REVIEW: Doctor Who: The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke

The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke provides a mixed bag of tales of highly varying quality. But Miranda Raison shines throughout as Mrs. Constance Clarke

The latest set of Sixth Doctor Adventures presents three unconnected episodes from the Doctor’s travels with World War II Wren Mrs. Constance Clarke. The result is a mixed bag of highly varying quality. Despite the overarching title for the set, for the most part they don’t particularly focus on Mrs. Clarke, either, or explore her in depth. Despite that Miranda Raison’s Mrs. Clarke is still the undoubted highlight of the release. Joining the Doctor on his travels in 2015’s Criss-Cross, she’s appeared by his side on and off ever since, but this is the first set to focus on her for a while.

It’s a shame as she really is a splendid companion. Indeed, she’s one of the strongest of the original friends for the Doctor that Big Finish have created over the years. This flows in part from her managing to be both unique and the quintessential companion. She wears her 1940s origins on her sleeve, and is terribly well spoken, like the heroine of a war time film, possibly starring opposite David Niven.

Better, though, her self assured belief in the proper way one does things, leaves her able to challenge the Doctor. In some ways, she’s strangely reminiscent of Donna Noble. If Donna had grown up spending her Thursday afternoons playing hockey at boarding school, that is. In one particularly lovely moment, she takes on the weary tone of a teacher, walking the Doctor through the logic of telling her not to wander off when, invariably, he’s the one who wanders off.

The Story Demon gets us off to a strong start, with a clever murder mystery and an inventively quirky twist on the trope of Daleks saying weird things

That exchange comes early on, in opening episode The Story Demon. It’s part of that story’s quick establishment of the rapport between the Doctor and Mrs. Clarke. Even those unfamiliar with her earlier appearances will immediately fall in love. The Story Demon is also by far the strongest of the three tales on offer here. It’s opening moments of a Dalek getting ready for a bedtime story (“ARE-YOU-SIT-TING-COM-FORT-ABLY?”) might make you fear the worst. After all, the wheeze of having Nicholas Briggs say the darndest things into his ring modulator risks being a little played out at this stage. In the end, not only is there a compelling reason for it, but it’s used to chilling effect.

The Doctor and Mrs. Clarke have come to a world where a single village houses the descendants of the survivors of a mighty battle in orbit above. Every crashed ship is repurposed to fit village life, and that of their fallen enemy is no exception. So we have the ‘Story Demon.’ An empty Dalek shell, its voice box hooked up to the villagers’ database, regaling children with old Earth fairy tales, as well as educating them on galactic history. It also tends to burst into life like a psychotic sounding Alexa. It appears to mishear cues from the people around it to deliver fragments of not quite relevant stories or history. Or is it deliberately trying to sow fear and the seeds of bad ideas with carefully chosen phrases?

It’s part of what keeps you guessing as The Story Demon unfolds. Why do the plant creatures called Burnhamen keep trying to break through the village gates? How is there always a death at the same time as each attack despite successfully keeping the Burnhamen out? And is the Story Demon and its ship really as dead as they appear? The episode delights in never going to the obvious answer, and produces neat and clever solution to each puzzle.

Iris Wildthyme is back for The Key to Many Worlds but Katy Manning is largely wasted in a story that’s not quite as fun, or funny, as it thinks

Next up, The Key to Many Worlds is not without its charms. However, Paul Magrs’ latest adventure for Iris Wildthyme, that unpredictable, mischief making, Time Lady with her  London Bus TARDIS doesn’t quite hit the target of whimsy and humour it’s aiming for. We being with the Doctor and Mrs. Clarke heading to 14th century Baghdad to visit his old friend Marco Polo. But to the Doctor’s horror, Iris is already there.

She swiftly carries out a body swap for not entirely logical reasons (granted, never her strong point). The result is that for most of the run time Colin Baker plays Iris and Katy Manning is the Doctor. A fun idea for a scene or two, it unfortunately goes on far too long. Katy Manning’s Iris is always a glorious, cackling, powerhouse of a performance. So even though Baker certainly seems to be enjoying himself embodying a slightly gin-soaked Northern granny, it seems wasteful to give Manning nothing better to do than rasp grumpily about the situation.

The story also depends on Marco being almost nothing like the man Doctor Who fans know. The First Doctor originally journeyed across China with a very different Polo for seven TV episodes in 1964. He’s many years older, now, it’s true. But his skeptical refusal to believe anything about anything becomes wearisome after a while. It’s also hugely at odds with his younger self, who took the idea of the Doctor’s “flying caravan” at face value and was full of talk of the weird things he’d seen on his own adventures. Here, there’s a young man with a new face at his door. One who all the same has all the memories of an old one from decades before. Yet, the same Marco Polo who met Buddhist monks and believed in their powers has no idea how that could be.

For his part Marco just wants to recapture his youth somehow, before it really is the end. The Doctor and Iris’ way of helping him do that doesn’t quite convince. While a gag based on an old myth that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy is incredibly niche, while also making less sense the more you think about it.

The Key to Many Worlds is still quite jolly fun. But it’s not quite the wild time we’ve come to expect from Iris.

Inconstancy is Blogtor’s least favourite Big Finish for some time, saved only by Miranda Raison’s fun performance as both Constance and Inconstances

Bringing up the rear in The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke is Inconstancy. It’s a rare example of a near total misfire from Big Finish. Few stories are perfect, but even fewer are as imperfect as this. It has the misfortune of coming out shortly after BBC Audio’s The Cloud Exiles. This leads to some unflattering comparisons with Inconstancy’s first half. As in The Cloud Exiles, the Doctor (or ‘Dr. Who’ in the 60s short story) visits a world where there are people rendered without form or personality of their own. Though here it’s Constance, not Dr. Who, who they latch on to as a potential template for their new bodies. There’s an apparent robot uprising in both too. Our heroes even find their way into the domed city disguised as a returning working party.

All coincidental, we’re sure, but it does mean you can’t avoid the thought that the children’s annual story actually had more nuance and sophistication than this one. The two diverge massively in Inconstancy’s second half, but it only gets more vexing.

The cruel despotic regime of this colony world is combating a spreading contagion by vicious repression of the masses. They force the population to maintain a minimum physical distance from each other on the streets, and to stay at home except to go to work. They also have to avoid contact with anyone outside their family work group. Meanwhile the mandatory preventative treatment is presented as cruel medical quakery.

This central allegory is not only heavy handed in execution, but frustratingly wrong-headed in concept.

It’s all contained without two intertwining framing sequences. The Doctor and Constance are each narrating this story separately to different people. It’s a device which adds nothing to the tale itself, and fails to disguise just how slight it is.

Inconstancy’s one saving grace is Miranda Raison as the eponymous Inconstances. Raison does a superb job creating an entire subspecies modeled on Constance. She attacks the task with great energy, making them distinct from Constance while still echoing her. The overall result is like a mother encourage to ‘do the voices’ for the bedtime story and really quite delightful.

Constance herself is by far the best things about The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke

The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke isn’t a completely glorious return for Constance, then. However, the very fact that she’s consistently the best thing in all three stories means we can only hope it won’t be too long before we meet her again.

Doctor Who: The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke

The Doctor meets old friends – and old enemies. But which is which – and who is Who? One thing is sure: they all have a story to tell…

Doctor Who – The Sixth Doctor Adventures: The Cosmos and Mrs Clarke is available to purchase now from just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition CD) exclusively here. Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1500 copies and will not be repressed.