Just in the vein hope of speeding through some of these older Big Finish releases I’ve once again bunched all three stories of this boxset into one review. This is the kicking off point in a new series of full cast Eleventh Doctor stories, featuring their second recast (I missed out on the first one for the most part, something to get to later I guess!) and I have to say our new Eleventh Doctor isn’t quite up the task of the previous one but does a good enough job that I was able to lean back and enjoy listening to the stories, and the new companion set up is a real treat too. Let’s take a look…
The first story, “The Final Cut” does a good job setting things up, mostly by giving us a companion quite unlike any we’ve seen before… though quite similar to one we’ve read before in Tenth Doctor comic companion Majenta Pryce but I digress. The Doctor (Miles Taylor) arrives in Hong Kong in the 90s where he meets tech CEO Eleanor Fong (Jamine Bayes), who is running a company that can erase specific unwanted memories straight from people’s brains and actually starts off by having the Doctor arrested, giving the impression she’s another corrupt business CEO type but it’s soon revealed she treats her staff extremely well and this all came about because she had a memory she herself wished to block out (not yet revealed, that’s for later I guess) The tech soon creates creatures made from TV static that start killing people though, so suffice it to say her good intentions don’t pay off like she’d hoped, especially when some friendly office workers she has been protective of start becoming the victims. It’s a good introduction story overall.
The second and third stories do the classic “let’s go to the far future and then the distant past to ram home the show’s concept!” thing. “The Tourist Trap” sees The Doctor and Eleanor arrive in “Space Florida” only to find it abandoned save for an A.I. welcoming them to the resort. As things continue though it becomes clear what had happened, the A.I. (called “Ray” and played by David Kendal) had put the entire population of Space Florida into cryosleep against their will because its logic saw it as the best way to save them, and then in order to keep the supplies up for his people Ray began luring other ships to Florida and then shooting them down to steal their supplies to keep Florida running. This means the story is effectively a three-hander but there are enough tense scenes and great interaction between The Doctor and Eleanor that it never felt slight.
The third episode, “A Delusion of Witches” sees The Doctor and Eleanor arrive at one of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, where an innocent young girl called Mary Morton (Becky Wright) is on trial even though history says she wasn’t, making it very much The Doctor’s business despite his teaching Eleanor about not interfering. The episode has a lot of court-based stuff but with some mixed in sci-fi, including the reveal that Mary and others are descended from a race that integrated itself within humanity to peacefully live with them and the judge of the witch trials is from another race that wishes to eradicate them for no other reason that flat-out racism. It has some powerful moments, especially the end credits where the actual real victims of the Trials are named one after the other, but I can’t say I enjoyed it much. Very on-the-nose and a lot of the court stuff I found quite dull, while I can understand why others would like it and its handling of the real world context should be applauded.
The Continuity:
I bet you’re sick of this artwork by now! (hey, I’d already made the thumbnails, waste not, want not!) but I will say this is a top class cover, great use of colours and lighting. Really pops.
This is set after The Doctor faked his death at the end of “The Wedding of River Song” but before he meets back up with everyone, or in other words, it’s set between Series 6 and 7. “The Final Cut” is pretty stand-alone, though the idea of using a machine to mess with the bad parts of your brain leading to disaster is a similar plot to Third Doctor TV story “The Mind of Evil” as well as the Ninth Doctor comic “Sin Eaters”.
“The Tourist Trap” is set in the same time period as Eleventh Doctor TV story “The Beast Below”, with large colony ships from Earth travelling the stars. I’m sure as hell not going to list all rogue AI stories in the show otherwise I’d be here forever… “A Delusion of Witches” was interesting because I could’ve sworn The Doctor had visited the Witch Trials at some point either on TV or audio, but apparently not! There is a First Doctor novel, “The Witch Hunters”, but I haven’t read that, so… yeah.
Overall Thoughts:
“The First Question” is a trio of stories that establish this new TARDIS duo really well, having an older and more mature companion alongside one of the younger (looking, I guess) and less mature Doctors works perfectly and is played perfectly. While I didn’t enjoy the third story as much, I’m looking forward to more regardless!
“The Final Cut” and “The Tourist Trap”:
“A Delusion of Witches”:
“The Final Cut” ends with the revelation that a creature had been feeding off the stolen memories and has implanted itself within Eleanor’s head. Just when all hope seems lost The Doctor manages to extract the creature from her head and “record it” onto a VHS tape. Handy!
In “The Tourist Trap” The Doctor just convinces Ray to shut itself down due to some logic traps, so not much to talk there in terms of spoilers, and in “A Delusion of Witches” Mary… is sadly executed despite The Doctor and Eleanor’s best efforts. They do get revenge on the time travelling racist judge though, so that’s something! As a post-credits thing we find out that the Shadow Proclamation now know The Doctor faked his death, leading to the next boxset…