The final two stories in the “Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke” release couldn’t be more different. “The Key to Many Worlds” sees both the return of Marco Polo and Iris Wildthyme and has a strong line of comedy running through it (as you’d imagine!) while “Inconstancy” is a rather dull affair featuring clones and lots of past-tense narration. Ah well, how well and poorly do these things effect their stories? Read on and find out!
“The Key to Many Worlds” sees The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Constance (Miranda Raison) arrive in Baghdad in the 1200s where they decide to drop in on The Doctor’s old pal Marco Polo (Terry Molloy), who is now far older and his travelling days are nearing their end. His “close friend” Toni (Anthony Townsend) is trying to convince him to settle down but he’s having none of it, and in fact soon plans his next journey: to return home to Venice to do a favour for the Doge and return a captured “enchantress” to him, the enchantress in question of course being Iris Wildthyme (Katy Manning). The night before they set off Marco holds a big party but is weary of this completely different looking man claiming to be his old friend The Doctor. He also “unleashes” Iris on the crowd to perform a bit of magic, where she calls The Doctor onto the stage and uses a cheesy-sounding magic crystal on her head to do a “spell” that actually legitimately causes Iris and The Doctor to body-swap.
Not willing to believe it was real Marco takes “Iris” back to Venice so “The Doctor” and a confused and panicked Constance go along for a ride, and that’s it for most of the story. It’s essentially just an excuse for Colin Baker to impersonate Katy Manning’s OTT Iris, which is funny… for a while. Kind of gets old though, and the older grizzled Marco plot isn’t all that riveting either. Still, good for a laugh here and there.
As for “Inconstancy”? Well, it starts off with two different framing devices as The Doctor is talking to a nurse (played by Lara Lemon) who is reading outside of the hospital on her lunchbreak, while Constance talks to a fortune teller high in the mountains called the “Sky-Teller” (Oliver Senton), but both are relaying their own experiences from their recent trip to Hoi, a dystopian colony world ruled by Claudia Purnell (Vivienne Rochester) and her clone army known as the Regulators. The twist of the story is while The Doctor is doing his usual “pointing out all the floors in the dictator’s plans while being captured” thing Constance comes across a creature that is responsible for all the Regulator clones and ends up becoming the next master to copy, so to speak, creating an army of mini-Constance Clarkes running around. There is some fun in these scenes but as a whole the combination of filling the story with “flash-forwards” of The Doctor and Constance talking about the main story in a past tense and the whole thing just not feeling very original or exciting just led the hour to feel like a bit of a slog…
The Continuity:
So the left side is all “Story Demon” and the right side is all “Key to Many Worlds”, leaving zero reference to “Inconstancy” …. makes sense.
Not a lot here. Iris Wildthyme has appeared a lot, but her first audio appearance was opposite The Sixth Doctor in “The Wormery”, so there is a sort of nostalgia to this pairing. Clones used as slaves / disposable soldiers isn’t a new concept either, Tenth Doctor story “The Doctor’s Daughter” and Eleventh Doctor two-parter “The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People” deal with the concept in a similar matter, just off the top of my head…
Overall Thoughts:
While I really liked the opener in this set the rest of the box slowly gets worse. “The Key to Many Worlds” has some bright spots but also both its body-swap and grumpy Marco Polo storylines drag on too long, and “Inconstancy” was just dull all the way through. I gave “The Story Demon” a 4, so funnily enough I think we’ll just slide down the scale…
“The Key to Many Worlds”:
“Inconstancy”:
“The Key to Many Worlds” leads to Marco Polo returning to Venice but instead of a big parade for the conquering hero he finds out that nobody knows who he is any more, his gift of exotic food were anything but and even his home had become occupied in his absence. He begs The Doctor to make him young again with his magic box, Marco assuming that was how The Doctor made himself look so young compared to his older self, but both The Doctor and Iris (who now feels the body-swap gag was running thin) admit that’s impossible, so he refuses to let them use the crystal again. Eventually The Doctor takes him to see his younger self from a safe distance before returning him home, which is enough of a thrill that he allows them to use the crystal and begins writing his memoirs. Like I said, it’s fine, it has some fun moments but the central body-swap gag goes on way too long…
“Inconstancy” on the other hand draws to a close as Constance and her clones arrive at Purnell’s office to rescue The Doctor and much to her horror he uses the remaining Clarke clone to undo the Regulators and give them all free-will at the cost of its “life”, stripping Purnell of her power. It’s then revealed in the “present” that The Doctor was at the hospital to visit Purnell this whole time. The whole anti-authoritarian stuff is sadly apt at the moment, but that doesn’t make up for a dull story with an even duller framing device…
Hogan Reviews 