The second and third stories in the “James Robert McCrimmon” boxset of Season 6B stories offer two fun and simple hour-long (or two part) stories and moves the whole Raven plotline along a little bit too. Michael Troughton and Fraser Hines get on really well as a double act, so if nothing else the two stories are elevated due to that. Let’s take a look!
“The Green Man” opens with The Doctor (Michael Troughton) and Jamie (Fraser Hines) talking with Raven (Emma Noakes) about some recent adventures they’ve had at her instruction before being told of their next destination: a top medical and rehab centre on Flores Prime, where a Time Lord has apparently vanished. In order to get into the facility Raven jabs The Doctor with a painful toxin that makes him unable to walk, so when we cut to the facility Jamie is wheeling The Doctor around as they’re getting the tour from Overseer Fuller (Nigel Havers). After they’re shown to their room The Doctor observes someone from the window trying to signal for their help before a mysterious green man appears and the lights go off. This is the set up for the rest of the story as the narrative focus never shifts away from The Doctor and his window as he sends Jamie on various scouting missions, that is until Jamie goes missing and The Doctor realises that the “Green Man” is actually a Krynoid under the control of the Overseer, who arrives in his room…
“The Shroud” on the other hand sees The Doctor and Jamie dropped off on the planet Ninevah, which has just recently fallen victim to the deadly “Shroud” a weapon that arrived in their solar system and blacked out every planet it touched. After literally stumbling around in the dark they’re found by some resistance fighters and brought back to their base, where they get eco-locating goggles that allow them to see and are told that they’re under attack from a Squid-like enemy who don’t see in a traditional sense and therefore are presumed to be the ones behind it all. No sooner had they heard this news that the facility comes under attack and The Doctor is taken, but Jamie manages to survive with a few other stragglers, including a man named Paul (Mickey Knighton) who seems to be delighted with the conflict…
So as you can see they both have interesting enough concepts and thankfully they play out well, with the latter also giving us a fun cliffhanger I’ll get to in the spoilers…
The Continuity:
Another look at the terrible “two old men talking” cover…
The Krynoids first appeared in Fourth Doctor TV classic “The Seeds of Doom” and have made an audio appearance before in the Eighth Doctor story “Hothouse”. I’ll also mention that The Doctor and Jamie describe a recent mission where they met an older version of The Doctor, which is a reference to “The Annihilators”, a Third Doctor audio from a year or two ago that debuted this Michael Troughton voiced “6B Doctor”.
In terms of the The Shroud nothing really stood out, though the Sixth Doctor / Tenth Doctor crossover story “Wink” did feature a planet with entirely blind people (though due to an overload of white light rather than no light), and the Eighth Doctor audio “Embrace the Darkness” has a similar plot of the sun going out on a race and what they do to try and survive.
Overall Thoughts:
“The Green Man” and “The Shroud” are two good audio dramas elevated further by Michael Troughton and Fraser Hines immediately clicking as The Doctor and Jamie. Add on top a fun wrinkle with Raven and the on-going “6B” storyline and it’s a very enjoyable two hours entertainment, it’s just a shame there’s only one of these sets a year…
“The Green Man” has The Doctor reveal that he isn’t actually crippled any more and that he knows Fuller’s plan is to blend Krynoid DNA with a bunch of other DNA and viruses to create the ultimate biological weapon that could be effective on any planet its dropped on, but The Doctor had been in mental contact with Jamie the whole time and instructed him to destroy the Krynoid and climb inside its leafy carcass, which made for a fun reveal. Fuller is defeated and The Doctor correctly assumes that Raven and the Time Lord CIA really wanted the ultimate biological weapon and that there was no missing Time Lord. She confirms that if The Doctor failed and had his Time Lord DNA entered into it they would’ve claimed it for themselves, but now its been stopped and isn’t in the hands of a potential enemy she isn’t too disappointed.
“The Shroud” reveals that the “Squids” are actually a race called the Hearken and they’re trying to help humanity fight off the same Shroud that is effecting this planet. It also turns out that Paul is actually the Shroud itself, a sentient weapon that was created by the Time Lords but has started to run out of the control, however when a rebel soldier sacrificed herself for it (thinking it was a person, obviously) the Shroud developed a conscience and despite being a weapon wished to help. They end up enlisting Raven, as she has the codes to “stop the weapon” but in reality they trap her within the Shroud and free the rest of the system from it. The Doctor and Jamie escape while their would-be captor is stuck within the weapon of her own people’s creation…
Hogan Reviews 