A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 0.5. The Beginning Part Two (The Companion Chronicles, Big Finish Audio, 2013)

It's an audio drama--it's not like I can come up with different
screen grabs....

As much as I really like Mark Platt, I’ll be the first to admit he’s a strange guy.  And if ‘Ghost Light’ (my favorite classic Who Story of all time) isn’t proof enough, just look at the resolution to this, which is supposedly literally the Doctor and Susan’s first adventure after stealing that legendery Type 40 Tardis.

Susan wakes up in what amounts to a high tech hospital bed after the last part’s somewhat confusing cliffhanger.  It seems that their actions in last episode flung everyone--them, Stoyn, the aliens--millions of years into the future.  Not surprisingly, the experiments the aliens were conducting were unsupervised and, it is implied, led to the creation of humanity, who is just now colonizing the moon.  The Doctor is delighted to learn that there’s a vital, thriving civilization on our little mudball.  The aliens, however, are horrified that this experiment has gone on unsupervised and is now bereft of the ‘order’ they were planning on imposing, so they’re going to purge the entire planet.  And Stoyn?  He’s helping them, in exchange for getting the Tardis, he’s told the alien it’s all the Doctor’s fault and he hopes to bring Susan with him.

On one hand, this answers an unanswered question--namely, ‘Why is the Doctor so protective of Earth?’ 

On the other hand, I don’t think anyone was really asking it, especially after some of the moments in the series’ fifty year plus history.  For me, this question was answered by Tom Baker’s amazing speech in ‘An Ark In Space’ about humanity.  For others, I’m sure it was the strong implication during the Russell T. Davies tenure of NuWho that the Time Lords and Humans are genetically related.  I’m not sure what this story does to replace those moments, and I have to wonder if it’s really necessary; maybe it should have been another ‘Unbound’ story (the range which produces the equivalent of ‘What If?’ stories) instead making it a special edition of the Companion Chronicles that implies that it’s canon.

And maybe there’s something in the next story that justifies it being quasi-official.  I admit, I own the first and the third story of this trilogy (featuring Lalla Ward and Juliet Landau subbing for the deceased Mary Tamm as two incarnations of Romana), but have yet to purchase the second part, a Second Doctor tale featuring Frazier Hines and Wendy Padbury.  But taking it as a story on its own, my overall reaction is ‘Okay, and....?’

This is not Carol Ann Ford’s fault, because she continues to perform the story well, and I don’t think it’s Platt’s fault...entirely.  I suspect that this was one of those special events commemorate the show’s fiftieth anniversary, where a little more content was dictated to the writers than would otherwise be*.  So it’s listenable, it’s okay, but it feels like an incomplete object.

And we’re not done with the fiftieth anniversary, folks....because Big Finish put out another prequel during that time.  And I’ll get to that ditty shortly.

*--which is why I’m awfully suspicious of this ‘Time Lord Victorious’ multi-platform thingie that the BBC is masterminding for the near future, and which Big Finish is doing three linked Eighth Doctor audios and some Master-based Short Trips (Short Trips are a series of short stories released in audio form)