The Other Woman

"The great wanderer, his wings forcefully clipped."

Writer: Philip Lawrence

Format: Audio

Released: November 2015

Series: Short Trips 5.11

Featuring: Third Doctor, Jo

Synopsis

UNIT is called in when an alien escape pod brings a woman to the Kent countryside. The Doctor offers to repair her stricken, dimension-hopping ship, seeing an opportunity to escape his exile. But while Calandra charms the Doctor and the other men of UNIT, Jo is less trusting. Are her suspicions well-founded or is there another green-eyed monster at work?

Verdict

The Other Woman was a very fun Short Trips audio adventure! I was really intrigued by the title of this story and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The implications of course point towards there being another female interest for the Doctor and that was definitely something Jo was tackling here. I’m not sure she handled things in the best way and that was part of the story’s appeal. It seemed like it was quite a way into Jo’s time with the Doctor and UNIT and probably somewhere between Seasons 9 and 10 with the Time Lord thinking his exile would soon be up, and that made it harder for Jo to accept that the Doctor’s end goal was always to leave Earth. Of course, he was always going to take her with him but that was far from obvious here. I liked the reality of Jo going out on a date and her thinking that the Doctor was off doing the same was very amusing! The arrival of Callandra was great and I thought she was a decent character. I enjoyed that she was a traveller between dimensions and the Doctor pouncing on that immediately as a potential way off the planet was brilliant in fitting with its era on television. The fact that Callandra was drawn to the planet by the TARDIS was good and I liked the concept of them linking the time and space machine with her own dimension hopper. Callandra was far from harmless though and she was actually on the run. The idea of the Judgementors was pretty good and I just loved their name! It sounded impressive and the basis for a lot of potential, but there wasn’t quite enough time to expand on them which was a shame. The story definitely had Judoon vibes but this probably wasn’t the right time for them to interact with the Third Doctor. Speaking of which, I thought Katy Manning did an excellent job with the narration and the way she transitioned between her character of Jo and the stubborn figures of the Doctor and the Brigadier was terrific. I was really impressed. I liked that the entirety of UNIT was present and going to Kent really provided the story with some scale. I thought the ending was slightly cheating in that the Doctor predictably wasn’t actually going to go against her and had been expecting her to arrive for a few weeks now after receiving her signal, but the description of Callandra’s reaction to being betrayed was tremendous! Overall, a really fun story. 

Rating: 8/10