The next Ninth Doctor boxset has arrived and it has a linking narrative of “stories where something from the past in effecting the present”, which is an odd choice as it does make all three stories feel rather samey, even if they take place is vastly different eras. The fact that these two stories also have the Doctor get a temporary companion to help out against an other-worldly threat, a.k.a. like 95% of these Ninth Doctor audio stories, doesn’t help the overall samey feeling these sets have created for themselves… Ah well, let’s take a look at the first two stories, shall we?
“A Theatre of Cruelty” sees The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) get visited by a man in the vortex only to see him chased away by a girl. Naturally confused The Doctor traces the man to his doorstep and recognises him as famous playwright Antonin Artuad (Alexander Vlahos) and is surprised to find out his interaction with him in the vortex was actually a dream Anton was having. Apparently he is constantly haunted by dreams of the tragic lady known as Beatrice Cenci (Elisabeth Yorke-Bolognini) who was executed in 1599 for killing her father, despite the fact that he father had killed her brothers and was generally a rather unpleasant man to put it lightly. The execution drew the ire of the general public at the time and the tragedy has led many to write stories, plays and films about her (though I’ll admit this is the first I’d heard of her…) including Antonin.
The Doctor soon joins him in one of his dreams via a gadget of some description and notices that not only does this Beatrice resemble a painting of the woman rather than the actual woman (thus proving it isn’t Beatrice herself somehow contacting Antonin but instead more of his own imagination) but that more sinister and other-dimensional hands are at play…
There is something very unnatural about The Doctor on this cover… I think it’s the face along with the fact he’s supposed to be running… Anyway, otherwise, fun cover!
“The Running Men” starts with The Doctor looking at some floating vortex amoeba before deciding to head to Shibden Hall in 1835 to meet with Anne Lister but ends up materialising in modern day Hallifax instead and is immediately arrested by Sergeant Ambika Desai (Fiona Wade) for impersonating a police officer. Meanwhile a greedy landowner called Annalise Avenley (Pooky Quesnel) and her heavy Greyson (Delroy Atkins) kill off a safety worker when he tries to close their latest building project down due to it being unsafe, and The Doctor and Ambika end up finding the body, though it soon disintegrates. Following the clues they end up at the same building site and meet Annalise and Greyson, as well as Frank Kelsey (Simon Rouse) who claims that she is building on a historical site where the infamous execution gibbet was placed and should be stopped.
They’re all dismissed but when they confirm the gibbet on display as a local museum is a fake they all sneak back in and go underground, where they find the original gibbet alongside our antagonists. Annalise soon reveals the power of the gibbet, that it can release “Running Men”, ghostly forms of those executed by the device in the past (and named after actual people in olde Hallifax who tried to run from their execution) which end up killing Greyson, and The Doctor figures out she is more than she seems…
Funny actually how The Doctor is running on the cover for “A Theatre of Cruelty” but not on the cover for “The Running Men”…
As I said in the opening paragraph, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with either story, in fact I enjoyed “The Running Men” quite a bit, but I just can’t escape how by-the-numbers everything felt. If this is your first Ninth Doctor boxset you’ll absolutely love their stories as they’re well produced and definitely well acted, but for me they’re all starting to bleed into each other.
The Continuity:
As per usual with a lot of these stories there isn’t really any continuity to speak of, they’re entirely stand-alone.
Overall Thoughts:
The overall boxset cover, as per usual very much focused on the big guest character in the final episode…
While I enjoyed “The Running Men” a bit more than “A Theatre of Cruelty” neither story particularly hooked me in. They both followed the now-standard Ninth Doctor solo travel pattern and due to the theming of the boxset they also shared a few plot elements as well. They’re both well performed and written, if these are among your first exposure to the range you’ll love them, but for me the formula is starting to wear thin…
In “A Theatre From Cruelty” it turns out a group of beings from the dawn of time called the “Astraphi” have latched onto Antonin’s powerfully active imagination and are using his Beatrice play, which is unusually fully interactive with the audience, to manifest themselves in this reality. The Doctor manages to lash up some technical doodad to send them back, with Antonin’s mental help. Simple enough ending… for Doctor Who anyway!
As for “The Running Men” we find out that one the vortex amoeba had hitched a ride on the TARDIS and latched itself onto the gibbet in the past and it gave it a thirst for blood, so it has taken over Annalise’s body in order to gain physical form and spread itself via the Running Men. Thanks to Frank in the TARDIS and The Doctor and Ambika on the roof of the large tower creating a special loop the amoeba and all the running men are sucked back into the vortex. All things return to normal, including Annalise, though she’s arrested for that extra feelgood moment. Again, pretty much the same ending, really…
Hogan Reviews 