Brave New Town

"Your town was built on an island."

Writer: Jonathan Clements
Format: Audio
Released: March 2008
Series: EDA 2.03

Featuring: Eighth Doctor, Lucie

Synopsis

"It's like The Village That Time Forgot!"

The inhabitants of the quiet seaside town of Thorington in Suffolk are living the same day over and over again. What's so special about the 1st of September 1991? Why haven't the villagers noticed that the same song has been number one for years? And just where on Earth has the sea disappeared to?

The Doctor and Lucie must solve the mystery before the 'visitors' return...

Verdict

Brave New Town was another very good story to continue what is turning out to be a very consistent second series of Eighth Doctor Adventures! And it's consistently good which is crucial to my enjoyment. I'm really liking the pair of the Eighth Doctor and Lucie, considerably more so than in the first series, and things were no different here as they arrived at a rather unique location. This was one of the rare stories where I actually read the synopsis prior to listening and I just figured that with Thorington and its people being stuck on the 1st of September 1991, there was a time loop that had been enacted around the town. But that was far from the case! It was something much more complex and brilliant. I really didn't expect it. The return of the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness in an audio tale was fantastic and I was quite stunned to find that they were back. There was no hint that they would be returning and I'm glad that another incarnation of the Doctor gets to do battle with the famous foes. But they were unlike any Autons we'd seen before, that is at least up to the show's chronology by this audio and in the context of 2008 Doctor Who. I'm sure this adventure will have influenced the sentient Autons we would see in The Pandorica Opens and that's hardly surprising because it is a great idea and there's a lot that can be done and played around with. Autonomic Autons. Autons that don't even know they're Autons. That has so much potential and I'd love for some kind of sequel on a larger scale, but what we got still worked very well. The initial arrival to Thorington was intriguing and I liked how Lucie immediately knew something was wrong. She likened her surroundings to the situation that occurred at Chernobyl. She just knew that something wasn't right. The residents knowing that each day was the 1st of September 1991 was quite weird, and what was even weirder was that they referred to their yesterday as the same date and the day always being Sunday. When pushed by the Doctor, they knew it sounded stupid but this was all because of the voice inside their heads. The Nestene Consciousness was doing its work. The story concerning Jason and his daughter was quite sad, but it helped the Doctor deduce that they were actually very far from Suffolk and were instead in oil-ridden Uzbekistan. The Doctor mentioning Marco Polo was terrific, but not quite as much so as Lucie asking if he was famed for the mint. I really did chuckle at that one I have to say. The Autons pondering that they were human when an instruction came through to go against humanity was a great moment and I liked the second guessing that came with that. The links with the fall of the Soviet Union came to be a good element of the story, and I just liked the ending even if things were a little simplistic. I had wished for perhaps a little more action and excitement, but I was largely happy with what I got! The first meeting of the Eighth Doctor and the Autons. What's not to like? Overall, a great story!

Rating: 8/10