Start to Finish: 6.10 - The Wanderer

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

It's back to pre-Revolutionary Russia for the First Doctor, a century after his encounter with Napoleon (but earlier in his personal timeline, as he is traveling with Susan, Ian and Barbara, rather than Steven and Dodo), for Richard Dinnick's pseudohistorical The Wanderer.

The TARDIS lands near a remote Siberian village in 1914, where a shooting star has the locals in a flap. When a mysterious illness strikes, only the travelling holy man Grigori seems willing and able to fly in the face of superstition to aid the travelers. But what else will Grigori's devotion to his sacred calling inspire him to risk?

The Wanderer pairs William Russell's Ian with Tim Chipping as one of Russia's most controversial figures (and reputedly its greatest love machine), although his actual identity is obfuscated for the first half of the play. The play is about isolation and the status and mindset of the perpetual outsider, comparing the Doctor and his fellow travelers, with their ongoing companionship, with Grigori's solitary wanderings.

In the end, this is not a story that really works for me, I think because the plot fails to create any significant stakes. As well as the TARDIS crew, the guest character's safety is guaranteed by his presence in chronologically later events, and no-one else is introduced in sufficient detail to give the story the necessary stakes. It also feels like a bit of a cop-out not to actually explore the nature of Rasputin's beliefs once you've got him there.

Next up, Jamie McCrimmon is trapped in The Jigsaw War.