The Other Side

"We need to make contact with the future."

Writer: Scott Handcock
Format: Audio
Released: May 2017
Series: Ninth Doctor Chronicles 1.03

Featuring: Ninth Doctor, Rose, Adam

Synopsis

Rose has invited a new friend on board the TARDIS, against the Doctor's better judgement. But when the Time Lord tries to take his unwelcome guest home, a temporal tsunami cuts the journey short. The travellers find the source of the disturbance inside an abandoned cinema. Will Adam Mitchell help or hinder when the Doctor and Rose discover what is lurking on the other side of the screen?

Verdict

The Other Side was an excellent audio adventure to continue along my listening of the Ninth Doctor Chronicles! This really was a big step up from the first two stories in the collection and a welcomed addition to Adam's time, albeit brief, spent in the TARDIS. I love the idea of squeezing a story with him as the companion between Dalek and The Long Game and there is no doubting that it absolutely works. We follow straight on from the former episode with Adam taking in the TARDIS interior for the first time, something I thought should have occurred on television but was never to be. That's the beauty of Big Finish in my eyes. I loved it. His reaction to experiencing travelling through a temporal tsunami was good and I was impressed with how he deduced that they had landed underground. Of course, working for Van Statten he had spent a lot of his time underground so he was certainly qualified to judge their surroundings. I thought it was interesting that the Doctor's intentions after letting Adam come aboard the TARDIS was to simply take him home. He could save on the plane fare! That was brilliant writing of the Ninth Doctor at this stage of his chronology. The tsunami meaning they ended up in Birmingham in 2012 rather than Manchester was funny and the abandoned cinema setting was fantastic. It's just perfect for Doctor Who and throw in some time disturbances and you have a terrific story on your hands. I loved how the Doctor acknowledged that 9 was his lucky number for the screen and he soon ended up going back in time to the end of the 19th century! He'd arrived in the same location, but at a time where the cinema was more of a theatre stage. Rose being worried that the Doctor was gone and wouldn't be coming back was fantastic and I found it very interesting that Adam seemed relatively pleased that he was alone with Rose. It was obvious he fancied her and Kayla mentioning to him how much more eager he was to save Rose when she went back to get him was great. Kayla was a very good character and I liked how she had been investigating strange happenings at this cinema in the form of time waves. Before the Bygone Horde revealed themselves, the brief introduction we had of them where it was shown that they could hijack human minds and they knew of the Time War and the Doctor representing the Time Lords was brilliant. I really liked that and it set things up nicely for the rest of the audio. Rose not quite ending up at the end of the nineteenth century was an intriguing twist as she arrived in 1922, but was soon reunited with the Doctor after he waited 28 years to get back to her. Rose's reaction to that was magnificent. Now there's a big gap for solo stories of the Ninth Doctor! The idea of the gaps that came with the waves getting smaller and whatever it was controlling them getting closer to their final destination of 2012 was really good. The use of the phones that the Doctor had manufactured to be used universally was very good throughout and with the abilities the Doctor provided, it was nice to have it used as the main source of the plot resolution. The link of the signals connecting 2012 and 1922 was very good and it was nice to play with the idea of Rose getting left behind one the Doctor broke his way through back to 2012. The Bygone Hard was an excellent enemy and I loved the idea of them being the remnants of the casualties of the Time War banded together in a sort of non-consciousness. It was really great and unique and definitely something I'd love for a return, although the emphatic nature of the conclusion with the Vortex falling in on them would make that quite difficult. The use of the TARDIS key as literally being a key to the door between each time was brilliant and served as a great conclusion to what was as a whole a fantastic audio adventure! Adam was acknowledged as being fantastic by the Doctor which was somewhat uncharacteristic, but at least heading into The Long Game he was a fully fledged accepted companion.

Rating: 9/10