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| Image (c) Big Finish Productions |
The TARDIS crew opt to take a break at the famed Library of Alexandria, with Ian joining the Library Guard to pay for the others' keep. Barbara gets pissy when Ian starts hanging out with rock star Alexandrine academic Hypatia and the crew get ready to leave before the historically vague destruction of the Library, but things go a little awry when a stock of smuggled books is found to include a modern-style bound volume in an alien language, and its owners decide to avoid messing with history by stepping on the city of Alexandria.
The revelation that this is a pseudohistorical comes a bit out of left field, with the set-up being a standard historical holiday story and leaning heavily on a Big Finish favourite, the relationship between 'good friends' Ian and Barbara. Slightly clunky writing - unexpected from an old pro like Simon Guerrier - and perhaps a slightly off-base delivery makes Ian come off as a bit clueless and Barbara as a little too catty. I suspect that she is genuinely supposed to be upset because Hypatia presages the fall of the Library, rather than because the head of the Neoplatonist School is getting her claws into Barbara's man. Honestly the Mim are a relief from this brief digression into soap opera, although a twist more apt to the modern series than the First Doctor.
Up next, yet another double act, as Jamie and Zoe relate the events of The Apocalypse Mirror.
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