Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: David Tennant, Jane Slavin, Joe Sims, John Banks, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Nicholas Briggs, Barnaby Edwards, Avita Jay, Kevin McNally, Leighton Pugh, Blake Ritson, Nina Toussaint-White.
It is often a surprise that for all the talk of family in Doctor Who, the thought of blood relations meeting the Doctor in different incarnations has never been truly explored.
How, for example, would the fandom react if they were suddenly confronted by the realisation that a new companion was brought on board the Tardis, only for the Doctor to find that out that their grandfather or great-grandmother had once also travelled in time and space with the lonely madman from Gallifrey; not only does it throw up the feeling of continuality, it raises the question of reaction, of what the companion already understands, and perhaps how the Doctor treated the person who came before.
Big Finish, the company behind the Doctor’s audio adventures have no so issue with probing deeper than the television serials perhaps have time or the scripts for, and whilst the clues were always there in plain sight, that the Doctor was aware of the special bond that seemed to exist between himself and Anya Kingdom, it is in the second Dalek Universe serial with David Tennant as the titular mysterious man of time and space, that the audience find themselves immersed in the forgotten, brief time of the Kingdom’s personal history of the Doctor, and with the Daleks.
Across the three continuous tales, Cycle Of Destruction by Roy Gill, The Trojan Dalek by John Dornay, and The Lost by Robert Valentine, the Tenth Doctor, Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven are given the opportunity to focus of family, the reaction of the truth of their own history, and how, in the case of Anya, she sits on the precipice of knowing her aunt and uncle had very different initial objectives in a time of war, and one that harks back to a little used, but vital to the lore of the programme, Mavic Chen.
The truth of family history is one that tears at the delicate fabric of time, the more you know, the larger the likelihood that you will unearth several moments that don’t sit well with your own views, the much loved aunt with a darkness in her youth that leaves you cold, the father who had a family before your own, the great uncle who found time hard to bear inside a jail cell; by searching for a truth you open yourself up to possible shame, certainly to heartbreak.
With superb performances by Nina Toussaint-White as the android Mariah Six, Jane Slavin as Anya Kingdom, and the briefly returning Kevin McNally as Merrick Kingdom, the second serial in the Dalek Universe set starring David Tennant is a reminder that family is not always the ones you choose to be around, but those whose blood runs through your veins; and in the case of the Kingdoms, blood is something that the family could be out for.
Ian D. Hall