The Marian Conspiracy
Tracking a disturbance in the fabric of time, the Doctor interrupts a college class being conducted by history professor Dr. Evelyn Smythe - only to discover that she is the disturbance he has been seeking. Evelyn initially wants nothing to do with the garishly dressed stranger until physical evidence of her family history begins to vanish from her home. The Doctor deduces that something in the past is unraveling, erased Evelyn’s ancestors from the timeline - and taking her along with it. He rigs up a stasis device to prevent Evelyn from disappearing altogether, but rather than staying put, the intrepid teacher decides to visit Earth’s history along with the Doctor. The TARDIS tracks the disturbance to a point roughly three years before the end of Queen Mary’s reign, where events - including a conspiracy to remove Mary from the throne by any means necessary - are converging with one inevitable effect unless the Doctor can stop them: Evelyn Smythe’s family will be wiped out in the process.
written by Jacqueline Rayner
directed by Gary Russell
music by Alistair LockCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Maggie Stables (Dr. Evelyn Smythe), Anah Ruddin (The Queen), Jo Castleton (Lady Sarah), Sean Jackson (George Crow), Gary Russell (John Wilson), Jez Fielder (William Leaf), Nicholas Pegg (Reverend Thomas), Barnaby Edwards (Francois de Noailles), Alistair Lock (Royal guard)
Timeline: after The Trial Of A Time Lord and before The Spectre Of Lanyon Moor
Review: This woefully underpromoted Audio Adventure turned out to be much better than I expected. Colin Baker’s Doctor is very well suited to historical stories with a bare minimum of science fiction elements, and the introduction of Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe, a new companion unique to the Audio Adventures, shows great promise. The thought of a middle-aged woman traveling in the TARDIS, as opposed to the almost suspicious string of extremely young ladies who have graced the time machine’s console room, is a welcome twist, and the character dynamics work uniquely well with Baker’s Doctor - especially when Evelyn, a history instructor, is almost always certain that she knows better than the Time Lord how events should unfold. It will be interesting to see how the next adventure handles the revelation (for Evelyn) that the TARDIS is also a spacecraft, and that its owner is not quite human. (more…)
In the present day, the Doctor and Ace arrive in a London gripped by fear. Terrorists seem to be going to extreme lengths to rid Britain of the ultra-right-wing New Britannia party and its Parliamentary candidate, Sherilyn Harper. The Doctor unceremoniously bursts in on Mick Thompson’s political talk radio show to make contact with a man named Walter who, with an accomplice who is now institutionalized, attempted to assassinate Harper and barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by…something. The Doctor postulates that the deadly entity is a non-corporeal creature which incites fear among its victims - and then feeds off that fear, often leaving the victims traumatized for life. Walter says that he can hear this creature in the voice of Sherilyn Harper, but as the crisis worsens and the streets become even more infested with terrorists - some of whom are not political agitators, but hired guns - it becomes apparent that the Fearmonger could be using anyone as its host… even, as Ace comes to believe, the Doctor himself.