The latest Fifth Doctor boxset continues the trend of well written genre pieces with “The Merfolk Murders”, a great example of Doctor Who doing the classic “whodunnit?” story, with a 1940 Scottish historical setting to finish it off. In fact this is a full-on historical in that beyond our time travelling protagonists there are no sci-fi elements at all. So let’s take a look at this murder mystery and keep in mind that the spoiler section is perhaps more important than ever in terms of not looking at it if you intend to get the most out of the story!
The Doctor (Peter Davison), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), Nyssa (Sara Sutton) and Tegan (Janet Fielding) arrive in St. Andrews in 1940, which isn’t ideal state-of-the-world-wise but The Doctor still would like to show his companions around. They soon meet Athena McDonnell (Peal Appleby) who tells them of a book club held by the society known as the Merfolk that’s happening later where they’ll be reading “The Casebook of Orion Hood”. The group splits up until the meeting and The Doctor runs into local student Sebastian (Angus Imrie), who claims to know who The Doctor is (as in an ally of Churchill) and that he must be here to “catch the spy” that is apparently in the area, while Nyssa meets a Polish soldier stationed there called Aurek Kowalski (Tom Alexander), the two bonding over having lost their homes. Tegan and Adric meanwhile end up in a bookshop where Adric meets local student Henry Cuthbertson (Will Kirk) and the two hit it off, perhaps romantically as the story goes on, and Tegan finds a copy of the Orion Hood book and is shocked to see the illustrations depict what is clearly the Fourth Doctor in his Sherlock Holmes deerstalker outfit.
At the book club meeting The Doctor admits to his companions that the books were written by his old companion Sarah Jane (under a pseudonym) and that they were based on a couple of months they spent in the area. As the head of the Merfolk, Professor Hodgson (Josie Lawrence) gets the meeting going, which is attended by every character I’ve already mentioned (yes, even the Polish soldier!) Athena makes the claim that she saw a murder happen last year and that it was covered up but she has the evidence. Everyone hand-waves it off as she is known to lie all the time and soon the meeting ends, but later that evening everyone receives a letter telling them to meet Athena at the old castle only for her to not arrive, at least until her body is discovered in a part of the castle that was already searched, only accessible by means that would’ve meant she’d be seen entering. As the other characters’ alibis start to confuse matters Cuthbertson is poisoned by sandwiches while Sebastian is nearly gassed to death, so The Doctor feels he has no choice but to start a new case for Orion Hood…
Now I’ve not got a lot of experience with murder mysteries (pretty much just Jonathan Creek and the recent Knives Out films, plus any other time a show like Doctor Who has done them, which is quite a lot!) so your mileage may vary if you’re more familiar with the genre, but I really enjoyed it. Kept me guessing to near the end, and even when I’d figured out who the killer most likely was the how was still a mystery until the end…
The Continuity:
Another one of those box covers really only based on one story in the set, in this case the two-parter after this one… They could’ve at least photoshopped a deerstalker hat onto Davison!
Not much to speak of, really. The Doctor does mention the events of TV Story “Black Orchid”, which was also a take on the period Whodunnit? featuring this exact TARDIS team, funnily enough…
Overall Thoughts:
“The Merfolk Murders” isn’t what you’d reach for if you want a Doctor Who adventure or “space romp” or whatever you tend to think of when you think of it, but if you’re looking for a period whodunnit? featuring The Doctor as the Poirot archetype then look no further! Although I am scoring it a solid 4 I most likely won’t be listening to it again unless I forget all the twists, which is obviously an issue inherent with the genre, still a good two hours regardless!
So in Part 3 we find out that Sebastian was the spy and he knew who The Doctor was from that and assumed he was here to find him so tried to throw him off the scent, but when it seemed like his cover was blown he tried to kill himself with the gas. The Doctor talks him down when he holds Tegan at gunpoint (though the gun isn’t loaded) and just so he isn’t executed he decides to keep his secret so long as he stops (obviously!) and asks to do him a favour by bringing Athena’s sister Anna to his get-together to reveal the killer (plus later on gives him some tips as to when and where bombs will drop in the area over the next few years and asks him to evacuate as many people as possible, much to his confusion) At said get together The Doctor runs down some potential suspects and reveals things (like how Kowalski acting strangely from time to time was because he’s actually short sighted, something that would mean he wasn’t allowed to enlist, so he keeps it a secret) until eventually revealing Cuthbertson as the killer.
He goes into detail about the elaborate way in which he did it, then reveals he’d been living on the street and took the name Henry Cuthbertson from another student who he’d killed last year and that Athena saying she saw a murder last year is what made him act and kill her. As it turns out it Athena was lying though only that her sister is the one who saw the murder the year prior but eventually convinced herself she imagined it and her sister took the story as her own to impress everyone. As one final twist it turns out that “Henry” is actually Prof. Hodgson’s nephew who was born out of wedlock, a scandalous event that led to her losing contact with her sister and essentially leaving her to die in poverty and leading our killer to become who he came to be. “Henry” makes a run for it, with Adric and The Doctor running after him, and at the same cliff face he killed the actual Henry at he claims to legitimately like Adric before throwing himself off, much to our travelling boy’s horror. The Doctor then makes a jump forward by a few decades to check in on Hodgson and finds her still teaching at the school and her current prize pupil is the son of Kowalski, showing he settled and found a new home, much to Nyssa’s relief. It was a nice uplift after the more dramatic ending…
Hogan Reviews 