Start to Finish:3.03 - The Doll of Death

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

For now continuing to work through the Doctors in numerical order, series 3 continues with Marc Platt's The Doll of Death, with Katy Manning narrating a Third Doctor adventure as Josephine Grant.

Time is out of joint, the Doctor declares; events are running backwards, and soon Jo Grant, Agent of UNIT, is caught up in it all. But why is everything centred on Killebrew's Toy Hospital, and if once dislodged from time, can Jo ever find her way back into it?

Jettisoning any uncertainty as to the era in which it is set, The Doll of Death is as much a love letter to the seventies milieu of the Third doctor's earthbound adventures with UNIT as anything else, with 21st century environmental campaigner Jo Jones - writing up an old encounter on her blog while fighting off a tummy bug - waxing nostalgic for Sergeant Benton's purple flares, dining on unashamedly seventies cuisine with Mike Yates, and eyeing up red, platform boots in Oxford Street. Through this, Manning brings the necessary energy to recreate the young Jo Grant, as well as a host of other voices, including a decent stab at Sgt Benton, the Brigadier and the Doctor. Jane Goddard is suitable creepy as the angry class warrior Mrs Killebrew and her benignly psychotic transtemporal alter-ego, HannaH (as is Manning when jo is under HannaH's direction).

The story leaves a few key questions unanswered, but overall it manages what the best of the Chronicles do; recreating the era and the characters it is portraying, but with bigger and flashier 'visuals' than could ever have been done on television. Also, the repeated use of a flat, echoing 'ma-Ma' from an old doll's speech box is especially creepy.

Next up, we return to Leela's dying moments for The Empathy Games.