Most days, I pass this well consecrated to the Virgin Mary, just before the playing fields and running track
But as usual, on the walk to work I've been listening to Doctor Who on audio. The Thing From the Sea continues the story of Fenella Wibbsey, the Doctor's housekeeper in the Nest Chronicles audio series. Paul Magrs' stories are ornate and melodramatic; he has an ear for the mundanities of the elderly, for the camp and the parochial. His baroque description blends with old-fashioned idiom to create a kind of Gothic Soap Opera.
This is a florid tale of 18th century Italy where the flesh of an alien "sea serpent" is conferring immortality on the locals and the spirit of Cagliostro inhabits a ghoulish, stuffed monkey. It's quite unlike any adventure Tom Baker ever had on tv but the flamboyant prose suits his Doctor. 6/10 Talmars for a story that feels like it's really part of a longer arc.
Peter Davison's Doctor was my favourite in my ( very) late teens and the week just passed was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the crammed and congested Twenty Years of a Time Lord event at Longleat House. I spent most of those two, pre-VHS days, watching b/w episodes of DW from the Sixties and queuing for Janet Fielding's autograph. And here they both are, in a highly entertaining Big Finish audio by James Goss ( I said he'd show up again!)
Goss, like Magrs, presents mundane life being intruded upon by the Doctor's world. Here, Fenella - no relation Woolgar, who played Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and The Wasp voices weary ghost tour guide and storyteller. She helps the Doctor's ghost defeat Sabaoth, a Lovercraftian entity. The three companions, meanwhile, have adventures in the past: Tegan is interred with the Doctor, Nyssa has a tragic romance which ends in accusations of witchcraft and Adric faces the noose. If Paul McGann's Doctor was the most dashing and romantic of the classic series, then Davison's has become the most drily comic. This is a creepy and clever timey-wimey, Moffat-Style story. 10/10 Talmars
I find Whovian hatred for Steven Moffat really tiresome, especially since he's now left the series. I've enjoyed the continuing adventures of the Doctor's "bespoke psychopath" at Big Finish and here she is again, in her third audio box set. The writers investigate River's background in more depth, as the sinister Madame Kovarian returns and the professor meets the fifth incarnation of her Time Lord husband.
The Lady in the Lake by Nev Fountain has a morbid idea at its core: a planet specialising in euthanasia. Space Dignitas . We learn that Kovarian has engineered a number of clones of River, all with regenerative powers. The second episode, A Requiem for the Doctor is set in 18th century Vienna and touches upon Mozart, spousal abuse and murder but it's really about the friction between the professor and the Doctor's companion Brooke. Never heard of her? Remember, the only water in the forest is the river... It's a dark fairy tale with an excellent cliff-hanger.
The third episode, My Dinner With Andrew is set in the Bumptious Gastropod- shades of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and The Crystal Bucephalus- both eateries associated with P. Davison.
This is another very timey-wimey tale; Davison plays the dual roles of the Doctor and ineffectual Yorkshireman Andrew, who becomes a pawn in River's machinations. This paradoxical story made me laugh out loud more than once.
The box set only stumbles at the climax. The Furies features the downfall of Kovarian. River teams up with her clones, who include the actresses who played Mels and Saibra, the shapeshifter on tv, in seasons six and eight. Despite trying to take on abusive parenting, it's all sound and, er, fury.
9/10 Talmars for the snivelling and wailing Kovarian and the punning names- H2 and O, Lake, Brooke, etc.
Coming soon: The Third Doctor Adventures volume 4.
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