“Ride or Die” was an odd story, but a very entertaining one and continues the strongish streak of Thirteenth Doctor adventures. I’ll admit the final 10 minutes and the overall resolution to the plot didn’t live up to the fun prior 30, but I still enjoyed my time with the it. Let’s take a closer look!
The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and Yas (Mandip Gill) are following a list of people who have vanished that was mysterious sent to the TARDIS and after they watch an APC full of soldiers get sucked into a void in the middle of Afghanistan they follow the next set of coordinates to 2021 Sheffield, where Yas meets an old friend (who had a crush on her) in paramedic Megan Miller (Lauren O’Leary), who among other things tells her she’d been suspended due to not showing up for work for a year, which makes sense! Anyway, both Megan and Yas get sucked into the portal this time, but Yas has a tracker on her so The Doctor heads to the same other-dimensional location. While Yas and Megan have to fight for their life when they’re attacked by screaming creatures only warded off by special sonic canons The Doctor meets with Sergeant Johnson (Ako Mitchell) where she finds out that humans have been getting pulled onto this planet, which they dubbed “Rock” (rather than Earth, get it?) for centuries, so long that a whole population has been birthed, lived old and died there many times over, occasionally bolstered with other visitors from time to time. That makes “rescuing them” a non-issue for the most part, but the previously mentioned monsters that the people have dubbed “Banshees” (all voiced by Giulia Innocenti) are the real threat to life on Rock.
The Doctor meets back up with Yas, who is thankful not to have to actually serve in the military after being forced into the uniform that was oddly delivered via what sounded like an online checkout. They meet a chained up Banshee, who thanks to the TARDIS, can now speak to them. Sadly it doesn’t say anything useful and The Doctor frees it to boot, but as it turns out intentionally so she, Yas and Megan can follow it to its leader and hash out a peace deal for the humans…
The Continuity:
Yep… looks like all the other Thirteenth Doctor covers. Really wish they’d gone for a bit more variety…
Not really anything beyond basic arc stuff from other Thirteenth Doctor audios. I will say that the plot reveal you can read in the spoilers is extremely similar to the plot reveal at the end of Part 1 of last month’s War Doctor audio “Cybergene”, though obviously that’s just one of those funny coincidences as I assume they were probably written a good deal apart from each other…
Overall Thoughts:
“Ride or Die” was a fun story all the way up to when it became something else entirely and kind of lost me. It did recoup it with a fun sting at the end of the story to hint at more to come from the linking “Tourist” character, so overall there was definitely more good than bad!
Sadly the drive there costs Megan her life (after a chat between her and Yas that saw Megan point out Yas’s obvious attraction to The Doctor) but our titular Time Lord manages to pull Yas back from the brink of wanting revenge. They meet the head Banshee but she wants nothing more than the death of her enemies, but a familiar online checkout sound tips Yas off to something being definitely off. The Doctor finds a teleporter and uses it to send her and Yas to the source: a space station above the planet intentionally not only selling gear and fresh Banshees to each side respectively but also teleporting the extra soldiers or medics when the Rock military numbers begin to dwindle. Basically an arms dealer playing both sides in an eternal conflict, and the one responsible is actually just an AI called “Prospero” (Jason Forbes) and is linked to the evil that is big business in the modern day, including a little speech about how the rich and powerful companies can do what they want with their money and nobody bats an eyelid so long as they get their little share. It was a little heavy-handed to say the least, but not 15th Doctor level brick-to-face level at least.
The Doctor tricks the market to gain all the shares in Prospero’s company and then intentionally bankrupts it, but if fights back with legal things, and I kind of stopped caring at this point. The interesting, if a little cliché, humans vs. aliens on a foreign planet story had been replaced by evil AI and corporate stuff and I kind of switched off. Still, The Doctor of course comes out on top and the people on Rock are now free but will have to try to find peace with the Banshees going forward. Later in the TARDIS The Doctor figures out the mysterious coordinates from the start of the story was “just a hello” as she receives another message from the same person, who signs it off as from “The Tourist”. We then return to Rock to find out that Sgt. Johnson has been possessed by The Tourist, who begins to speak with The Doctor and Yas’s voice all jumbled up, claiming that it doesn’t know who it is any more but that “she will be coming” because she’ll be interested…
Hogan Reviews 