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| Image (c) Big Finish Productions |
Following on from previous Zoe Companion Chronicles, we open with our heroine held prisoner, accused of... stuff. The monolithic Company wants her knowledge of other times, and hse had been drugged to access it as public defender Jen, supposedly her only ally, grills her. What was she doing on early 21st century Earth? What was the secret of the Feynman computer? What are the mysterious, shambling grey figures that seem to appear out of nowhere? And could it be that an ultralogical prodigy of the (probably insanely corrupt) elite programme is falling in love with a romantic fool?
The last of these questions is obviously the most problematic, as Doctor Who has a very rocky track record vis a vis Companion romances. In this case it's a bit of a non-starter, with the boy in question mourning his dead sweetheart and said sweetheart turning up alive at the end, but it actually helps that our narrator is Zoe. Due to her almost cloistered upbringing, Zoe is just about the worst person in the world to tell you about her feelings, and the in-character awkwardness alleviates the actual awkwardness of shoehorning of an incidental romance into a 65 minute play about alternate realities and quantum computing. she also makes no attempt to explain her crush by talking about dreamy eyes, so we (don't) have that.
The oddity here is that the framing narrative is actually more compelling than the main story. As often happens, the modern setting militates against an apocalyptic threat carrying much weight, and the love interest - the only character there to be in personal peril - is never really up to carrying that weight. It's Zoe we worry for, with her headaches and impending execution for... crimes.
Okay; let's forge ahead, to the 7th Doctor story Project: Nirvana.
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