| CATCH-1782 by Alison Lawson |
| Story 68 Synopsis: Mel receives an invite from her uncle, Professor John Hallam, to attend a function at the National Foundation for Scientific Research. The big event, burying a time capsule, uncovers a mysterious old chest. Inside, the Doctor and Hallam find his experimental time capsule, and soon after Mel disappears. She has been transported back to December 1781, and suffers amnesia. Still in Hallam Hall, she is taken care of by the owner, Henry, still missing his wife. The Doctor and John trace after Mel in the TARDIS, but arrive 6 months later. Henry refuses to allow them to take Mel (or Eleanor, as he believes she is called) away, so they have to spirit her away behind his back. She has been drugged for most of the time, but recovers slowly. After recovering their steps to ensure no further paradox, and realising Eleanor doesn't have a proper existence in 1782 after all, they return to the present day. |
| Review:- Mel should know better than to disclaim ghost stories so vehemently, really... her lofty disdain takes a knock after she becomes a part of her own family history, when her uncle's experiment proves to have an unforeseen side-effect. One great plus-point with this story is the small stakes. There are no aliens, no threats to the peace and order of the universe, just a simple cuckoo perched on a family tree. Mel's fate and the Doctor's inability to rescue her quicker suggests she is doomed to live out someone else's life until an untimely death two centuries back in time. The resolution proves rather simple, and the great failing of the story is that there's nothing else to it. Mel goes back in time, spends 6 months trapped and drugged into oblivion, then the Doctor rescues her - and that's it, through four episodes of admittedly engagingly-acted pathos (Bonnie Langford seems to take a while to settle into being Mel, too, but that's only a brief issue). Even worse, this whole "companion's paradoxical past" was much the same plot of the earlier The Marian Conspiracy, which also used this Doctor. Whilst this focuses more closely on the emotional effect of Mel's predicament, rather than tragicomic narrative with big historical names, the effect is still to put the listener in mind of the fact that the earlier story was rather more interesting. The punning title that refers to Mel's doom as Eleanor turns out to be just a red herring, and it turns out that Henry was the person suffering emotional upheaval - although in their glee to return to 2003, neither the Doctor, Mel nor John consider that they have influenced history, presumably to compound the misery of a widow. Hardly the engaging feel-good ending that the story claims for itself, really. Overall, though a bit of a waste of time, it's still entertaining to hear and engaging to follow, and that must count for something. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |