Start to Finish: 3.04 - Empathy Games

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Back to the Fourth Doctor, back to Leela of the Sevateem, and back to scribe Nigel Fairs for episode four of series three, Empathy Games.

Pax Majorica, the capital of Synchronis, is a closed environment, free from crime, violence or want, and yet no sooner have the Doctor and Leela arrived than a vicious animal attack leaves Leela in hospital and the Doctor in an apparently self-induced coma. While she waits for the Doctor to wake, Leela is invited to take part in the Empathy Games, an annual hunt, but is the event more than it seems.

This play has perhaps the most existential framing device to date, as Leela - now alone in the Z'nai prison, with her guards and their race now wiped out by the virus she carried, kept alive only by their torture machines - recounts a tale to a crying child who is in fact her own younger self experiencing loss for the first time.

The story itself is equally existential, with the Empathy Games framed as an annual sin-eating for the society of Synchronis. It's a story about fear, and about responsibility, and shows a Leela who is beginning to know that she should not kill in first resort. it follows in the path set by The Catalyst in establishing Leela's path from savage to an enlightened being. In the first play, she showed her defeat of the fear of death, in this she confronts her fear of isolation.

Interesting side note, Empathy Games was released less than a month after the first publication of The Hunger Games, which also features a public spectacle of battle, contestants standing on a ring of platforms and genetically engineered animals with the faces of the competitors. Synchronis is well named.

Louise Jameson's Doctor-voice is developing, with Tom Baker's darker and warmer vocal traits now coming through well, and her secondary voices are excellent again. Our extra voice is a treat this time, with the superb David Warner as the ever-so-sinister Coordinator Angell.

Empathy Games develops the story of Leela, which was so nearly finished in The Catalyst, and does so with assured panache. Fairs shows a strong grasp of Leela's character, and of the Doctor.

It's the weekend now, which means family time, so next week, we'll pick up with another for the First Doctor, as Jean Marsh brings short-lived companion Sara Kingdom back to life in Home Truths.