The next Eighth Doctor boxset is already here, just a month after the previous one released and this time we’re back with Liv and Helen in their post-Stranded, pre-Liv-returning-to-Tania period, and it seems we might be gearing up towards bringing this period of the Eighth Doctor’s life to a close… in a few years’ time, given the amount of Eighth Doctor ranges/time periods that get shuffled through each release! “Eos Falling” reminded me a bit of some of the middle episodes of the Eighth/Lucie Miller run in that it was just an hour long and while inoffensive it was also not particularly original either. With that glowing endorsement, let’s take a look!
“Eos Falling” starts with The Doctor (Paul McGann), Liv (Nicola Walker) and Helen (Hattie Morahan) receiving a distress call from a ship called the Eos and arriving on board only to find it abandoned beyond a ghostly voice a small girl following Helen around and a man who Liv and Helen can both hear but are struggling to see. The Doctor meanwhile meets a woman called Jenkar (Orlessa Altass) who is a rescue worker for hire, as in she will straight up refuse to save people if she’s not significantly paid, an odd concept that somehow doesn’t seem unrealistic for a future, depressingly. Anyway, the ship is on a collision course to the colony down on the planet below (a colony that Jenkar is from for the record, so yes she’s willing to let her own home town/planet get destroyed if she’s not paid due to disliking her life there so much) and so The Doctor races to the controls to see if he can save the ship while Liv goes into “for the purpose of this episode my backstory of being a medtech has been remembered” mode and tries to help the man, Roscoe (Thomas Michaelson) for the record, as he begins to fade into reality only to find out he’s injured, and Liv manages to track down the girl but runs into an other-dimensional enemy that is stalking them both…
It’s pretty normal (for Doctor Who) stuff, but I will say there are some good conversations between Liv and Helen, particularly the latter feeling a bit weary after having so many recent adventures involve her meeting a family member from her past with tragic consequences, which is good that they actually mentioned that! She also reminds the listeners that she can’t go back to her own time so wonders what will happen to her when her journey ends, a thought made more interesting when Liv finds out that the colony below was created by the “Sinclair Foundation”, Helen’s surname in case you’ve forgotten. Liv responds to Helen’s worries by saying she’s happy to follow The Doctor until he doesn’t want her around anymore, but we know that isn’t true thanks to the “cake and eat it too” ending to Stranded 4. It’s all very interesting, which is nice. That’s the benefit of having original companions compared to TV ones!
The Continuity:
What’s that? “There weren’t any Zygons in this story”? But how would you know?
Not much to say here. Abandoned spaceship, ghosts that turn out not to be ghosts, there are a lot of reused tropes but nothing that directly connects it to any other story. As I said there are mentions of recent adventures where Helen has met relatives, which are “Albie’s Angels” and “Lost Hearts“, if you’re interested.
Overall Thoughts:
“Eos Falling” doesn’t break any new ground but also doesn’t disappoint either, it neatly tells a fine Who story in one hour and then moves on, doing a little bit of groundwork for Helen’s eventual leaving story while it does it. Perfectly fine, but I doubt I’ll be listening again…
So as things progress the “interdimensional beings” turn out to be people from another time phasing forward, and Roscoe and his daughter (the girl running around) are also from this other time but they’ve just phased in more. The Doctor comes up with a way to save the ship but has to use Jenkar’s ship to do it, which she initially isn’t pleased with but over the course of the story warms up a bit, enough that she seemingly sacrifices herself to explode her ship and save the Eos and the colony below. The Doctor and pals head back into the TARDIS before it all gets sorted and we find out the Eos is actually from the past (or is from the present but sent to the past…?) and is the ship that lands on the empty planet and colonises it, meaning that Jenkar, who survived on the ship, ends up helping found the very city she resented so much…
Hogan Reviews 