Hogan Reviews

It’s time for another story from probably my most anticipated Doctor Who range of them all at the moment: the Third Doctor adventures. “The Quintessence” is the next in the line of older Jo Grant (or Jo Jones) adventures that got off to a bad start last year but I’m happy to say that this second set is among the very best this year. While it starts slowly (and oddly familiar) it turns into not just a great story but a great story with the Cybermen, the original Mondas ones no less. Let’s take a look!

The story kicks off with Jo (Katy Manning) having a dream where she’s living in a large mansion with a girl named Emmeline (Felicity Cant) and just before she wakes she’s given a set of space-time coordinates. The Doctor (Tim Treloar) isn’t convinced but when he puts the codes into the TARDIS is actually arrives on a specific planet, something extremely unlikely if it were a random set of numbers. They arrive on Nethara Reach only to find it a desolate storm-ridden world, apart from a single Victorian mansion all on its own, the same one from Jo’s dream. It’s here that I had an extreme case of déjà vu as Third Doctor audio “The House That Hoxx Built” had an old manor house mysteriously on a desolate landscape as its setting, which is a really specific thing to be duplicating! Anyway, they knock on the door and meet Arthur and Lucy Pepperdine (Chris Larkin and Emily Joyce) who are more than a little surprised to have visitors. Despite Arthur’s attempts to stop them they are eventually taken to see Emmeline, who is sick and bed-ridden but still definitely the same girl from Jo’s dreams.

As Jo talks to the girl The Doctor figures out that the whole house is fake, the books aren’t really books and there is something very odd about the paintings. He puts it all together thanks to find a communication device but its too late, the paintings are actually portals and the people on the other end are the Cybermen, still stuck on Mondas and who think Emmeline is the best candidate for an experiment they have in mind. Lucy is knocked out and captured trying to stop them as Arthur gets mad that this wasn’t part of the deal and then follows the Cybermen and Emmeline to Mondas via the portal when they take her anyway. The Doctor tells Jo it would be safer to head there in the TARDIS than risk the portal and despite Jo stating that they’ll probably end up in the wrong time again Episode 3 features The Doctor and Jo meeting an older and bedraggled Arthur who reveals they’d arrived many months after he leapt into the portal (so Jo was right on the money there!) but at least his time on the planet allows him to heal Jo after she gets bitten by a Cybermat, so it’s not all bad.

It’s not immediately obvious that the Mondas Cybermen are in this story, but once you know it’s a very fun cover.

The three head to Arthur’s hideout and find out he’s been experimenting on de-Cyberman-ing a Cyberman, which works well enough that he reveals his name to be Drexel (Gary Turner) but in reality he’s still not much of himself. The act of reactivating him tips the Cybermen off to their position though and after they take care of Drexel they take our trio to their main base where Emmeline is revealed to have been converted into an early version of the Cyber-Planner, and is looking to spread the Cyber-race throughout the galaxy. The Doctor, Jo and Arthur are plugged into “The Quintessence”, which is basically a large Cyberman computer that creates a false reality all so we can spend an episode with Jo and Emmeline acting like grandmother / granddaughter before The Doctor breaks her out of it. It was by far the weakest part of the story, completely killed the momentum dead, but ah well… Free from the false reality The Doctor wants to flee but Arthur wants to find his daughter and wife and see if he can still save them, one way or another…

The story has a tonne of atmosphere and has some great scenes of early Cybermen body horror, despite the audio medium.

The Continuity:

As mentioned a Third Doctor audio drama featuring an old manor house unexpectedly in a barren landscape can also describe “The House that Hoxx Built”, weirdly enough. Different writers as well, but only two years apart! Also this is actually the second time The Doctor and Jo have met the Cybermen on audio too, with “The Tyrants of Logic” being the first, used by our main duo as a reference point in the story when needed.

I’ll also mention that the Mondas Cybermen first appeared in the very first Cybermen story, “The Tenth Planet” and reappeared several times on audio, comics and novels, as well on TV again during the Twelfth Doctor’s run in the double bill “World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls”.

Overall Thoughts:

“The Quintessence” was a great slice of Mondas Cybermen horror, with a fun slow burn set up (even if it was oddly familiar…) and plenty of great set pieces to keep the run-time going. A slight knock for the episode set in a false reality slowing things down, but thankfully it didn’t hurt it too much. After a pretty weak year for Big Finish I’m relieved to be handing out a rare 5!

The Doctor manages to lash up a device that could track Emmeline’s location, and after finding out Lucy’s body was used as spare parts and therefore her bio-signature is “everywhere” (Yikes…) he finds the Cyber-Planner and they head to her location. The ending goes exactly how you imagine, with some close calls and Arthur sacrificing himself to destroy the Cyber-Planner that was formally his daughter, neatly tying everything up and giving The Doctor and Jo enough to time to escape. It’s the good kind of predictable though!

Jo is distraught about Emmeline, let’s not forget she has many, many kids and even more grandkids so seeing such a young girl go through that was rather harder for her than most, especially when you add in that this whole re-travelling with the Doctor thing came about because she lost her husband… The Doctor asks if she wants to go home, but she refuses and wants to continue on.