The Eighth Doctor Time War stories return and with The Doctor’s great grandson from an alternate timeline Alex already settled in. As the name suggests Big Finish shows that no companion is off limits for them once again as the box features Cass, the woman The Doctor met moments before her death and his regeneration. How do they meet up now? The Time War! That’s all the excuse you need for timeline muddling scenarios… So let’s take a look at these first two single part episodes, shall we?
“Meanwhile, Elsewhere” feels like we’ve missed a boxset or two since the last one as not only are The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Alex (Sonny McGann, formerly known as Jake McGann, so it’s the same actor/son of Paul as teenage Alex!) settled into their partnership with the latter not questioning being in an alternate timeline or anything, but Bliss is also missing, though as it turns out that’s actually a plot point. We’re first introduced to Cass (Emma Campbell-Jones) as she finally makes it onto the crew of a spaceship and begins to befriend her superior due to her eagerness but it all goes a bit wrong when she finds a stranger called Hieronyma Friend (Jaye Griffiths) in the cargo hold and then the ship begins to connect to different planets via the literal doorways. The Doctor and Alex arrive due to the abnormal readings and soon the three begin acting as a TARDIS team, putting the pieces together.
It’s a fun story with some nice twists and thankfully McGann Jr. has improved his acting abilities since his last turn as Alex (which given his age at the time is understandable!), in fact Alex and Bliss end up spending some time together in this story and already bounce off each other well.
“Vespertine” is your standard “first trip” story as The Doctor detects a time anomaly and ends up in a location coincidentally important to Cass. You see she grew up amazed by the stories of space explorer Hudson Sage, an explorer who vanished along with his ship the Vespertine with no one ever finding its wreckage. The Doctor, Alex and Cass arrive at Station Twilight to find out its sitting on top of the frozen wreckage of the Vespertine with the goal of uncovering its mysteries. Local technician Rin Martolo (Indigo Griffiths) offers to take our TARDIS trio to see the ship itself…
I can’t get much more into it without spoilers but it contains a fun twist and a great performance by a guest actor. Much like the first story it’s enjoyable enough and the new TARDIS crew works really well.
The Continuity:
It’s funny that being able to use Night of the Doctor pictures makes Cass look legit while Alex looks like a regular bloke in a jacket…
Obviously alternate-Alex was revealed in the previous Eighth Doctor Time War audio “Restoration of the Daleks”, while Cass first appeared in the TV short “The Night of the Doctor”, which takes place in The Doctor’s future where neither of them recognised each other, so some time high jinks await! This-universe’s Alex’s fate is hinted at by Friend, seen in “Lucie Miller / To The Death”, but this Alex seems unphased by it so, I guess The Doctor has already got him up to speed!
That’s it though! Well, apart from the Time War itself, but at this point that would take a hell of a lot of other-story links to explain…
Overall Thoughts:
Both “Meanwhile, Elsewhere” and “Vespertine” are perfectly fine and enjoyable slices of Doctor Who, with a new TARDIS trio that manages to gel extremely well very quickly. Neither blew me away but both were very fun to listen to, and I’ll gladly take that!
“Meanwhile, Elsewhere” reveals that the issues the ship is going through is because Friend was actually on board the ship to use something akin to a Time Scoop to pick up random civilians and turn them into “Meanwhile Soldiers” to sell off to both sides of the Time War. She is stopped by Alex and Cass after they mistakenly go back in time, visit all the different planets connected to the ship, meet an earlier version of The Doctor and Alex by mistake and then end up back on the ship before the events of the story happen, so they have enough time to sabotage Friend’s machine. She is arrested and the new TARDIS trio head off.
“Vespertine” has two central mysteries: the first is that The Doctor and co. meet Hudson Sage himself (played brilliantly by Simon Shepherd) who is somehow still alive and young in his cabin after all this time; and the second is that The Doctor has apparently visited the Vespertine before, hinted that it was with Bliss and that’s why he doesn’t remember it (well, we know that, The Doctor and Alex still have no memory of Bliss at all…) It turns out that Sage is still alive because his cabin and the ship was saved via a Time Lock but it decays shortly after they arrive, eventually forcing The Doctor, Alex and Cass to run as Sage succumbs to his long-delayed fate.
After figuring out the beacon Rin gave them is what broke the Time Lock Cass believes Rin is the descendant of Hudson’s Second-in-Command Isaac Martolo, whom Hudson treated poorly at the end of his life, but actually Rin soon reveals she is the granddaughter of Hudson himself and wished to destroy his ship so she can stop living in his shadow. Tragically she had no idea Sage himself was still alive in the ship and will now have to live with being the murderer of her own grandfather. A couple of fun twists, and Alex is becoming more and more concerned that The Doctor is clearly missing a chunk of his memory…
Hogan Reviews 