It’s time for Big Finish’s celebration of 50 years of the Fourth Doctor, and you what? They actually didn’t go overboard this time! Instead of an old enemy and companion-fest like the Fifth and Sixth Doctors got, or whatever the hell “The Last Day” for the Seventh Doctor was, we have a perfectly pleasant Doctor/Sarah/Harry story that nicely slots into their debut season with some warm and comfortable tropes thrown in. Sound good? It did to me, both leading up to the release and when actually listening to it, so let’s take a look!
The story opens with The Doctor (Tom Baker), Sarah (Sadie Miller) and Harry (Christopher Naylor) talking about an alarm going off in the TARDIS signifying that The Brigadier is signalling them to return home and help out UNIT but The Doctor decides to hold off on seeing what its all about, they’re in a time machine after all, no real way to end up late to something, so instead they investigate a good old fashioned time anomaly and end up in Medieval England… or do they? They meet a travelling actors group led by Faustus Black (Angus Dunican) and follow him to his performance where he tells a tale of humanity returning to Earth from space following a great disaster and once a few generations went by humanity starting losing the knowledge of how to use the technology on the spaceships / arcs and when those who still used it failed to help cure a deadly disease humanity regressed into a medieval-like state thanks to swearing off technology from the “old times”. So this is in fact a sequel to both “The Ark in Space” and “The Sontaran Experiment”, nicely fitting in to its slot at the end of Season 12.
At a pub after the performance The Doctor starts to ask questions, both to Faustus and a nearby barmaid called Arnica (Scarlett Courtney), the latter of which mentions a secret cave where she lost a friend hidden in the “forbidden woods”. While piquing his interest The Doctor then hides all his tech when a group of hooded men led by Brother Voss (Andrew French) arrive and search for it after hearing rumours about strangers being in town. While they don’t immediately find anything Faustus was clearly listening as The Doctor, Sarah and Arnica are all kidnapped by his men during the night and are forced into the same cave Arnica mentioned. After deactivating a robot looking to kill a “Zaphiel Ixon” they gain access to an old bunker where the less wealthy people tried to survive the solar flares underground due to not being able to afford a place on the arcs and discover that they’re all dead thanks to the previously mentioned Zaphiel, who sabotaged the pods after they exiled him when he was caught killing people in experiments, even if those experiments were to help.
Simple but effective, though I wonder how many times Harry has been dressed in different outfits on these Big Finish covers? Seems they can’t resist!
What follows is a long string of capture and escape, swapping who gets captured and brought before either Mother Cassava (Rosemary Ashe), who leads the Brotherhood and is very much in favour of killing any who even go near “old times” tech, or Zaphiel Ixon (Terence Wilton), who survived the flares by creating a time machine and leaping forwards but the machine was faulty and he only exists as a incorporeal ghost unable to even get out of his chair, but thanks to the tech in the cave he has mentally controlled Faustus to finish a machine that can transfer his mind into a suitable host. Ixon tries it on one of Faustus’ men but it fails, so he figures he must need someone from roughly his time so even though he has Sarah he tells Faustus to capture The Doctor and Harry, who are currently with the Brotherhood (I guess a female body doesn’t appeal, though he does say he’ll do it if he has to!) After the whole “playing dead to escape the prison cell” bit The Doctor and Harry are on the run from the Brotherhood but they swiftly get captured by Faustus instead and brought back, and while the attempt to enter The Doctor’s mind just knocks the Time Lord out, the attempt with Harry is seemingly a huge success…
As I said, it’s a fun story, doesn’t break any new ground but it’s not supposed to! It’s a celebration of Season 12 and in that sense it does everything it set out to do.
The Continuity:
As mentioned it follows up the plot thread that makes its way through the whole of Season 12, most significantly with “The Ark in Space” and “The Sontaran Experiment”, which sets up the setting of this story. It also mentions a call to return to Earth from the Brig, which is a reference to the Season 13 opener “Terror of the Zygons”, nicely placing this in the middle.
Someone killing people in order to extend their awful existence brought about by botched time travel is also a very Fourth Doctor thing, being the main plot of all-time classic “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”, as well as the Lost Story that came before it, “The Foe from the Future”.
Overall Thoughts:
“The Curse of Time” was created to slot into the end of Season 12 as a nice slice of nostalgia to celebrate 50 years since that Season first began to air, and it pulls off this mission brilliantly. Will it get its hooks into you with amazing and original plot? No, but it will entertain you with its cosy, familiar plot and great performances all round.
While The Doctor stalls for time and Ixon frets about his clinging to Harry’s body being unstable Sarah and Arnica escape and meet back up with the Brotherhood, a plan hatched by The Doctor in their minds and one Mother Cassava agrees to. Soon the Brotherhood attacks Faustus and his men, killing them all before Sarah unleashes the killer robot who finally gets to fulfil its mission and “kill Zaphiel Ixon” as he shoots Harry down to the floor. The Doctor correctly figured the robot’s batteries would be too drained for a lethal hit and so straps the unconscious Harry back into the chair and undoes the process, and thanks to no longer even having a ghost body to return to Ixon screams in terror as his floating consciousness “endlessly falls through the vortex until the end of time”. Dang.
Everyone heads back to the TARDIS, well apart from Arnica who just happily goes back to her pub to try and forget this whole thing happened, and there The Doctor finally gives in and agrees to answer the Brig’s message…
Hogan Reviews 