Start to Finish: 3.01 - Here There Be Monsters

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd.

With its third series, The Companion Chronicles was expanded, each future series consisting of not four but twelve monthly releases in a round the year schedule. The series also began to feature adventures for companions of the four 'working' Big Finish Doctors, presented in the enhanced reading format. For the first story of the series, it was back to the beginning, with the Doctor's earliest companion, his granddaughter Susan, as played then and now by Carole Ann Ford.

Struck by some great force in the Vortex, the TARDIS, crewed by the Doctor, Susan and reluctant companions Ian and Barbara, lands aboard a spaceship filled with lush vegetation. This is the Earth Benchmarking Vessel Nevermore, and its mission of galactic mapping and navigation could prove the undoing of the universe.

In the framing device of Andy Lane's Here There Be Monsters, an older Susan narrates the story to a voice in her head, that may or may not be the literal remnant of a being she once encountered. The First Mate (Stephen Hancock) is a reflection of the Doctor, a righter of wrongs from another universe seeking to prevent incursions just as the Doctor does, and in a way his influence on Susan to move on with her own life echoes the Doctor's own words at the end of the Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Young Susan's viewpoint is interesting in part for its handling of the difficult interface of the First Doctor with the later mythology of the series, presenting a teenage fascination with the love lives of the adults around her, even as she muses on the fact that she is older than both of her teachers combined. It is the relationships with the Doctor and the First Mate that are most touching, however; her need to care for her grandfather, and vice versa, and the influence of a stranger who understands her only too well.

Ford presents an effective Doctor (like Peter Purves, she makes us of Hartnell's characteristic vocal tics) and a range of other voices, while Hancock's fellow traveller convinces as a slightly warmer and self-sacrificing version of the Doctor; something a little more like the character that Hartnell's time traveller would eventually mellow into.

Here There Be Monsters is another of the Chronicles that I did not rate highly on first listening, but which has grown on me with repetition. There is a lot here to like, from the ambitious story - in broad strokes it fits the First Doctor's era, but with a scope and scale that the budget would never have stretched to - to the character notes.

This month's releases are out now, so it may be a few days before we come back to episode 2 of series 3, when Victoria Waterfield will tell the story of The Great Space Elevator.