The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Volume Two

 

"We are the music makers! And we are the dreamers of dreams!!"

The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Volume Two

I love that I get releases like this from time to time - I think the last one was GAU 2, where I get to completely and totally lose all credibility as a reviewer and gush mindlessly about what I think is one of the best batches of stories under the sun. The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Volume Two is everything and more that I hoped Volume One would have been - it's just utterly, utterly, gorgeous, to the extent that there's unironically little to say about it. This is one of the best things you can get. Should you get it? Yes. Immediately. That's it, really.

No. Seriously. Go on. Stop reading now, go out and Grab the damn thing. Hand over your 30 bucks. I'm serious. This is one of the most fervent recommendations I could ever give. Do it now. Go in blind. Experience goddamn heaven. 

There isn't much to go on about. The set does do a fair few things that other Companion Chronicles sets don't do, and a few of these tricks would possibly be infuriating if the range did them all the time. For instance, the Volume has a loose arc connecting all four stories. I complained about the Steven duology in Volume One being too continuity based, but this is delightfully inserted, it's clever and it harkens back to other successful usages of this format, like Bad Wolf. It's very unobtrusive, and I like that the entire piece does indeed feel like a complete package. It's one of those releases that plays with it's format. It's also one of the boldest releases out there, and happens to have the audacity to try and insert the fricking Time War into the First Doctor's era. This could have been the worst possible thing, but the way it's implemented is wonderfully subtle and not, well, terrible. The Time War is a big stupid background event that can really envelop stories if you let it, and a few really tiny references to the idea that the entire timeline of The Doctor is in trouble is sort of neat. It's also imminently ignorable for those that don't care for such material. The First Doctor Companion Chronicles Two just somehow does everything right. It shouldn't be possible, but once in a blue moon you get something that you weren't necessarily expecting, but was exactly what you needed.

Fields of Terror by John Pritchard

Fields of Terror is the opening of the set, and I think it's one of those stories that benefits from hearing as little about it as possible. Which to be fair, is indeed, most of this set, but for the other stories you can at least get away by saying the central concept and what the story is trying to evoke. Fields of Terror on the other hand is just a gorgeous little gremlin that I can say plays with The First Doctor and The Reign of Terror, a concept already approached on the television show. I don't think though, that it was done with this level of aplomb. This is just the PERFECT two-part structure for a story in particular. A lot of Companion Chronicles can feel like they're forcing longer stories into the two hour structure, or NuWho style stories with classic who characters and a cliffhanger in the middle, or that they have their own structure that comes directly as a result of being narrated Doctor Who. No, Fields of Terror is paced correctly and really well. It's very definitely what you want out of a Hartnell story, and Maureen O'Brien is at the top of her game. Vicki is one of the characters from the First Doctor's era that's aged the best and doesn't need as much fleshing out in expanded media as Dodo, Steven or Polly, because she was excellent to begin with, but she's really only gotten better with time. Maureen O'Brien just creates this vivid gorgeous kooky atmosphere, and her narration was perfectly selected for this installment. It's never shit-your-pants scary, but it's always really very nicely tense. The closer you get to the ending, the better this one gets, it just knocks it out of the park. This is bloody magnificent drama with a very top tier conclusion. 10/10

Across The Darkened City by David Bartlett

Across The Darkened City is a story worth applauding for having a goddamn focus point. Too few stories do. The story begins In Medias Res of another journey, with Steven having been captured by the Daleks, and doesn't ever waste your time. Across The Darkened City is one of those rare stories that knows you've done billions of Dalek stories before, and now it's going to play a bit with your preconceptions. It's a twisted little gremlin of a story, and I absolutely love it. It's all about Steven and a Dalek crossing a dangerous city, like one of those odd-couple films where the two people who can't stand each other get handcuffed together. It's premise is excellent, this being one of the only possible ways that a Dalek and Steven could be forced to be in the same boat, and Genetic Variant Two Two One is a rare Dalek that's a very interesting character. Peter Purves and Nicholas Briggs deliver some truly astounding performances. They both portray the begrudging nature of the scenario very well, and I was never quite sure where the story was going. You have to work really hard to make me love a Dalek story, and this more than succeeds: 10/10

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Una McCormack

The Bonfire of the Vanities is one that it's probably going to seem like I'm damning with faint praise, but if this was in any other boxset other than this one, it'd probably be the standout. It's a story about Guy Fawkes Night in the 1950s, and the Bonfire Boys, a street gang that happened to cause a lot of problems back then. And also aliens. It does a lot with it's very small cast of just Anneke Wills and Elliot Chapman, with the latter used the perfect amount, sparingly but never absent. Polly is a very astute and likable narrator, and the story here is more than engaging. It's got excellent imagery, and the alien/human threats are good. However, the problem is that it's just stuck between too much good stuff. Bonfire is a very good script, but put any story next to the other three in this set and the cracks will shine through. Una McCormack is accomplished enough to still make this an excellent hour, and the imagery of nightmarish Guy Fawkes masks floating up and attacking people is wild enough for the story to certainly be very memorable - and such a ridiculous idea seems genuinely harrowing when put behind her expert words. This is as good as this particular story could possibly be, it's just very much a normal Doctor Who story while the rest of this set relishes in the unfamiliar: 8/10

The Plague of Dreams by Guy Adams 

This story feels targeted. To me. Personally. Who loves weird experimental shit. And Theater. And cheeky meta humor that's weird but never goes too far. And tributes to the magic of storytelling in general. This story sort of doubles as a tribute to all the companion chronicles that have come so far and how you can make a story out of two people in a sound booth and also a tribute to the magic of stories in of itself, doing some weird Neil Gaiman Sandman-like stuff about the nature of storytelling and dreams. There isn't a single story beat in this that I don't adore. It's very, very, very good, 100% my favorite in the set, and one of my favorite stories I've even done out there - it's just completely unlike anything that I was expecting from a Doctor Who story in general. Like the best productions, it's got the right combination of sheer audacity and commitment to what it's doing. It's also a story that could have so easily veered into camp silliness but thankfully manages otherwise. It's surreal and clever and uses it's minimalism to it's best possible conclusion - the fact that only two characters can be present is weaponized, much like Scherzo! Any time I'm comparing a story favorably to something as momentous as Scherzo, you know you've struck gold. This is a story about stories. And as a writer, actor, and a lover of all that is strange, I will always be especially close to those. Bloody perfection: 10/10