The Doctor is on a quest and needs some help…

I’m really enjoying getting to know these sets and just how much work is being put into getting the atmosphere right. This set explores that idea even further, with lead Jacob Dudman’s swansong taking on a full season arc style plot. It’s evocative of the countless big narrative swings the 11th Doctor era took and it hits, if anything, a bit more consistently.

‘The Inheritance’ by box set producer Alfie Shaw sets us off at a dead run with the Doctor crashing Valarie and Patricia Lockwood’s low-key night in with a bomb and a request for help. It’s a great idea, hitting the ground running and gives Dudman a chance to yet again nail this Doctor’s absent charm.

It’s also a really smart play by Shaw who sets out the stall for the story and the set at the same time. This is a cheerfully dysfunctional corporate future which starts as a base under siege story and becomes something much larger and angrier. Nothing you think is happening is quite what you think and Lara Lemon as corporate mogul Arabella Hendricks does great work shifting from plausible to ruthless to more ruthless. The fact she calls the Doctor, has UNIT’s files and knows where Clara is neatly sets this story inside the show’s timeline and also makes it clear she is not a normal adversary. Her sparring matches with Dudman are great and this Doctor has rarely sounded older, angrier or more determined than he is here.

The foundation of the story though is Safiyya Ingar. Valarie Lockwood is a quintessential Doctor Who companion; brave, brilliant, funny and utterly without tolerance for evil. She and Dudman spark off each other brilliantly and Valarie becomes a lens through which the true nature of the world is explored. Her deep love for her mum Patricia, Mandi Symonds on top form, is the ground Valarie stands on and the evil of the story is made real by how badly it damages that ground. The core concept is also great: a virus spread through wealth that Shaw’s witty, furious script uses to skewer the tech company sociopathic landscape we’re all trapped on. Plus there’s a ton of running and explosions and a great third act reveal.

Shaw’s story sets the foundation and the strongest elements of the two stories that follow build on that. ‘The House of Masks’ by Georgia Cook is a welcome return to Venice for the 11th Doctor and a first trip story for Valarie that’s refreshingly breezy. The core of the show, like all great stories, is simple and Valarie’s joy at realizing where she is and what she’s suddenly able to do is one of the purest elements of the set. Ingar is fantastic throughout and Cook’s story very deliberately sets her and the Doctor on an equal footing. At a curiously mannered masquerade in Venice, the pair are approached by a figure who tells them a killer is stalking the party. The ‘killer’ is the person talking to the other one of the two leads and Cook has a ton of fun with how quick witted and snappy the repartee between Dudman and Ingar is. This Doctor is always at his best when he’s got someone to play with and Valarie matches him step for step.

But the core motif is what makes this story sing. Lady Sicura, played with precise menace and barely concealed desperation by Genevieve Gaunt is both villainous and deeply sympathetic. Tomasi, played by Fode Simbo, is driven, ruthless and blinkered. Their common past is cleverly executed and it all plugs directly into the unacknowledged trauma so many Who companions are defined by. Ingar’s Valarie wears her heart on her cybernetically augmented sleeve and the catharsis she finds here is hard fought and untidy, as it should be. As it’s expressed, you see the fundamental goodness in every character here and the exhausted kindness at the heart of this incarnation of the Doctor. It’s not easy, or simple. But it’s a good start for everyone and a great story.

That exploration of the show’s fundamentals is explored even further in ‘The End’ by Rochana Patel. Patel’s script swings for the fences with a big gimmick and some brave choices. The Doctor or Valarie are dying depending on what time loop you’re in and as they work the problem the script shifts with graceful footwork and some great sound design between them.

This has such quickfire energy to it, it’s like the 11th Doctor personified in audio form. Dudman is great throughout the set and especially fantastic here and the Time Lord’s amiable, occasionally concussed stream of consciousness and abject seething rage both get an airing in Patel’s often very funny, always pacy script. Jo Castleton’s Delphine and Paul Panting’s Vega are a great supporting cast too. Their shared grounded pragmatism sells the idea of them being the crew of this agricultural ship without any need for exposition. The script does stumble, once, on a really clunky fat gag but it goes by so fast and the rest of the script is so good it’s a bump, not a pothole.

Especially as the twin plots again dive down into the show’s hearts. This is the 11th Doctor at his besieged best and Valarie learning how she fits into his world. Valarie’s physically strong, tough, smart and kind and all of these factors become vital as Patel lays the puzzle pieces out in front of us leading to one of the strongest companion beats in ages. Valarie’s rage, her concern, her stress, her heart and her cybernetics all matter and all payoff with Ingar’s best performance so far.

This is a very strong set. The scripts and performances are all rock solid and director Nicholas Briggs and sound designer Lee Adams give these three unique stories a unified tone and feel. If you’re a process fan, and I am, the interviews on this set are especially good and there’s lot of crunchy technical detail that’s also useful and interesting from Adams and cover designer Caroline Tankersley in particular.

Verdict: Complex, confident, fast and fun this is a great start to Ingar’s time in the TARDIS and Dudman’s final run with 11. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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