Mercury

"Isn't Mercury quite close to the sun?"

Writer: Eddie Robson
Format: Short Story
Released: October 2005
Series: Short Trips: The Solar System 01

Featuring: Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe

Synopsis

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe have landed on a moving dome on the planet Mercury. While the Doctor and Zoe work out what the dome is, the TARDIS slides off its back and the trio soon meet a team of scientists encountering trouble with the native Mercurials...

Verdict

Mercury was a terrific little story! It saw me kick off my reading of The Solar System collection of stories from Big Finish and I'm really intrigued to see how they deliver in prose - if this first adventure is anything to go by then I will be impressed! This was a really good story with a fast pace and great plot which, considering the limitations of setting it on Mercury, was fantastic. I am hoping to make more time for stories like these with my increased university workload dominating my schedule until 13 May, but hopefully things like this can fill my Who fancy a couple of times a week! The trio of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are marvellous and I thought they were written wonderfully well here. I was very appreciative of the characterisation and I particularly enjoyed the battle of wits between the Doctor and Zoe when it came to explaining Mercury's cold side to Jamie. The Doctor didn't actually seem to enjoy an intellectual equal which was somewhat amusing. The loss of the TARDIS off the moving dome was decent but not an absolutely necessary derailing in the plot and I liked the idea of this dome moving to keep up with the optimum temperature due to Mercury's slow rotation. Alison was a very good character and she clearly had taken charge following Oleg's loss of brain processing. I was intrigued by that and further so when it occurred to Chelo - I loved it when the Mercurial revealed itself to be communicating through her! That was a great moment. The Doctor explaining how they had flesh-like properties appertaining to metal was very intriguing and the idea of them not wanting to be frozen again because of the 'giants' was very good indeed. Zoe wasn't so sure about blindly trusting them but the Doctor didn't like the numbers game, with them being so outnumbered by the planet's indigenous creatures. When it turned out that the giants that scared the Mercurials away was actually just the base's sun pylons, I was quite surprised but in a pleasant way. There was no enemy threat in this adventure, just a misunderstanding due to the technological construction of mankind's technology. They had to go tampering! The Doctor knowing that it could only be people of Earth that would come to Mercury was a great moment and real highlight and I thought the ending was good with things being cleared up and the natives returning the TARDIS. Overall, a very decent adventure!

Rating: 8/10