Flatpack is a weird story because it has the Ninth Doctor encounter some old companions but in this case its Liv and Tania from the Eighth Doctor audio range, a situation where we know Liv left The Doctor to live with Tania but also had adventures before then that are still being released. That makes this feel less like The Doctor meeting old companions and more like some sort of crossover. Still though, key question: is it good? The answer is yes! While I had some problems with it the two returning companions worked really well with Christopher Eccleston, so let’s take a look.
The story kicks off with Liv (Nicola Walker) and Tania (Rebecca Root) acting like a regular couple and doing some furniture shopping on a Sunday afternoon, though they seemingly can’t agree on how long the shop has been around… or even what day of the week it is. Then they encounter the TARDIS and while they want to believe it’s a designer wardrobe they’re soon met by a weird Northern man in a leather coat who claims to be The Doctor. Liv, who met The Doctor first in his Seventh form, is quick to come around to the idea, though she is sad the Eighth Doctor is essentially dead. The Doctor points out with Time Travel she could easily meet “her Doctor” again, so nobody is really dead for time travellers, a sentence that hits hard when the main threat makes itself known and our titular Time Lord shoots down Liv’s idea that it could be The Master or The Eleven, because as far as he’s aware he’s the only Time Lord left and he actually can’t meet them again, time travel be damned.
Not as big of a fan of this cover as the others in this set. Lots of dead space in the top and bottom…
As for that main threat? Well, our lead trio soon realise that they can’t seem to find the way out of the store and it just keeps going on and on, meanwhile we the listener are made aware than the colleagues of Flatpack that are walking around are either a vocal duplicate of a man named Fraser (Jeremy Swift) who we heard get taken out in the pre-credits teaser or one of the main TARDIS crew…
There are some nice layers of mystery and like I said in the opening paragraph this Doctor works really well with Liv and Tania. The final third doesn’t quite land with me as I’ll get into detail with in the spoiler section, but it was still a fun hour’s listening.
The Continuity:
The overall cover again. If it weren’t for the Sea Devil it could be the cover for this story as well!
Not much, beyond Liv and Tania confirming it’s been nearly a year since the end of the Stranded storyline in “Best Year Ever”.
Overall Thoughts:
“Flatpack” has some fun ideas and this makeshift TARDIS trio really work well together, makes me wish Eccleston would allow himself to be moved forward in the Ninth’s timeline so he could have a more regular Doctor-Companion set up. The big twist was a bit flat however, so it doesn’t quite get full marks. Fun enough though!
As hinted at the Flatpack “colleagues” are all older versions of people who visit the store, the store being infinitely large and eventually set to contain the whole of humanity stretching backwards and forwards in time (causing the effect Liv and Tania experienced when they couldn’t agree on how long the shops been there) There is something in the food and drink which makes people lose all will to leave, even effecting The Doctor and Tania, but Liv survives because she didn’t feel like having a drink at the time and so her older self posing as a colleague helps them out, including tipping her younger self off as to how to create this time loop in the first place by avoiding the drink. She eventually breaks the time loop by announcing on the Tannoy that everyone can get a refund at the food shop which given all of humanity is there at all points in time means the shop goes bankrupt before it’s even created, causing it to cease to exist.
Some fun ideas, though the twist of the identity of the staff was built up like a big deal but given this is an audio story it was pretty obvious what the twist of once some familiar voices began to be heard under the masks (though fair play to Christopher Eccleston who plays the evil manager with a completely different voice, that at least was a twist I didn’t see coming, though it is implied to be this incarnation visually so I’m not sure what’s going on there… I guess the evil Ninth Doctor decided a more posh voice would be more suitable?) Still, a fun script, which given it’s a John Dorney one shouldn’t be a surprise!
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