1 episode. Approx. 25 minutes. Written by: Richard Dinnick. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs, Ken Bentley. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: William Russell.
THE PLOT
A distress call draws the TARDIS to a spaceship that is the sole home remaining to the Metraxi, survivors of a race that became sterile generations earlier. Believing their sterility to be a result of a poisoned homeworld, they fled in search of a new planet, maintaining their population during the search through cloning. Now their ship is breaking down. Radiation is seeping into their atmosphere and is slowly killing them.
The Doctor and his companions are quick to promise help, and the Doctor and Ian begin to investigate at once. They find no malfunction in the ship's systems. But when they search further, they find a truth that's even more disturbing...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: While William Russell can't make himself sound exactly like Hartnell, he does manage to fit some of Hartnell's mannerisms into his First Doctor line deliveries. As such, his readings of First Doctor stories always end up being a pleasure to listen to. When the Doctor becomes righteously indignant at a terrible discovery, the image is vivid of the First Doctor standing, chin raised, grasping his lapels as he imperiously stares down a villain. Russell's reading is no small part of bringing such moments gloriously to life.
The Doctor: While William Russell can't make himself sound exactly like Hartnell, he does manage to fit some of Hartnell's mannerisms into his First Doctor line deliveries. As such, his readings of First Doctor stories always end up being a pleasure to listen to. When the Doctor becomes righteously indignant at a terrible discovery, the image is vivid of the First Doctor standing, chin raised, grasping his lapels as he imperiously stares down a villain. Russell's reading is no small part of bringing such moments gloriously to life.
Ian/Barbara/Susan: The 25-minute length and comparatively complex story leaves little time for characterizations of the companions. Ian acts as the Doctor's assistant, helping him to investigate the radiation leak, but he really is just a sounding board for the Doctor here. There is a nice exchange between Barbara and Susan, in which Barbara references The Bible as "the book of our religion," only for Susan to correct her by reminding her that it is "one book, of one religion." This is a good moment, one which feels right for the characters even as it expands beyond the usual teacher/student, surrogate mother/daughter roles they were usually confined to in the series.
THOUGHTS
The final volume of Big Finish's short-lived audio "Short Trips" series launches with this atypically lengthy story. Whereas most of the "Short Trips" on these discs run somewhere between 10 - 20 minutes, this one clocks in at 25 minutes, the length of a full episode.
Writer Richard Dinnick fills that time with a full episode's worth of story, which he even takes care to structure and pace like a black & white Hartnell story. It's not difficult to picture the whiskered, pot-bellied Metraxi as benign aliens in the early Hartnell era, and a fair amount of time is provided to establishing their background and even a bit of their culture. The regulars are split up, with the Doctor and Ian investigating the dilemma of the episode while Barbara and Susan talk with the Metraxi and share cultural insights. The character divide is fully in-keeping with the televised era.
It's a well-told story, tightly structured but with a measured enough pace to reflect the characters of this TARDIS crew. William Russell does his usual fine job of narration, switching effortlessly between the First Doctor and Ian. Between his skillful recreations of this story's primary regulars and the effects layered onto the Metraxi voices, the story almost feels "full-cast"... though, of course, Russell can't do much with the Barbara and Susan bits.
The story does suffer from one huge continuity error, a glaring one given the era in which it is set. The story's climax depends on the Doctor being able to control the TARDIS... Something he absolutely could not do at this point in the series. I could have blinked at this if there had even been a couple of short lines to address it. As it is, however, it feels like a glaring error that's allowed to pass simply because it would be inconvenient to do otherwise. This is sufficient for me to dock a point from the story's score.
Even so, it stands with a solid score as one of the better audio original "Short Trips."
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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