A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 13.1. E is For... Part One (The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor Volume Three, Big Finish, 2019)

This is a much more recent edition of the Companion Chronicles, at a point where Big Finish has begun to phase out individual stories for ‘box sets’ that contain three to four separate stories, sometimes linked by a theme or overarcing subplot.  And listening to the new Companion Chronicles as opposed to the earlier examples, I can make a couple of statements.  For one, they’ve managed to evolve the ‘dramatized reading’ format to a point where they feel more like full audios; like The Beginning and Hunters of Earth, this features a main reader and, in this case, two other actors who provide dialogue for specific characters, but the integration between the narration and the dialogue is a lot smoother to the point where the disconnect between the two is gone.  For another, it doubles down on the ‘Companion’ part of the line’s title; during this two part story, Susan is front and center, and the other members of the Tardis crew at this time don’t appear at all.

This particular story, which is performed by Carol Ann Ford, Mark Edel-Hunt and Lisa Bowerman (who is something of an icon to Whovians for being the voice and physical model for Bernice Summerfield, a fan favorite companion from the Virgin ‘New Adventure’ novels that carried over into Big Finish and generated a line of her own adventures that are being produced to this day), takes place in the capital city of the planet Malkus*.  Roughly thirty years ago, Malkus began experiencing an explosion of births where the children display fantastic powers.  When Susan’s telepathy flares, she is mistaken for one of ‘The Gifted,’ separated from the others, and goes to a special facility.  There she meets ‘Weapon E’ (Edel-Hunt),a.k.a. Virgil Winters.  Virgil has uncontrolled power to absorb and redirect energy, a power so great he has to wear a containment suit.  Susan and Virgil escape the facility, to the chagrin of Colonel Maria Rage (Bowerman).  Virgil leads Susan to a place where the computer might be able to help them locate the Doctor and the others.  But for them to reach that place, Virgil has to release his power on a pursuing helicopter....

You may find a lot of similarities with a certain comic book franchise, and it’s very intentional; ‘E is for...’ consciously references the X-Men, which like Doctor Who began in 1963. What’s weird, though, is that this story seems to be more beholden to the X-Men of the 70‘s and 80‘s (in particular the stories ‘Days of Future Past’ and ‘God Loves Man Kills’) than the 60‘s....a strange choice for a line that’s very concerned with keeping the period flavor consistent with the time frame of the series it emulates.  It doesn’t hurt the story, being structured as a two-handed dialogue between Susan and Virgil, but it still rang funny with me.

That aside, I enjoyed this episode a lot better than the previous Companion Chronicles I listened to.  I really appreciated how writer Julian Richards worked the narration into the story in such a way that it comes off as diagetic--so that stop-and-start nature of earlier Chronicles is smoothed over.  I’m curious to see if this item sticks the landing with the second part.

*--the reason I place this story as coming after ‘Edge of Destruction’ is Susan’s reference to the Doctor wanting to explore the city despite the troubles that caused last time, which could be interpreted (generously) as a reference to the Dalek city in ‘The Daleks.’