All of Time and Space

"This is the tale of Doctor Who!"

Writer: Tim Foley

Format: Audio

Released: February 2023

Series: Eleventh Doctor Chronicles 4.01

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Valarie

Synopsis 

As concepts for shows go, it's a good one. An adventurer and his friend travelling through all of time and space, righting wrongs and defending those who can't defend themselves. Yet, as its creator is about to discover, there are those who'd rather this show never existed.

Verdict 

All of Time and Space was a great start to the fourth series of Eleventh Doctor Chronicles and the anthology of the same name! This was a very intriguing adventure and I liked the follow on from The End with the TARDIS having exploded and the opening credits being twisted into a pitch for a television show was quite the way to start an episode. Mr Quest was describing most of the key aspects that make Doctor Who but he was actually pitching it as a play at the theatre rather than a television show which was an interesting twist. His out of tune imitation of the theme tune was horrible to listen to despite its humour! I was intrigued that his pitch was specifically focused on the Eleventh Doctor and Valarie as they are obviously from an era fifty years after the show started. Mr Darling was the artistic director of the Regal Theatre and he was very much not keen on the concept of Doctor Who. That’s amusing. I thought the format was a little disorienting with the short cut scenes to the Doctor and Valarie but I was intrigued that Darling wanted the notes on the Doctor Who show and he didn’t even know why. The Doctor and Valarie talking to Quest through the radio was good stuff but I thought the extended sequences of them talking as puppets was pretty bad sound effects. I wasn’t a fan of that from a purely listener perspective. The multiple versions of Darling trying to get Quest was good horror though! The idea of the Doctor and Valarie being transported into Quest’s head was very good and the concept of the pitch being as a way to get them onto the page as a story was fantastic! I really did enjoy the idea of the Doctor and Valarie being able to manifest anywhere there was a story. That had a lot of potential! The setting of London 1956 worked well and the need to find something recognisable in London being a police box was tremendous. The plan for it to carry Quest’s idea of the story and act as a psychic echo chamber to bring the Doctor and Valarie back was good, although given the truth later on it didn’t seem too logical. The moment where Darling realised he didn’t have a motive was good and it was quite surprising that the Doctor was actually using Quest! That felt uncharacteristic. They weren’t actually in his head at all. They needed him. The significance of Jeremy Castle with his name always on the notes was fascinating as we learned he was the author who’d invented both Quest and Darling! I must admit I hadn’t seen that coming. Valarie explaining that Quest was in a place of negative perception and had literally fallen down a plot hole was a fun use of the story theme. The significance of Quest’s lucky coin was a good inclusion and I thought it was an interesting explanation that upon explosion the TARDIS telepathic circuits had put them into the writing machine. Castle was also writing a biography of the Doctor’s life whilst having Quest as his passion, but the idea of the Doctor’s adventures being documented was very dangerous. He’d missed this collection in his efforts to delete all reference to him as it wasn’t yet published, but even so the threat of the Doctor’s life being mapped out was a big one as someone could find where he was weak. And that seemed to have been exactly what had happened in having the TARDIS explode. Valarie’s moment as the narrator for Quest was fun and I liked that he’d also seen scenes that hadn’t happened yet and knew the Doctor was looking for Clara as well as there being a woman calling the TARDIS. Might we get an encounter between the Eleventh Doctor and Missy? I do hope so! The moment of the explosion had actually been deleted and Valarie was extremely angered by that due to not being able to save her mum in The Innocence. That was understandable and it did seem that there were different rules for the Doctor. She did come around to understanding and I like the direction of the series now I’m wondering who commissioned the biography as we hunt for answers. Overall, a great start to the series!

Rating: 8/10