A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 42.2.1 The Great White Hurricane Episode One (The First Doctor Adventures Volume One, Big Finish, 2017)

I might as well state this up front--of all the Big Finish staff writers, Guy Adams is my favorite.  I find his tendency for unconventional story structures engaging, and at turns both scary and fun.  He has spent a lot of his time writing material for the older Doctors, particularly the first four.*

This particular Adams episode is from the first in a series with a curious pedigree.  You see, they're full audio featuring the four actors who starred in the telefilm Adventures In Space and Time.  Previously, the full audio 'early adventures' handled the lack of Hartnell and Hill due to death with a mixture of narration and having one of the companions do an approximation of Hartnell.  The effect of having actors playing the actors playing the first Tardis crew can be...disconcerting at time.  While David Bradley and Claudia Grant do fairly good First Doctor and Susan,  Jamie Glover and Jemma Powell can get sketchy at times as Ian and Barbara. 

Judging from this first episode, this serial is a pure historical set in the New York City of Herbert Ashbury's landmark book Gangs of New York.  I read this text some time ago, and it really left an impression on me--so much so that somewhere, lost in the tousled tides of times, is a short story fragment about the ghosts of said gangs haunting the modern day streets of New York's financial district.  As such, I may be a little predisposed to liking this story...so take my comments with a pinch of salt.

Not much happens--the crew lands in Five Points, which was the notorious slums of 1888 Manhattan, and Ian promptly gets creased by a bullet from one of the warring gangs.  To escape the police, one of the gang members, Patrick (Jackson Milner), takes Susan hostage.  This, understandably agitates the Doctor, who ends up in the local jail when he tries to go off to retrieve her himself.  Barbara accompanies Ian to the hospital and learns that this is the night of the Great Blizzard, an icestorm that crippled the northeast that year, and is still considered one of the most severe in history.

I enjoyed this a lot.  By setting it in this specific time, Adams gives us some New York accents that might sound cliched--but may be historically accurate.  A great deal of time is spent establishing a rapport between the Doctor and his cellmate, Patrick's older brother David (Cory English), and the interplay between these two characters are a joy.  I do worry that this might descend into poverty porn, especially when we get the scenes between Barbara and the immigrant Rosalita (Carolina Valdes)...but I think a lot of that will depend on whether the Great Blizzard of 1888 will end up being just a backdrop, a complication, or a major element in how this play turns out.  But right now I am not resistant to what Adams is laying down right now, and I look forward to hear where this is going.

Although I still have a lot of problems accepting Glover as Ian.  But I'm open for that to change as well....

*--He also writes some cracking good Torchwood stories focusing on Eve Myles' Gwen Cooper and is the 'showrunner' for Big Finish's adaptation of Verity Lambert's follow-up to Who, Adam Adamant.