to Evelyn when she left. Because of course he didn't. He has a hard time saying goodbye at the best of times. But now he really does get to say it as he gives Evelyn away at her vow renewal and they dance together.

There is a special cameo here, as well, where McCoy shows up and Evelyn can tell he's the Doctor. He tells her that he's traveling with Hex who is Cassie's son and how much that means to the both of them. Excuse me while I start crying. I didn't care for the Project stories, of course, but I did like the character stuff that Arrangements for War and Doctor Who and the Pirates did with them. Of course we haven't really gotten to know Hex yet. He was just in two stories so far, his introductory story and a pretty terrible one, but it's not about him so much as who he's related to.

And that's that. This was a really special coda on top of Arrangements for War. The story was very fun and really served as a good reason to get the Doctor and Evelyn back together again. I love Mel's presence in the episode as well. She has good chemistry with Evelyn and does her investigation quite well as I'd expect.

It was really sentimental at the end there. Evelyn never told the Doctor about her heart condition while the Doctor just didn't ever really want to say goodbye. They were both sentimental towards each other, but couldn't really speak their feelings towards each other. Now here they can. Evelyn starts to say her feelings and the Doctor cuts her off, but Evelyn won't hear of it. She says it anyway. She says that the Doctor means a lot to her and that she loves him. Which is really special. She's now the second companion to say she loves the Doctor, after Charley, and she really means it. This relationship is special. Rest in peace Maggie Stables. I miss your voice and your character in these stories. This is such a moving tribute to her.