“The Return of Jo Jones” is an odd boxset. Apparently this reunion of the Third Doctor and an older Jo came about from Katy Manning saying she was struggling to do the young Jo voice but honestly her performance here doesn’t sound that far removed from her other Jo voicework anyway… Still, if it makes her happier to continue then sure, why not? Sadly this opening adventure is as plain as it comes in plot and characters, so doesn’t really get the “new” era off to a flying start, but hey-ho. Let’s take a look!
Jo (Katy Manning) is invited to the Isle of Wight by some old friends called Lorna Holmes (Wanda Opanlinska) and Malcolm Hollings (Wayne Forester) as the local bird populous has begun attacking people randomly, and Jo having become something of a sort-after commodity for this kind of thing. With popular podcaster Al Hunter (Viv May) by her side she follows the trail to a scientific research base near a lighthouse where she runs into The Doctor (Tim Treloar) who had not long said goodbye to Jo himself, but for her it’s been decades (well, since she’s seen THIS Doctor, anyway). They get access to the lighthouse, meet single-minded scientist Ms. Frost (Corrinne Wicks) and find out a spaceship had crashed during the Cretaceous period and they were using its salvaged tech to try and control nature.
This leads to some running around, escaping bird attacks and The Doctor being locked up and used as a conduit where he communicates with the psychic being controlling everything dubbed “The Innate” and finds out it wishes to destroy all of humanity…
Like I said, it’s hitting a lot of predictable beats, that’s for sure. Al Hunter is particularly annoying as well, though as it turns out her Podcast is designed to twist the truth to make people out to be bad for ratings so that was kind of the idea, I guess. Well, it worked!
The Continuity:
The Doctor points at something interesting while Jo… poses for a picture, I guess.
As mentioned The Doctor is relatively fresh from Jo’s last TV appearance in “The Green Death”, where as for Jo it’s much, much later. Jo mentioned having met an older version of The Doctor who claimed to have not seen her since then, which this Doctor admits it must have been a lie to allow this meeting to still happen. This older Doctor is the Eleventh, who Jo met in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode “The Death of the Doctor”. I guess this means the Third Doctor / older Jo story in the Legacy of Time set, “The Sacrifice of Jo Grant”, doesn’t happen until after this? *shrugs*
Overall Thoughts:
Supernature is… fine. Its entirely predictable and none of the new characters are really up to much but as a framing device to get the Third Doctor and an older Jo together again it works. Not exactly a thrilling start to this new era though!
The Doctor talks to “The Innate” and realises it’s a newly formed gestalt entity that has connected all the birds due to their connection to dinosaurs of the time the ship crashed. He manages to get through to it and uses its increasing control over all nature to command rats to chew through the wires of the machine and shut it down. While all this is going on Malcolm is taken over a cliff while attacked, Al is hurt when Lorna’s cottage is swarmed and Jo and Lorna herself just manage to survive long enough to assist The Doctor and Ms. Frost in shutting down the machine for good (though Frost strongly implies she doesn’t believe she did wrong and will no doubt try again…)
The Doctor uses the TARDIS to dispel the Innate and then he and Jo have a heart-to-heart where Jo admits her husband Cliff died recently trying to save villagers trapped in a Nepal landslide (yeah, I can see that…) and with The Doctor also lonely from having recently, well, lost Jo the two decide to go travelling together again.
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