Purity Unleashed: Purification

"We have to make sure he sails to his doom."

Writer: Chris Chapman

Format: Audio

Released: May 2023

Series: Sixth Doctor Adventures 3.02

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Mel

Synopsis 

The Doctor and Mel follow the trail to a port in New Zealand, 1910. A ship is being prepared for a journey to Antarctica and the Doctor realises that this is Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition. But this is merely the beginning of an intricate scheme to rewrite the future of humanity.

Verdict  

Purification was a great story to continue my way through the Purity Unleashed third series of Sixth Doctor Adventures! This was a big improvement on the Broadway Belongs to Me! opener and there’s definitely some strong continuity regarding the search for Hebe and linking back to the Purity Undreamed series. This was much like what should have opened the series and whilst it was no secret from the artwork for the series that Patricia McBride would make a comeback, the moment she was revealed still felt triumphant. It’s easy to forget how involved she was in the last series as Hebe’s associate and it’s actually scary to think the former and now lost companion is how Patrica was introduced to the world of time travel and the Doctor. Her ideology is frightening and the way she is trying manipulate time and change history is horrifying. The very name of the political party being the Better Party immediately has negative connotations and actually getting the explanation of Hebe’s disappearance being purely that she was disabled is scary. Patricia is some villain in that regard! She genuinely believes that the world would be better off without imperfections and that’s quite terrible. Her calm nature and just shrug of the shoulders demeanour makes her even more fitting as an enemy. The fact she’s human makes it all the more shocking too. The link back to Chronomancer with her suit abilities is good continuity and her fate by the end of the episode in embracing herself as Purity itself gives credence to the series umbrella title. It’s a mad concept really to think that purity wouldn’t include disabled people as we’ve seen already from Hebe that she can offer a huge amount. She’s a big asset and I’m sure she’ll remain that way once she is found. I liked the setting here of 1910 New Zealand as it’s not very often that we venture this side of the globe, and there was an important voyage that needed to happen as history intended. Meddling was in full force though and it would seem that the Terra Nova expedition wouldn’t be going ahead as planned. I thought tackling with the idea of ensuring that it did sail despite the death it would cause was fantastic and it was some way to try and bring Hebe back. Would it actually change her fate if this was altered? Thomas Rodden was a fine character and I thought Elizabeth too was wonderful. She went onto have quite the life and the time jumping around was fun as we saw her at her Cambridge interview. She was also involved in politics as a MP which was really good stuff too. History had taken quite a shift! Patricia listening to her suit’s instructions was intriguing and just the meeting of Thomas and Martha would cause issues, and did. Jasper Woodward was another great character and the effort to introduce him to Elizabeth was fun stuff and provided some good humour for the Doctor and Mel as they kept busy. The fact Patricia killed Jasper in such a matter of fact way was astonishing and something I really didn’t see coming! It seems the suit had found another way to provide Patricia with her purification and it didn’t involve him. I thought it was a little easy that the Doctor had planted a tracker on her, but using the time and space visualiser earlier in the story was a nice throwback. Overall, an episode that addressed a lot of important points and ideologies whilst setting us up for what is bound to be an exciting finale! A great listen. 

Rating: 8/10