Finishing off the “Deadly Strangers” set then is a story featuring the return of The Mara, well, sort of anyway. It takes place in a clinic where people are sent to a deep sleep for many years at a time and so the idea of the Mara invading people’s dreams while they’re kept under is a good, it’s just sadly the story really isn’t all that interesting. Ah well, let’s take a look!
The Doctor (Paul McGann), Charley (India Fishe) and Audacity (Jaye Griffiths) arrive at what our Time Lord thought would be one of the most gorgeous and lush worlds in space and time but it turns out to be a barren place with one space station called “The Gloaming” in orbit around it. They head over there and are told it’s a sleep clinic by the droid overseeing the facility, Franz (Graham Seed). This is another case where a pre-credits scene has already told us there’s more going on as someone who was sleeping was ejected into space for having a nightmare, but we’ll get to that in a bit! Instead a kindly old woman called Meryl (Abigail McKern) arrives and gives them a tour and some tea but Charley soon falls mysteriously ill and is put in a hibernation capsule for her safety.
At this point we hear Charley in her own subconscious having a shouting match with The Mara, the evil mental snake thingy from several great Fifth Doctor stories, while Audacity meets an intentionally obnoxious young man called Dekkar (Homer Todiwala) who is meant to be an online influencer type who is somehow extremely popular despite being a complete twat. He plays it really well! It’s revealed that this isn’t just a sleep clinic and instead the rich businessmen of the planet’s past drained the planet dry of resources in pursuit of profit and then escaped to this space station while living the general populace to die off on a barren world, so everyone who is being picked off by the Mara is actually an arrogant businessman type which almost makes Audacity feels no sadness as she hears of them being ejected into space. Speaking of which, Charley shows signs of possession and so Franz begins the process of ejecting her into space…
The story isn’t bad per say, it’s not “Women’s Day Off” thankfully, but I spent the hour waiting for things to pick up and get exciting and they never did, it just sort of kept revealing things that you kind of already assumed and then ended. It’s a rather average end to an average-to-below-average boxset, sadly.
The Continuity:
Now we can talk about the Mara and a possessed Charley on the cover! … It’s, um, on the cover. There. Done!
Obviously the main connection here is The Mara, who first appeared in two Fifth Doctor TV stories in “Kinda” and “Snakedance” and later returned to complete a trilogy in the Fifth Doctor audio story “The Cradle of the Snake”.
Beyond that there are a few references to past Eighth Doctor/Charley stories as The Doctor tries to wake her with pleasant memories, including their first three adventures in “Storm Warning”, “The Stones of Venice” and “The Sword of Orion”.
Overall Thoughts:
“The Gloaming” had an interesting set up but sadly it never goes beyond interesting as the story moves along at a steady pace but never actually picks up. Throw in an extremely annoying character who gets no comeuppance because “it’s funny he’s so obnoxious” and I can’t say I’ll be listening to this again, but I will concede it’s better than the previous story, so a 3 it is!
The Doctor manages to stop Charley’s pod from being ejected into space and after Audacity falls ill he realises that Meryl is possessed by The Mara as well and is intentionally spiking people’s drinks to set them up for possession. He manages to help Audacity wake up without being possessed and then focuses on bringing Charley back to the land of the living by talking to her about the adventures they’ve had together, which soon works. They then put Merly in deep sleep as well after Dekkar knocks her out after not being affected by her spiked tea and then The Doctor tells Franz what’s happened. Basically this isn’t the original Mara but instead some weak copies that were created in a lab, but due to this they die once their host rejects them rather than live on in the psychic plain.
They then figure out that the Mara has somehow infected Franz’ AI brain as well and seeing no other way to protect his patients Franz ejects himself and Meryl’s capsule into space, destroying the last of the Mara copies. Dekkar celebrates like a knob and the only conclusion our main cast can draw is that his mind is simply too stupid for the Mara to be able to possess. Dekkar walks down the hall spouting more really obnoxious things about waking the remaining people and creating some sort of rich obnoxious utopia despite not knowing what the hell he’s doing so The Doctor, Charley and Audacity leave him to it and head back off in the TARDIS…
Hogan Reviews 