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Started well, but after time, the Doctor's lack of action and Mel's treatment was just not real.
Mel's mental and physical torture reached a point that the story just drifted off into a feeble squibb.
The final straw was a pill to cure all the suffering, which pushed the whole thing over a cliff.
Like many recent Big Finish productions, could have been good but just lost itself.
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: |   5 |
Poor Mel. Having just wasted 3 months of her life working for Davros, here she gets to waste 6 months in a laudanum-induced stupor at the hands of a mad ancestor. The story is another in the time-conundrum tradition. Mel, while visiting her uncle, takes interest in some of her family history, most notably the mysterious 2nd wife of one of her ancestors. A maguffin and a TARDIS later and she finds herself to be the very woman she was reading about. While Alison Lawson has taken some trouble to supply various clues as to the outcome - a mysterious chest buried on the estate grounds, a piece of technology that should not be inside the chest, etc., the trouble is that she constantly seeks the easy way out of the conundrum. For instance, the chest gets buried merely because it needs to be buried for the future to remain intact. This is not very clever. It would have been much more interesting to contrive events so that the chest gets buried inevitably as part of the natural process of events in 1782. In the end, a potentially good story is derailed by lazy writing.
| By: | Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA |
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| Date: | Saturday 18 November 2006 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
I agree with the other reviews of this story, but in defense of it, I must say that the time passed swiftly as I listened and I enjoyed the story in spite of its weaknesses. This production was well-acted, and the premise is rather interesting (since it's already been revealed in the reviews): When the Doctor's companion is harshly whisked away into the past by an artifact composed of an unstable new element, she finds herself unwittingly and undesirably becoming part of past history, and her rescue would appear to require the creation of a paradox.
Of course, the trouble is that it's all resolved a bit too easily.
As to the previous reviewer's objections to the way the burial of the chest was lazily written into the story, I'd agree that the writer could've done better with that. But it was already clear that the Doctor could not have brought the "device" back to 2003 because of its effects on the TARDIS, so they really *had* to leave it there and bury it. This was not, however, clearly stated in the script.
I dunno - I'd really have to say that this was kind of a neat time travel story, the charaterization was good and the script worked well. Maybe not a solid 7, but worth more than a 6.
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 | up with Arrangements for war... |
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| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 20 December 2009 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
Some stories race by and leave you wondering what the henry is going on. Some stories bore you to tears with typical ideas and typical presentation. We seem to finally get a great break from the norm with this lovely and charming tale from Alison. The ideas are just simple and put together to form such a delightful little tale. This has more of a feel of a Hetty Wainthropp investigates...although that isnt hardly surprising, what with Derek Benfield starring as a fine character. I love the fact that Bonnie is getting to do Mel far better than she ever did on screen. Her acting is beefy and solid in all areas. Colin Baker doesnt need any help as usual in being great either, nice pace and great to not be overburdened with twists and turns at every post. This is just a nice little tale of love and loss and is up their with Arrangements for War in my book.
