Start to Finish: 4.09 - Shadow of the Past

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Simon Guerrier's Shadow of the Past is another Third Doctor adventure narrated by Caroline John as Liz Shaw, featuring Lex Shrapnel (aka the dumb bully one from the training camp in Captain America).

Years after leaving UNIT, Liz Shaw returns to one of their vaults to check on the contents. With only a single UNIT Sergeant in attendance, she recounts how the alien ship came to Earth, and what secret caused it to be sealed away for so many years.

Shadow of the Past is the kind of story the UNIT era did well, full of vast alien menace and a shapeshifting alien sponge that would have been hell to manage on screen. It cops out a little by having the Time Lords drop a deus out of their machina onto the main invasion, but it's not managed badly. All in all, there's not much wrong with Shadow of the Past as a play in its own right; it just doesn't quite fit with The Blue Tooth, the previous Companion Chronicle with Caroline John. The earlier play was all about Liz Shaw's disillusionment with UNIT, whereas this play - set at almost the exact same point, just a few weeks after the Silurian incident - touches that only with a brief reference to the passing of test tubes and has Shaw wondering why she left.

As I say, on its own terms it's a good play. John is a fine narrator, and Shrapnel ably supports. I just can't get away from that niggle.

And speaking of continuity, next we have chronological chaos in The Time Vampire.