The next set of Eighth Doctor / Charley / Audacity stories has arrived (or did a short while ago…) and with it an interesting titbit: the first story in the set, “Puccini and The Doctor”, was written by Matthew Jacobs, the man who wrote the TV Movie and therefore created the Eighth Doctor, returning to the franchise for the first time since then. It’s a good thing it has such an interesting behind-the-scenes bit of info because I have to say the set as a whole is rather average or in one case flat-out bad, so there isn’t a lot to talk about otherwise…
“Puccini and the Doctor” sees, unsurprisingly, The Doctor (Paul McGann), Charley (India Fisher) and Audacity (Jaye Griffiths) travel to meet Giacomo Puccini (Tim McInnerny) and listen to his famous works at the time of release. They’re whisked away to an after party at the famous and extremely wealthy home of Princess Tura (Tania Rodrigues), a woman who clearly has some odd secrets… to the other characters, we heard her literally turn someone into a tree when he failed to solve her riddles in the opening of the story, so… no mystery to unravel for us! Our trio of main characters each find her interesting, Audacity possibly even falling for her while Tura herself seems infatuated with The Doctor. A lot of the story is looking at love and its meaning in life, so there isn’t a lot to talk about in the first two thirds beyond what I just wrote and the fact the story shifts from a garden party to a luxury cruise ship. There Tura gives The Doctor the same threat of solving three riddles and if he does she will marry him and if he doesn’t he gets changed into something, and to her shock The Doctor gets them right and she leaves in a huff, where she later turns Charley into a bird as a way to get at her new would-be husband as she knows Ms. Pollard has romantic feelings for our hero and therefore will be a good bargaining chip…
Basically there are lots of allusions to Madame Butterfly in a sort of “clever if you know the opera” kind of way, but I don’t, like, at all beyond the very basics and the classic bit of music so otherwise it’s a lot of talking, but at least often interesting talking. The Eighth Doctor is in particular very much closer to his TV Movie dashing and romantic version, which I guess is understandable!
I know which bit has caught your attention! You’ll have to wait for the third story for that though…
Sadly “Women’s Day Off” is the story that I mentioned in the opening that was “flat-out bad”. Set during the titular Women’s rights movement of 1975 Iceland the story focuses completely away from that event to the point where it’s nearly false advertising and instead focuses in on a girl called Kyla (Molly Harris) who has moved to the location and is now in an all-girls boarding school and is generally miserable apart from one teacher who treats her nice in Mrs. Gunnar (Kate Terence) One day she picks up what she thinks is a necklace but its actually part of an alien spaceship and due to not knowing how to control it she starts causing havoc with telekinetic powers and spontaneous fires, Carrie-style (but without the style…) The Doctor, Charley and Audacity arrive because the latter two companions want to see the aurora borealis but The Doctor is soon running after Kyla while Charley and Audacity run into the alien whose spaceship crash caused the whole incident in Jefred (George Watkins) The two storyline meet when the latter three find The Doctor flung out of a school window after he tried to approach a frightened Kyla…
It’s barely over 40 minutes long, as mentioned the historical setting isn’t actually used and there are some weird moments where Kyla and Mrs. Gunnar are talking to each other about scenes that just happen retrospectively but there aren’t any scenes in the story setting up them talking to each other after the events so it just feels completely out of nowhere and often confused me for a few seconds until I realised we were suddenly in a retrospective scene again. Really weird and uncharacteristically amateur scripting from a company with such a good track record…
The Continuity:
Not a lot to say here. Puccini and his opera music appear a few times during the “TV Movie”, with was obviously intentional by TV Movie script writer Matthew Jacobs! The only other continuity things is just mentioning Charley’s love of The Doctor, something that’s properly explored in “Zagreus” and mostly its follow up “Scherzo”.
Overall Thoughts:
“Puccini and The Doctor” is a bit of an odd story and somewhat lost on me in parts due to not having any interest in Puccini or his operas, but it has some good moments as well. “Women’s Day Off” was for whatever reason a bit of a dud, with weird scripting errors and a complete waste of the titular incident. A mixed bag, but not a particularly nice mix…
Puccini and The Doctor:
Women’s Day Off:
“Puccini and the Doctor” ends simply with The Doctor figuring out who or what she is and after she transforms the entire crew and passengers of the ship into animals The Doctor figures out that all she wants is the answer to what it means to live and love as she comes from a dimension where everyone is immortal but just change shape every few hundred years and they have no real sense of love or life as they don’t really have either. The Doctor does manage to get through to her, though this involves an odd scene in the TARDIS console room where The Doctor turns the room upside down to send her away to her home dimension. Tura thanks The Doctor however before returning to her world with a sense fulfilment and a wish to spread his ways to the rest of her people. The Doctor is pretty bummed about everything but is cheered up when Audacity gets Charley to reveal some drawings she’d done of The Doctor, our favourite Time Lord ironically oblivious to the loving nature of the act…
“Women’s Day Off” ends with Charley rushing out to a march and finding Mrs. Gunnar, bringing her back and then the teacher talking Kyla down and Jefred takes his ship part back. We don’t get any other scenes with the two women (making the retrospective scenes even weirder!) and only a brief scene of Jefred taking off before suddenly cutting to credits. Such a weird story, feels like it needed another pass or two before getting the go-ahead…
Hogan Reviews 