Episode CC4.07b: The Suffering, Episode 2: The Piltdown Woman

The second episode maintains the standard of the first, with, if anything, even more humour. The sound effects and music are quiet and selective, which captures the feel of an era far removed from the constant soundtrack of the modern series. There's a reminder that this is Steven and Vicki recording an adventure at the start, but it's very short; now that Steven has got into the flow, Peter Purves can dive almost straight back into telling the story using his full abilities.

Mostly it's good plain fun, with the Doctor namedropping a fictional character (Raffles) and the farce with the Gladstone bag, the skeleton, and the omnibus. The drama on the clifftop never feels too dangerous, being more of a "how will he get out of that?" puzzle; and the horror is restricted mainly to the opening and the close.

Speaking of which, the cliffhanger is surprisingly similar to the previous one, and I hope that's not a sign the alien threat is going to be kept in the background much longer. I am more interested in the historical setting, but if you're going to have a pseudohistorical the menace needs to be a proper part of it.

So far, this is a proving to be a good story for continuing to develop Steven's characterisation. His worrying about madness continues, and he is characterised as sexist but gallant (which seems to fit), whereas the Doctor is both more egalitarian and more callous.

Normally, of course, this would have been the final episode of a Companion Chronicle, but here Big Finish experimented for the first time with a four-episode release (alongside having two voice actors from the TV series). It must have been a success because the two-disk story became an annual feature up until the end of the monthly run, and the use of multiple leads became even more common - The Flames of Cadiz being an example I've reviewed earlier.

Of course, being in the middle of the story means it's a bit odd to suddenly be presented with an interview! It's not completely unprecedented - it happened in the main range when they experimented with a serialised extra story, The Three Companions - but there's still something jarring.

Fortunately they studiously avoid spoilers, and I did learn some things. Unsurprisingly, like most of the cast, Purves prefers historicals. (When I met him last year, he said the story he'd most like to see recovered is The Massacre, with The Myth Makers a close second. His favourite SF story is The Savages, which he considers underrated. It'll be a while before I get there in this marathon, though!)

Something I'd never considered before was the matter of colour. Purves pictures his audio adventures in full colour, whereas I generally imagine them in monochrome. I hypothesise that this is to do with him being there when the TV serials were made: in effect, he saw them in colour then, whereas I have only ever seen them in black and white.

It also sounds as if some of the ideas he gives here for future stories of Steven were taken into account - and when I get The War to End All Wars I'll find out just how far they've gone...

Rating:
7/10.

Next Time:
The Female of the Species.