T H E   C D   R E V I E W 

Release Date: May 2004

Reviewer: Alan Read

Short Summary  (no detailed spoilers)

The Doctor and Evelyn visit the planet Vilag where a royal marriage is due to unite two warring nations.  But the bride-to-be princess is having an affair with a secret lover which threatens to jeopardise the alliance, if Plenipotentiary Suskind's sinister plotting doesn't de-rail it first.  The Doctor and Evelyn manage to become trusted confidants of the princess but fall foul of political plotting as the alliance begins to crumble.  And things soon get even worse when aliens start an attack from space.

Longer Summary (with Spoilers)

This returns the nations to a state of war and the Doctor is imprisoned and Evelyn sentenced to deportation.  The Princess helps the Doctor to escape prison but then an alien invasion begins.  As a time-traveller the Doctor had been aware of this imminent attack by the Killorans but had thought he and Evelyn would have departed long before it started.  The Killorans attack both nations from the air in their spacecraft.  This helps Suskind see the error of his ways and he and the Galen leader agree to resume their Alliance to jointly fight off the alien invaders.  This is successful although in the ensuing battle the palace is destroyed and Marcus Reid is killed.  When all seems over a vengeful henchman of Suskind's goes crazy and indiscriminately fires into the room in an effort to kill the Doctor for earlier indignities he was caused during the Doctor's escape from prison.  The princess is killed.  This mortifies the Doctor who had grown very fond of her - he blames himself for the deaths and rushes back to the TARDIS with the intention of going back in time to when they first arrived so he can avoid giving the advice to Reid that caused him to return to the princess.  Evelyn goes with him and secretly adjusts the controls so that they arrive five years earlier.  There they see the young couple out walking and very much in love and Evelyn convinces the Doctor that this shows that the two would have wanted to be together no matter what happened and he had done the right thing in helping them back together however briefly it turned out to be.  

Comments
This is the 57th Audio Adventure according to the production notes in the CD inlay booklet - but this reviewers first.  Hence I cannot say if this is a good, bad or indifferent contribution to the series compared to others.  So taking it on its own merits:-  Colin Baker slips into his role as the Sixth Doctor effortlessly, reminding us how good he could have been on TV if he'd been given more of a chance (and perhaps a less garish costume).  His companion, Evelyn, has already been established in several other audio adventures with Colin Baker.  The start of the story has continuity tie-ins dealing with the consequences of whatever happened in the previous story.  Evelyn breaks the typical companion "mould" in that she is somewhat older - nearing retirement age and also with a heart condition that she is keeping secret from the Doctor.   The story has a relatively small cast and all have distinctive enough voices that it is easy to quickly tell who is speaking.  The story is adequate although I wouldn't say it was especially memorable - it follows a typical Doctor Who story pattern (as seen on TV)with him arriving as a stranger but almost immediately being accepted as an authority figure that everyone trusts - in fact even quicker than normal with no "we think you're a spy/saboteur/killer" bit first.  It doesn't really explore or advance the Doctor Who mythos in any way - just a treading water kind of story.  The alien invaders utilised are fairly arbitrary and could have been almost anybody as they do not have a narrative part to play other than as faceless attackers from spaceships - although the production notes do say that they have been featured before in other Audio Adventures this seems to be of no real consequence.  The story is structured like a 4-part TV story with 25-minute episodes - this didn't seem particularly necessary in the audio format but perhaps it is done to give the production an authentic feel - it also provides a convenient break point should you not want to listen to the whole thing in one go.