The next story in the Halloween boxset (skipping over Doctor-less spin-offs for my wallet’s sake) is an Eighth Doctor / Audacity story that focuses on the classic “children’s folklore comes to life” idea but with the folklore of an alien tree-like species instead. It’s a perfectly good one-hour story but once again it feels more sci-fi than horror, which given the whole idea of this Halloween boxset was “spooky stories for Halloween” is a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, lets take a closer look…
The story starts with a fun scene of The Doctor (Paul McGann) and Audacity (Jaye Griffiths) having just watched the world premiere of “Night of the Living Dead” by themselves as Charley had no interest in watching a scary movie, and on the way back into the TARDIS The Doctor finds himself in a spooky forest talking to a scared child briefly before returning to his ship, Audacity worried that he’d just zoned out. Shortly afterwards the TARDIS responds to a distress signal from a ship containing a family of Gystall people, basically tree-people. The father of the family, Otto (Jamie Kenna) doesn’t want any strangers help but the mother Gretchen (Judith Jacob) accepts as they desperately need to deliver their cargo. As The Doctor gets to work repairing the ship Audacity bonds with the daughter of the family, Reinke (Felicity Cant). During repairs The Doctor finds out that Otto and Gretchen were part of a troop of soldiers hired by the Sontarans to fight the Rutans but they soon backed out (Otto getting branded as a response) He also finds out their son was badly hurt in conflict as well, despite his parents warning him away from war.
While this is going on Audacity hears from Reinke about her people’s bogeyman: the Bramble King and how she thinks its stalking them, and sure enough she is soon mentally taken to the same forest The Doctor was earlier and ends up frozen in place in the real world. Audacity asks for help and we find out that the whole thing is connected to the cargo Otto doesn’t want anyone to know about…
Like I said, there’s nothing wrong with the story, it’s a perfectly fine spaceship under attack, family drama-y type affair, but given it’s a Halloween themed set and the story’s title I was hoping for something more… spooky.
The Continuity:
… Yep, that’s the same cover as before alright, and will be the same again for the next Who review too!
Not a lot. There are a few tropes and ideas I’ve seen/heard before, naturally with a series this long, but nothing directly connects this story to any other, beyond it happening during the currently-releasing Doctor/Audacity/Charley stuff.
Overall Thoughts:
“The Bramble King” was a perfectly fine sci-fi Who story with a bit of family drama mixed in, and The Eighth Doctor and Audacity are a fun paring, but overall it was overly familiar and given the boxset its apart of disappointingly lacking in spookiness…
Backed into a corner we find out that the cargo is The Bramble King, who is actually Otto and Gretchen’s son, his “damage” in the war was an experiment to up his psychic ability but it drove him insane, instead making his childhood fear a real part of his mind and “infecting” people with it. Otto wants to keep his son alive, Gretchen wants to put him out of his misery and save their daughter, but in the end The Doctor dives back into his subconscious and saves the child (representing the son’s real personality) and brings him under control. The family hopes that he can get the needed help once they reach their destination, while The Doctor and Audacity head back to Baker Street to meet up with Charley…
Hogan Reviews 