Start to Finish: 5.12 - The Cold Equations

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

We wrap up the fifth series of The Companion Chronicles with the second part of the Oliver Harper trilogy, Simon Guerrier's The Cold Equations.

There are some things that come down to cold, physical truths; situations where the numbers don't add up to anything but death. It is Oliver Harper's first trip in the TARDIS. He's a fast talker, a shrewd dealer, but you can't barter with a vacuum.

The Cold Equations takes Peter Purves' star pilot, Steven Taylor, back into space, in a hardish SF disaster story, which gives Steven a chance to flex his muscles as an astronaut and to confront both Oliver Harper's secrecy about his reasons for joining the TARDIS crew and his own fears following the loss of Katarina, Brett Vyon and Sara Kingdom. It's a highly emotional story, carried by Purves and Tom Allen as Harper, and could easily have tilted over into farce.

Fortunately, the two men work together well. The big payoff of Oliver's dark secret is handled with deft lightness, even as the story hangs their destiny over them. As the first openly gay companion in Big Finish (there were a couple in the various novel series, and TV had to wait for Captain Jack), Harper could have been horribly over-played, but the end result is pleasing in its restraint as well as it's reaction. Like the opposition to votes for women in The Suffering, the idea of rejecting someone for their sexuality is depicted as alien to the space age Taylor.

I'm going to look at some of the special releases next, starting with Freakshow, before coming back for the start of series six, Tales from the Vault.