Doctor Who
(Main Range) #230
Time in
Office episodes 3 & 4
written by
Eddie Robson
History
Repeating
And we start
off with yet more agency and fun for Tegan. The basic set-up of this
episode is that the Doctor is making a speech at Pyrdon Academy about
some reforms he wants to make and a bored Tegan accepts an offer of a
drink from another Time Lord, one who intends to steal a TARDIS in
imitation of the Doctor and take (kidnap) her as his companion. As
with the last episode it puts Tegan in a position of knowledge for a
change, the experienced traveler to the naive young Time Lord who
doesn't know what he's getting in to.
The Doctor,
meanwhile, contends with the lightest plot of the set so far as he's
confronted by a rather incompetent student revolutionary who, it
turns out, has a list of grievances the Doctor was going to tackle in
his speech anyway.
Its the
least biting bit of satire Time In Office has
to give, especially after the last episode was all about the sins of
the past and colonialism, but by Doctor Who third episode standards
its far from the depths of filler that have been served up in the
past even from Big Finish.
There is
also a part of me that loves the idea of Tegan going on a date with a
Time Lord and maybe even starting off a casual thing with them. Maybe
I'm hoping too much of this sudden turn towards agency for the
character but I hope that some of what Robson has been writing for
the character gets built on down the line.
Architect
of Destruction
In all
seriousness, Eddie Robson needs to write more Tegan stories, he has
such a fantastic grasp of what makes her a great character. Her
desire to take no crap from anyone, even a race of immortal time
travelers millions of years more advanced than her, is the sort of
trait that should have made her one of the most influential
companions in the classic series. As it is she was written off as
unsympathetic and we didn't get a companion with as much character or
agency until Ace.
On a larger
scale Eddie Robson has a wonderful twist on the conspiracy that
anyone listening to this would have known was going to end the story
even before the end of episode reveal in the previous episode. There
are also some fantastic “visuals” described as the Doctor and
company tour the new Capitol. I particularly liked the idea of
statues whose faces change to represent all the incarnations of the
famous Time Lords they depict.
Davison
continues to enjoy the chance to get up to comedy antics and I hope
Big Finish take this as an indication that they can do more with the
character from here on out than light exasperation. I also hope it
puts to bed forever the fan myth that, to misapply a quote from Jim
Cornette, “funny don't make money”, a myth that has been with the
series ever since fandom hailed the departure of Douglas freakin'
Adams as the best thing to ever
happen to the show.
No,
seriously, that happened and whilst this story was nowhere near a
Douglas Adams in quality it does show that BFP can afford to have a
little more fun with the license.
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