"What happens next in the story?"
Keith Drinkel has a bigger part to play in this episode, and although
his character's speech is clipped and to the point - contrasting with
Vicki's more florid, literary style - his role rather neatly brings the
framing and framed stories into closer contact as time goes on.
Unlike The Suffering, we've known almost from the start that this
is not a pure historical. Rather, it's a celebrity historical somewhat
in the modern style, although Jane Austen is less at the heart of the
action than fellow authors Charles Dickens or Agatha Christie. Indeed,
while she has a larger part than Steven, Miss Austen seems more on a par
with Jem, the boy from the chimney introduced at the end of the last
episode.
This really is the perfect period to feature a chimney sweep's
apprentice as a character. It sits in the uncomfortable gap between the
invention of mechanical brushes in 1803 (the results of a prize
competition, no less - shades of Longitude!), which took away the last
excuse, and the new legislation introduced in 1834 to replace the
(completely unenforced) act of 1788. We may be a long way from the end
of this particular chapter of human misery (The Water Babies still has relevance nearly half a century in the future), but the practice is at least at the beginning of its long decline.
So it's a bit of a shame that Jem is a completely programmatic,
stereotypical urchin. Like Valzaki, he's exactly the sort of figure we
might expect from the 60s TV show; but the rest of the production has
moved along, so we can't use "faithfulness to the period" as an excuse
(even if we wanted to, which in cases such as this I don't). And sadly,
this observation also points up the shallow characterisation of the rest
of the guest cast. It's not a deal killer for the entire story - which
has plenty of other charms - but it does damage it.
[Mild spoilers from here on.]
"I live it again with each telling."
I mentioned that the framed and framing stories grow closer here, and we
do actually learn quite a bit about Vicki's life after leaving the
Doctor. The struggles she's had living in history make me a little sad -
part of me just naturally wants a fairytale ending for one of the
brightest shining companions, and there is also my general impatience
with the pessimistic outlook for the Doctor's friends expressed in my
review of The Schoolboy's Story. However, she is not crushed or
made totally miserable: she simply has to deal with a less-than-perfect
world. And she has obviously continued to grow as a person, which is
great - her travels with the Doctor have merely been part of a full and
rich life. So, overall, it's not really a bad thing. And the fact that
we learn so much about her is vital to helping us invest in the framing
story as much as the 1814 section.
(Incidentally, it was also this which prompted me to refer to the
episodes as "scrolls", since Vicki mentions when beginning the narrative
that she is starting to read the first scroll. My alternative idea was
to break it into four scrolls corresponding to the four tracks on the CD
- the joint-lowest track count, I believe - but that was too
restrictive.)
[And major spoilers for the rest of this review - skip down to the rating if you want to avoid details about the ending.]
"Perhaps next time it'll change."
The series of quotes I've taken here from Frosty - and what a perfectly
Vickiesque name that is! - really set the tone for the structural twist
which is revealed at the end to form the retroactive driving force of
the story. (And incidentally, it was given just enough emphasis that I
spotted it before the reveal, but not too long before.) I've recently
been relistening to the anthology release Circular Time, which
looks at the difference between cyclical time (for example, the seasons)
and linear time (e.g., mortal lives); and this is at the heart of Frostfire, too. The story goes round and round in a timey-wimey fashion, and who knows? Perhaps the story can
change on each iteration - certainly my second time hearing it (as with
other twist-ending stories ) was not the same experience as my first.
But for Vicki and Frosty? I suspect not.
Rating:
Good, but not quite so good as the opening episode, despite a superb build-up to a perfectly judged ending.
7/10.
Next Time:
Companion Chronicle 1.01 as a whole.
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