Hall of the Ten Thousand

 

"Nobody ever wins, and everyone suffers."

Writer: Jaine Fenn

Format: Audio

Released: November 2019

Series: Short Trips 9.11

Featuring: Eighth Doctor, Charley

Synopsis

The Ten Thousand represent everything the Doctor admires. Ingenuity, creativity and triumph of peace over war. So, naturally, he's taken Charley to see them.

However, their arrival isn't quite the gallery visit they expected. Why is everything slowly falling apart? Why is the artist refusing to see them?

But for Charley, there's a question that's far more urgent. Did that statue just move?

Verdict

Hall of the Ten Thousand was a decent little Short Trips adventure! It was great to be reunited with the pairing of the Eighth Doctor and Charley as I thoroughly enjoyed going through their run together in the Monthly Adventures and whilst things aren't quite the same without Paul McGann alongside India Fisher, the latter still did a pretty good job in rekindling that relationship we heard for so long. For me, I'm still none the wiser regarding Charley's story with the Sixth Doctor but having her back with the Eighth Doctor here was just a lot of fun. I thought the artistic theme worked well and the installation of the Hall of the Ten Thousand provided quite the backdrop for the Doctor to take Charley on a visit. His description of the Hall being done by the work of a genius was good and immediately led me to want to know more about who that was. I thought the concept of the Hall containing ten thousands statues was pretty impressive, and finding out that each statue represented each second that the war lasted on Orlay was a fantastic development! This audio really did start off well and it was good to establish the setting of Orlay and describe how the two continents on the planet had been at war with each other. The genius artist being revealed as the neutral Marania was interesting and I liked how the soldiers on both sides had agreed to her request of a memorial in the form of the Hall of the Ten Thousand. Charley's background living in a post-Great War time coming into play was very well done and good to draw on her experiences of what that world was like for her. The Doctor wanting to meet Marania was fun so when she was busy in seclusion, he jotted back in time to try and meet then. However, from there things developed and Charley saw that there was someone alive and in pain in the statue which was frightening. I don't think the story quite developed as it could have from there, but the mystery of the men being the spitting image of the caretaker from the future was good as we learned about Marania's husband and how he was lost in a previous war, so she'd simply used robotics to recreate him! The revelation that those inside the statues had been gassed and used as a symbol of war's futility was extraordinary and there should have been more impact following that. But the helplessness of the Doctor in being able to change time did work well. Charley wanting to change the past and save those inside the statues was good, and I liked how the Doctor's saying no was described as being full of anguish. The fun that was had with the Doctor playing the security caretakers in messing with their systems when he realised that the artist might not merely be in seclusion was a story highlight! The latter ten minutes or so of the story seemed to be too rushed and probably a victim of the format, but I did like the concept of the soldiers within feeling physical pain of being melded to their suit and the emotional pain of being frozen but conscious. That isn't something I'm keen on thinking about! The Technician CAV666 being freed and sending the Hall of the Ten Thousand into self destruction with the countdown to finish the audio was good, if not slightly predictable, and it was nice that they were all saved in a roundabout sort of way. Overall, a solid little story!

Rating: 7/10