The Time Vampire

"I saw them age, decayed to dust in front of me."

Writer: Nigel Fairs

Format: Audio

Released: May 2010

Series: Companion Chronicles 4.10

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela, K9

Synopsis

Leela, in her last moments of life, recalls a long-forgotten memory: a time in the TARDIS. The Doctor is worried that K9's increasingly bizarre behaviour might become dangerous. He decides to make a new model, little knowing that the fate of all three time travellers has long since been decided.

As Leela recalls the chilling connection between K9's 'illness', the Z-nai and the haunted sea fort in which the TARDIS lands, she prepares for her final journey: into the land of her ancestors, the Afterlife.

Verdict

The Time Vampire was a very good Companion Chronicles audio! This brought to an end a strong trilogy with The Catalyst and Empathy Games and emotional time for Leela with her on her death bed after the Time War. It's a little heartbreaking to hear her in such a bad way at the end but for a while we got a fantastic outing back when she was travelling with the Doctor and K9. I thought the TARDIS scenes were a lot of fun and it honestly doesn't get much better for comedy than this trio. There's so much to enjoy and even though this audio was from a time before Tom Baker joined on board with Big Finish, Louise Jameson did a stellar job with the narration. She's such a strong actress and is definitely one of Doctor Who's finest. Now, I won't pretend that I understood absolutely everything that was going on in this adventure given the timey-wimey nature of events, but I kind of like that. I do enjoy a temporal focus and having what was essentially a paradox and some past involvement from the Doctor's previous incarnation was a lot of fun. I must say, I thought Holland made for a good villain and the involvement of him going into the TARDIS as a child and taking the temporal suspension cage was excellent. I'm a big fan of when past actions of the Doctor have consequences and having him return here at a later stage in life was very strong. It was really good as well for him and the planet to be experiencing events all at once or at least visually seeing them. The past, present and future were somewhat intertwined and it was to prove a disaster as this was Westropi III and the Doctor had been here before and witnessed the entire planet die. That was a powerful prospect and the cliffhanger revealing that was great stuff. I really enjoyed K9 having a bit of personality in this story and his instructions essentially being classified was very amusing. He needed resetting to be able to fully interpret the instructions which I just loved. The Doctor's reaction to K9 killing someone when adhering to the instructions to protect Leela was very good too and I was also shocked by the actions, but I did understand the interpretation of his instructions. The Z-nai returning again was good and I thought the explanation of the Time Vampire was brilliant. I liked the paradoxical nature of it a great deal. One little criticism of the story would be that it probably went slightly too long and whilst the ending with Leela on her deathbed and K9 coming to her was emotional, it did drag out a little too much. In contradicting myself. I will say that it was excellent to hear Leela's life flash before her eyes with some fun little flashbacks. I thought the demise of the Z-nai was a little too quick but the convenience was appreciated in getting to the key story for Leela. One little anecdote I should also mention was the Scottish accent from Louise Jameson. I thought it was extraordinary and I'm still not sure if it was great or horrendous! But it was certainly noticeable. Overall, a really strong story!

Rating: 8/10