The Ninth Doctor and Rose adventures continue on with the third and hopefully final visit to the Powell Estate (this was clearly supposed to be a three episode boxset…) which sees the classic idea of a “children’s game come to life” as an imp-like creature begins to make people do and say things they think to themselves but otherwise would never do, which starts off as innocent pranks but soon becomes something far more sinister. Let’s take a look!
The story starts with a few residents of the Powell Estate doing uncharacteristic things, including Jackie Tyler (Camille Coduri) knocking down a stack of tin cans in the local shop, which causes her to contact Rose (Billie Piper) and tell her about it all. The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) soon agrees to check it out and after some investigating finds the culprit at a local antiques shop. Turns out an interdimensional imp called the Hellion (Harry Myers) is what’s at work, and it soon doesn’t stop at causing people to do physical things and moves on to getting the locals to just blurt out the deep truths they intentionally would never say out loud to each other, including Rose saying something horrible to her mother down the phone. Things take a turn for the much, much worse when despite having a Time Lord’s mental defences it manages to get into the Doctor’s mind and free him of his own inhibitors, but instead of causing The Doctor to do something merely naughty The Doctor heads out into the darkest void and chants what was essentially a magic spell to summon an all-powerful but extremely abstract entity known only as “The Endless”, which then begins to plunge the entire universe into misery…
It’s a really solid story, with strong emotional beats coming from Rose and her mother and another fine and varied performance by Christopher Eccleston, who thanks to having a regular companion to bounce off of can now show a greater range than “guy who turns up, saves the day and leaves again” as he was in his solo boxsets. The only real downer was some of the other members of the local community that all gather in Jackie’s flat, as a lot of them are one-note characters whose one note is kind of annoying. Given the fact they also have to be nasty to each other at one point doesn’t help me like them any more either!
The Continuity:
Always nice to seen a completely original monster created visually on the cover. Happens quite rarely, understandably given they’re audio dramas!
Nothing directly ties this in with another story. There have been devilish imp-like creatures a fair few times over the many years, but that’s a bit too vague to look up for this paragraph!
Overall Thoughts:
“Dare You” was another strong entry into the current run of Doctor/Rose adventures, one that has a good concept for its villain but the main cast and the emotions they go through are what really stand out. Let’s keep this momentum going!
As everyone begins to feel the effects of The Endless The Doctor manages to regain his sanity in the TARDIS after Rose manages to get through to the Hellion and get it to stop. The Doctor first heads back out into the darkest void and chants a spell to call the Endless back into its own dimension, but he says even having touched “our” universe for that short a time its made it a darker place. This puts him in an extremely bad mood so he begins to speak about the horrible things he’s going to do the Hellion, proper torturous things until once again Rose steps in to call him back from the edge of darkness. The Doctor instead just drops the creature off on a world without sentient life for it to torture and then thanks Rose for keeping him from surrendering to his dark thoughts. We then hear a very genuine and heartfelt conversation between Rose and her mother, where despite the horrible things Rose said to her and the fact they had to come from somewhere in her mind the two make up. It’s a very pleasant conversation, and well done by both actresses.
Hogan Reviews 