Earth Aid review [Andrew Cartmel]

For some reason, Ace is the captain of a spaceship called the Vancouver, which coincidentally gets targeted by Metatraxi ships. What are the chances?

Where and When: At some point between Animal and The Fearmonger.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You let others die for you."
• "You wouldn't by any chance be telling a huge fib."
• The Doctor and Raine get some proper time alone together since... probably the first half of Crime of the Century. It's just traditional Doctor-and-companion exploration but it takes on a whole new dynamic with Raine being inexperienced. She emerges from a safe just as the Doctor did when they first met, which is a nice reversal.
• Ingrid Oliver (who would later be cast as Osgood) isn't given the most engaging of roles but she does a great job with what she's got.
• It isn't the most interesting of plots and takes a while to kick in, but at least this story has one, which its predecessors were lacking in. 

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Belay that!"
• "You will know the wrath of the Metatraxi!"
• "Muuuum."
• "Yeah, we're like the three musketeers."
• The Metatraxi are an immensely impotent threat, hanging upside down and shouting empty threats. They supposedly led Raine on a wild goose chase in order to trap her in a safe and send her onto the Vancouver, but we've seen nothing to show that they can be so crafty and patient. It's safe to say that they've been an utter failure since their first appearance in Crime of the Century, not working as comic relief nor as villains. One of the most warlike races the Doctor has ever come across? Please.
• New companion Raine is wasted once again. What was the point in introducing her if Ace is going to serve the role of companion and Raine is going to do next to nothing? It isn't even as though Ace is getting great material to half-justify it. She pretends to be the captain of a spaceship (for some reason) and does a terrible job of acting the part.
• Raine's method of finding the password for the grain silo was, frankly, ridiculous. It's up there with Tosh's random leap in logic that an ISBN would open the Torchwood Hub in They Keep Killing Suzie.
• The Vancouver is saved thanks to the Metatraxi's sexism. It wasn't funny or clever when this sort of thing happened in Crime of the Century and it is even less so here, happening completely out of the blue.
• The character of Yanikov exists for one sole purpose - to point out Ace's mistakes, yet nothing comes of this until she is finally relieved of her command in part 4.

I'll Explain Later:

• Why were the Doctor and Ace on the Vancouver in the first place? Unless I missed a fleeting explanation, none was ever given.

This Reminds Me...:

• Ace is angry at how she keeps being called small.
• The Great Mother created the Metatraxi to kill her previous generation of children, much like the Giants and the Titans in Greek mythology.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Whilst it's the best of season 27, it's not good by any means and wins by the slimmest of margins. The humour remains flat, the Metatraxi remain pathetically ineffective and Raine remains superfluous. It has more direction than the previous releases and Raine gets to play companion for a short time but there's very little else to compliment about this story. This is a poor story to end a very disappointing season. Earth Aid is very bad, and that earns it an E.

The Lost Stories (Series 2)

Animal  |  Earth Aid  |  The Elite

Animal review [Andrew Cartmel]

Raine has her first journey with the Doctor and Ace, arriving at Margrave University in 2001. She and Ace pose as freshers to investigate an ecoterrorist plot with extraterrestrial connections.

When and Where: Margrave University in England, 2001. This is between Crime of the Century and Earth Aid for the TARDIS crew, and four years after Battlefield for Brigadier Bambera.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You will come to know harm."
• Like with Crime of the Century, the first episode is the best, although still not great, featuring some nice interaction between Ace and Raine which has just the right amount of antagonism between the two. Ace learning that she's supposed to be a vegetarian and then having a burger served to her is funny.
• Brigadier Bambera (one of the few decent elements of the otherwise solid season 26, Battlefield) returns, played more convincingly than in her onscreen appearance.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You lied to me." / "You lied to yourself."
• "Here's one he prepared earlier!"
• "Hey, Doctor dude! Check this out!"
• The cliff-hanger is one of Classic Who's staples and Big Finish have done a number of excellent ones. Cartmel's scripts, however, are utterly devoid of any exciting endings. The various plotlines don't tie up very neatly either: we've got Ace and Raine going undercover to investigate an ecoterrorist who turns out to be in contact with the Numlocks; we've got man-eating plants in the university for some reason; and then there's the battle robots that the Doctor came here to investigate in the first place. Very little actually happens in this story and, whilst this could be forgiven if it involved some character work for Raine or something, it's another overly thin plot with nothing happening until part 4.
  
• Ace is still present but has no function that Raine couldn't just have easily assumed, meaning that despite the fact that this is Raine's first journey in the TARDIS she disappears for large chunks of the story. We've seen the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Give us Seventh and Raine.
• Is the sergeant dopey or corrupt? He isn't consistently characterised, seeming to want to execute Ace for one of the cliff-hangers but showing no such cold-bloodedness in the rest of the story. Scobie, too, is boring and, although his mission is noble (at least, his motivation is) he isn't remotely sympathetic.
• Oh, dear. The Metatraxi. Why? They aren't an interesting race and the translator gag isn't funny.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: An improvement on Thin Ice and Crime of the Century, but still a poorly written release. Thinly-plotted, uninteresting and once again sidelining Raine, this story is a jumble of plotlines with no engaging characters or developed themes. Still, it's more competent than its predecessors and Brigadier Bambera's appearance is a welcome one making a rare connection to the later seasons of the classic series. This story is very bad, and that earns it an E.

The Lost Stories (Series 2)

Crime of the Century  |  Animal  |  Earth Aid

Crime of the Century review [Andrew Cartmel]

Cat burglar Raine Creevy sneaks upstairs at a garden party and cracks into a safe containing an object she'd been contracted to obtain. But that's not all that's inside. There's also a short man in a brown jacket and a hat.

When and Where: We're in London and Kafiristan in October 1989. This takes place between Thin Ice and Animal for all involved.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Lock-manipulation is safe-cracking in its purest form. No specialist tools are required, just a notebook, a pen and the stethoscope I got from a nice medical student I once met at a party in Holland Park."
• "The dogs? Now that really is uncivilised."
• New companion Raine is the polar opposite of Ace. She's more mature and sophisticated and from a far different background, making her a breath of fresh air. She speaks in an upper-class accent and has an appreciation for art, and dislikes her father whilst Ace disliked her mother. Big Finish have the Seventh Doctor travelling with Ace all the time, with a handful with Elizabeth Klein or Mel, so this new dynamic is a joy to listen to.
• Raine cracking open a safe to find the Doctor inside was pretty much all that Andrew Cartmel knew would happen in the planned episode that became this audio drama, and it's realised very well. Raine talking about safe-cracking in an almost sensual way is fascinating and finding the Doctor in the safe more so. Timey-wimeyness is a rare thing with the classic Doctors, so the Doctor knowing what Raine was going to do from her diary in the future is cool. It's easily one of the best companion introductions and would have made a great scene had it been filmed.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
  
• "Come back and fight, you sexist Metatraxi!"
• The Doctor and Raine work beautifully as a pair in a way wholly different to him and Ace. Unfortunately, Ace is still here holding him back from diving into a fresh relationship with a new companion and the beginning of a new era in the Seventh Doctor's life. Ace is a great companion and easily amongst the best of the classic series, if not the series as a whole, but the Seventh-and-Ace Era has become tired with very little new things to be said about them. Ace should have left in Thin Ice and her presence in this story is unwanted. It's mentioned early on that Raine has some skill at fencing, yet for some reason it's Ace who uses the artefact to fight the Metatraxi at the end. Ace is a thunder-stealer.
• The plot of this story is ever so slightly better than Thin Ice, but it has very little substance to it, failing to interest or develop in interesting ways.
• The Metatraxi are a dull villain. The translator gag isn't remotely funny and their code (yawn) is reminiscent of the Ice Warriors, who only just appeared in Thin Ice. Otherwise, they're quite similar to the Sontarans.
• If the score is trying to sound like it really could have belonged to a season 27, it does a poor job of it.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The first episode is a promising start, introducing the refreshing character of Raine Creevy in a hugely memorable scene that earns a place amongst the best companion introductions. After this episode, however, the story falters. Ace is a relic of an era that should have ended with Thin Ice and the Metatraxi (who take a long time to make themselves known) are unoriginal and uninteresting. Cartmel's script suffers from the same trap-falls as the previous story: there's not that much plot and a change in setting doesn't equal plot development. Aside from Raine's great introduction, Crime of the Century is very bad, and that earns it an E.

The Lost Stories (Series 2)

Thin Ice  |  Crime of the Century  |  Animal

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Thin Ice review [Marc Platt]

Martian relics have found their way into the hands of Russian scientists in 1967, and so have the Doctor and Ace. Caught up in the planning of a robbery with Londoner Markus Creevy and Russian Raina Kerenskaya, the two come face-to-face with the Ice Warriors.

When and Where: Moscow, November 1967. For the Doctor and Ace, this is between Survival and Crime of the Century, which is just under twenty-two years later for the Creevys. For the Ice Warriors, this is between Empress of Mars and Cold War.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You always used to call me 'professor'." / "Kids' stuff. Things change." / "I liked it."
• "Come on, professor. We've still got work to do."
• Choosing to introduce a companion's parents and her own birth the story before her first real appearance is a wonderful idea that makes this one of the best companion introductions, certainly of Classic Who. Markus is a cheeky and likeable man who we'll be seeing again and who was meant to be a recurring character in the classic show much as the Brigadier was. Raina too is well-performed by Beth Chalmers and proves to be one of the more interesting characters, having a believable and sweet secret romance with Markus. Doctor Who doesn't have a great track record of accents (Ray's Welsh accent in Delta and the Bannermen, Peri's American) but Ricky Groves and Beth Chalmers do an excellent job, as do all the Russians.
• Ace sympathises with Lord Hhessh, having been taken from her planet against her will when she had to live on Svartos. They have a nice relationship, which is the sort of thing not really seen between Ace and any aliens on the show (with the exception of Kara). It helps that Hhessh is played by Nicholas Briggs with a voice far superior than was used in Red Dawn for Lord Zzaal.
  
• The Doctor is his manipulative self, secretly training Ace to become a Time Lady and keeping the fact that his people are testing her from her.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Groovy, baby."
• Had this story been produced for the television, it was to be Ace's departure. Big Finish chooses, rather than to have Thin Ice take place post-Hex, to have it take place shortly after Survival, meaning that Ace remains with the Doctor rather than going to Gallifrey. This is disappointing. Ace has appeared in around forty audio dramas and, just as the Sixth Doctor was refreshed by travelling with Evelyn and Flip, it would have been nice to finally see Ace leave and to have the Doctor travel alone with Raine. Ace staying gets in the way of what could be an engaging new relationship between the two and will relegate Raine to a tag-along rather than the companion that she would have and should have been. This could have been the start of a brand new era for the Seventh Doctor, but it wasn't so.
• A powerful relic searched for and fought over by a number of factions and starring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and one of the big Doctor Who monsters. This could be used to describe Remembrance of the Daleks, Silver Nemesis and now Thin Ice. The heist element adds some refreshment, but it can't disguise that it's the second story to follow on the successful formula of Remembrance without much success.
• Each of the cliff-hangers are lacklustre. Hhessh saying that Ace needs to die in an unthreatening way that could only be resolved with ridiculous ease (which it is), the Doctor saying that a tractor beam is pulling them in... They fail to make any sort of impression or cause any degree of excitement or anticipation. The Time Lord telling Ace that she was being tested to join the Academy would have been a great cliff-hanger if we didn't already know that this was the case.
  
• Ace getting angry at the Doctor because she feels she can't trust him. We've already seen this, in Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric. Unfortunately, this means that Ace's statement that she will never trust the Doctor again just feels like something we've heard before and adds nothing new to their relationship.
• There's far too much percussion in this story. Not only is it unlike the classic series' soundtrack, but it can get rather irritating at times. The music at times is reminiscent of that of Attack of the Cybermen.

I'll Explain Later:

• If the Doctor can communicate with the Time Lords telepathically as he does in this story, why hasn't it been done before?

This Reminds Me...:

• "This is a kindness," Hhessh says. This is the catchphrase of the Handbots seen in The Girl Who Waited.
• "Who are you calling small?" Ace says, as she did to a Dalek in Remembrance of the Daleks before beating it up with her enhanced baseball bat.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Thin Ice would have been the first episode of season 27 and would have made for a sedate opener notable only for Ace's quiet departure. The audio drama doesn't have that, meaning it's all-round average and largely unmemorable. The bottom line is that, despite some great performances for Markus and Raina, there isn't enough plot for four parts (perhaps making it even more authentic as a Classic Who story than it intended). It goes through the motions and from plot point to plot point, but it's slow and a boring listen. It's atrocious, and that earns it an F.

The Lost Stories (Series 2)

The Destroyers  |  Thin Ice  |  Crime of the Century

Click here for more audio dramas featuring the Seventh Doctor