Big Finish continues with its bizarre slap-dash 60th Anniversary “Once and Future” series with the most random line up of them all. How about jamming the Sixth Doctor, an older Harry Sullivan, Jackie Tyler and Lady Christina (you know, from that one Tenth Doctor TV story…) plus an earlier incarnation of The Eleven in The Two all together? Bloody hell… does it work? Not really, but it could’ve been far worse let’s put it that way…
The Doctor runs through a few faces to start us off again before eventually stumbling upon a building where Harry Sullivan (Christopher Naylor) is under the impression he’s working with a future version of The Doctor but it’s actually The Two (Michael Maloney) Harry catches The Doctor as his Third self (Tim Treloar) before he pops into his Sixth body (Colin Baker), confusing his past companion who assumed he’d turn into “his” Doctor. Harry is caught up to speed and reveals he’s working for a future version of The Doctor, which confuses him as when he looks around the building and at “his” equipment he finds it shoddy and not up to his standard. Either way he soon hears of a jewel being sold on auction that is potentially connected to the degeneration weapon he was hit by so heads to the auction house.
Something about the colour scheme of this cover really annoys me, and I can’t put my finger on what…
Meanwhile someone who was clearly River Song has directed Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri) to a job as a cleaner for the rich Lady Christine de Souza (Michelle Ryan) and despite her not advertising for the job she takes Jackie on anyway as the two find themselves getting on. Christina realises the necklace Jackie is wearing is extremely valuable so suggests she puts it up for auction, neither knowing that it’s an alien artefact (well, since Jackie got it from Rose during her travels with The Doctor, she probably does…) This leads to the two plot-threads connecting as The Doctor bumps into the two of them at the auction, though he loses the bid to The Two. Realising something funny’s going on The Doctor, Jackie, and Christina all head back to the lab to find out what’s really been going on…
The Continuity:
Odd they chose an older Harry to be the Special Edition cover hook, although to be fair not really any of the guests this time round were big deals…
Well, beyond just “it’s part of the Once and Future storyline” and “returning characters” (though I will reiterate Christina comes from a single Tenth Doctor story “Planet of the Dead”) this is the first time we’ve heard The Two as a singular character, though he has been portrayed as a disembodied voice in the head of future incarnations like The Eleven since the character’s debut.
Plus its worth pointing out that Jackie mentions being familiar with Regeneration (so the Tenth Doctor debut story “The Christmas Invasion” has already happened) but it’s also mentioned that it’s 2006, which is the year the Ninth Doctor series takes place. So a good old fashioned continuity error! It happens, though normally not in such a blatant way, I can only assume they forgot that the relaunched series’ are a year ahead of when they aired.
Overall Thoughts:
Once and Future: Two’s Company is an oddly fun run-around thanks mostly to Colin Baker and Camille Coduri having oddly good chemistry but all the separate parts don’t really form a whole at any point and once again it doesn’t really feel like anything happened in terms of the actual core Once and Future storyline apart from The Doctor having another vague clue to follow. Basically, like so much of this series, it’s alright but I doubt I’ll be listening again…
After avoiding a whole bunch of elaborate traps the group arrives in the lab too late, The Doctor seeing The Two activate his tech and creating a wormhole to Totter’s Lane in 1963 while Harry looks on bemused. Apparently The Two headed to the Sisterhood of Karn when he found out about his mental condition and asked to see his future and if it really would be as cursed as it seemed to be even with only one prior incarnation in his head, and what he saw told him that it would be terrible but a lot of that had to do with The Doctor getting in the way of his plans. So instead of trying to mend his ways and become a better person that won’t have to be stopped by The Doctor he instead decided to head back to before The Doctor began his first travels and sabotage his TARDIS by rigging it to blow.
The Doctor follows him there, stops him and defuses the bomb without much incident, then returns back to the lab to inform Harry, Jackie and Christina that due to the effects of all the tech and stuff they won’t remember anything that happened. Classic continuity error dodging!
Hogan Reviews 