We hit our first offical 50th anniversary story of this catch-up marathon (remembering that Day of the Doctor has already been reviewed…) as well as our first non-comic review and it’s Big Finish’s well advertised multi-Doctor story “The Light at the End”, the story that made me lose a lot of respect for Nick Briggs after he showed no interest in writing the multi-Doctor story until Tom Baker wanted to be in it, then he claimed the story had “his name written all over it”, and boy-oh-boy, it does have his name all over it, but not in a good way, more in a “this clearly didn’t get checked over by anyone else because he’s in charge” way. It has its moments, mostly Paul McGann and Tom Baker making a fun duo, but thank goodness the TV series delivered a fun multi-Doctor story for the 50th instead… Let’s take a closer look, anyway…
The story starts off with a simple, regular man called Bob Dovie (Big Finish writer John Dorney, no doubt used to save some cash given the size of the guest cast…) and his kids (one of which is played by Nick Briggs’ son… no doubt he thought the performance was great) playing in their back garden when a police box materializes and breaks his chimney. We then cut to the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) and Charley (India Fisher) as they soon notice a light on the TARDIS console that wasn’t there previously. Out of curiosity The Doctor traces the point in the time vortex which caused the light to appear and its November 23rd 1963 (naturally!) and Dovie’s house, specifically (the address of which is the house Nick Briggs grew up in… bloody hell…) When he tries to land there though they land instead inside a pocket dimension belonging to top arms dealers the Vess (Nick Briggs), and nearly get caught in their crushing death machines for good measure.
The special edition came with some created “scenes from the story” but they obviously couldn’t find a picture of India Fisher where she looked shocked or afraid so this picture just looks like she’s mildly amused by the killer machine…
The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) have the same light-based issue and arrive nearby, leading to Charley accidentally making her way into their TARDIS after they land and seeing lots of ghostly images of past companions from the First-to-Third Doctor eras as well as some Doctors and companions at various points later in this story. A short while later and the two Doctors meet and start trying to put together what happened and come across The Master (Geoffrey Beevers), who is at the heart of this whole mess and soon Charley and Leela vanish into thin air. The two Doctors make it back to the TARDIS but it soon explodes. We then get “oh look, a weird new light has appeared” scenes for the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri (Nicola Bryant), and the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) leading to a very similar outcome of them both landing in the Vess dimension, meeting up outside of it and then running back to their TARDISes only for their companions to soon vanish. The Sixth Doctor does run into Straxus (Oliver Hume) and his C.I.A. buddies though, apparently there to purchase a weapon for the Time Lords, just to keep it out of enemy hands, naturally. Apparently The Master catching them red-handed and threatening to “tell on them” to the main Time Lord council is how he was allowed to take on Vess weapon of his choice.
As for the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) they get the same red light but unlike the other Doctors he doesn’t head to the precise moment, instead he arrives a few minutes before and therefore actually arrives at Dovie’s house, where the duo meet the man himself as he waits for his family to come back home. Sadly they also find his family shrank by the Master’s TCE and then speak to the man himself, who gleefully taunts his old nemesis. The Doctor, Nyssa and Bob head to the TARDIS and as soon as he gets inside Mr. Dovie describes the craft as “impossible” and that sets off the very explosion that not only destroys this TARDIS but the ones in the future, and indeed the past. As for an explanation as to how this is happening, well the Sixth Doctor is visited by corporeal versions of the First Doctor (William Russell), the Second Doctor (Fraser Hines) and the Third Doctor (Tim Treloar), who announce they know what happened and have a plan to save them all…
The Doctor is horrified to find the shrank remains of Bob’s family… Nyssa is once again slightly amused. There must be a better picture of Nyssa / Sarah Sutton they could’ve used, surely! She was actually an on-screen companion!
As I mentioned, there are parts of the story that just feel they needed a second or third set of eyes on it. This is the infamous story where combining each Doctor together the phrase “old girl” is used to describe the TARDIS so many times that it’s just aggravating, and we certainly find out why he’s never written for Ace before as she just spouts basic descriptive dialogue and says “Professor” 1,000 times a minute, along with a really awkwardly written scene where she comes up with “funny” names to describe all the other Doctors. It’s really poor for such an important story, I mean it was the first multi-Doctor story that had Tom Baker perform in it! Oh well, like I said, it has its moments, a scene where the Fourth Doctor sees images of his future selves and comes up with actually amusing descriptions of them and banters with his Eighth self is a good laugh.
The Continuity:
The Standard Edition cover, the only one to feature The Master on it despite him being central to the plot…
For a story so full of Doctors and companions its surprisingly not very continuity heavy. There are references to other companions meeting The Master in this current incarnation’s future (funny really how Nyssa, Peri and Ace all have TV dealings with him later, I forget sometimes how over-used the Ainley Master was…) and Peri is the only companion who is familiar with seeing multiple Doctors thanks to “The Two Doctors”, in fact she even recognises the Second Doctor from that adventure.
Funnily enough The Great Intelligence also tries to erase The Doctor’s effect on the timeline in “The Name of the Doctor”, a story coming up in a few days, while Charley and Leela have already met in the audio “Zagreus”, coming up much later in the mini-marathon, though that’s later in their respective timelines.
Overall Thoughts:
The special edition box cover. It’s actually one of those lenticular pictures so it looks like its moving when you tilt it, but that obviously doesn’t work here…
I remember how excited I was with this release coming out, the Fourth Doctor in a multi-Doctor adventure! Two hours, a guarantee that the Doctors interact with each other… but in the end its just not a good script. It has some good moments but they’re drowned in the dull or poor, and the repetition with some of the dialogue just screams “nobody proofread this thing”. Oh well, ten years later, it’s just another multi-Doctor story to review and sadly it hasn’t reviewed well…
With the help of his earliest selves the Sixth Doctor manages to call his prior and later selves to his console room to have a natter and plan. We find out that the thing that causes the TARDIS to explode is Dovie, as he was fitted with a “Conceptual Bomb” that activated when he claimed the TARDIS being bigger on the inside is impossible, and therefore the Master’s whole plan is to wipe the Doctor’s TARDIS from existence and therefore have him never leave Gallifrey and meet all his friends, save all those lives and stop his plans. An interesting move though I image if this TARDIS wasn’t available The Doctor would’ve just got a different one and things would’ve remained exactly the same, but hey, there you go. Apparently not! Also the blinking light was the First Doctor trying to warn his future selves not to fall into the trap as it happened when he was already on Earth at the time, but instead having a magic light suddenly appear on the console had the exact opposite effect and drew them here, which… yeah. Not The Doctor’s brightest move there…
Lastly the vinyl cover, which I feel is the best of the lot (which is why I picked it for the thumbnail!)
While the Eighth and Fourth Doctors distract The Master the rest enact a plan where the Fifth Doctor arrives at Bob’s house a year earlier (the scene at the very start of the story) where he convinces Mr. Dovie to come up to the roof and he shows him his TARDIS, meaning the following year he’s already seen the TARDIS and therefore won’t describe it as impossible and thus the bomb doesn’t go off. Everyone is safe and sound once again as The Master realises all eight TARDISes are about to time ram him as punishment but before they do The First Doctor realises how he can put everything right and turns off the system that drew everyone there in the first place, thus resetting the timeline entirely like the story never happened. Oh well, that’s … one ending, I guess. We do get an amusing end scene where all eight Doctors and various companions visit Bob Dovie on November 23rd without remembering why they wanted to do so, but then surely that means all the Doctors still arrived there? … I guess they didn’t all arrive at the exact same moment so it doesn’t count? … Well, whatever. That’s it! The end!
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