Klein's Story

"I will never accept this reality."

Writers: John Ainsworth & Lee Mansfield

Format: Audio

Released: February 2010

Series: Monthly Adventures 131a

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Klein, Eighth Doctor

Synopsis

Elizabeth Klein is an anomaly. A renegade from an alternate future in which the Nazis won World War II. In an attempt to get to know his latest companion, the Doctor invites Klein to tell him how exactly she came to be in possession of his TARDIS and of the events that led to her trip into the past to Colditz Castle.

Verdict

Klein's Story was an excellent little adventure to get the 131st Monthly Adventure kicked off! I wasn't a big fan of the format Big Finish took around the 100 mark of this range with an abundance of releases separated into three-part and one-part stories, but I have to admit that after listening to this episode that the return to that style was most welcomed for this release. I thought this was a really helpful way to set the record straight about Elizabeth Klein and inform those listeners about who she was and her significance. She appeared in Colditz which was an excellent audio adventure, but that was way back at the beginnings of the Monthly Adventures so this little insert was a fantastic way to bring everyone up to speed, new and old listeners both. I was very much a fan of that as it has been a long time now since I listened to that early release, and I thought the format here worked well with the immediate continuity from A Thousand Tiny Wings and how the Doctor was going to take her aboard the TARDIS. We learned a lot about Klein and her inability to accept that what we know as established history was not the correct timeline is really intriguing and just hearing her describe how Hitler died in 1961 and the way the Reich was able to use laser technology to develop the nuclear weapons that saw bombing rampages on Washington and Moscow to win the Second World War was incredibly fascinating. I'm always up for some alternate timelines and when that gets meddled with history as important as the Nazis and World War Two then it's right up my ally. It was also good to establish Klein's scientific background further and I liked learning of her beliefs in the temporal theory. Her desire for the Doctor's TARDIS after learning of the significance of events at Colditz was great and I loved how it was actually the Eighth Doctor who was the man to give her its key! Of course, he was fantastically disguised as Johann Schmidt. Having an alternative Eighth Doctor was so clever and using Klein's lack of knowledge on regeneration against her was so well done. I loved the description of events that led to the Seventh Doctor's regeneration in Klein's timeline and it's fitting that it mirrored the cause of death in The Movie. The Seventh Doctor from the current point of view wanting to learn of his future self's appearance was amusing and I liked how he'd clearly realised what his alternate future self had constructed. The TARDIS had no time logs so his work regarding those was very good indeed. He was playing Klein like a fiddle in order to go back and save his life and restore history. Jonas was a very good character to play off Klein and I liked how he was horrified by her suggestion of going back in time to when the Doctor was alive in order for him to show how the TARDIS worked. That was very good. He was sceptical of Schmidt all along which was admirable. Klein's reaction to the Seventh Doctor explaining about regeneration was delightful and I loved how shocked she was to find that Schmidt was actually the Doctor. She realised she had been defeated and that was brilliant. It really has presented a new twist to what was already a hugely intriguing dynamic and prospect with this pairing together in the TARDIS. I can't wait to hear how things move forward. Overall, a fantastic little episode! 

Rating: 9/10