The Martian Dilemma

"Any assassin taking on a fixed point mission ended up dead."

Writer: Darren Jones

Format: Audio

Released: August 2023

Series: Four From Doom's Day 02

Featuring: Doom

Synopsis

Hired assassin Doom is on a mission to save her own life before Death catches up with her. If she can find the Doctor they might be able to help her – but where in Space and Time are they?

These four missions take Doom to a Mediterranean cruise ship in 1966, the planet Mars in the distant past, San Francisco in 1999, and finally desolate planet in a dying solar system. Along the way she meets former TARDIS travellers Ian and Barbara, the mighty Ice Warriors, and Brian the Ood. 

But when a mysterious stranger with silver hair and sunglasses turns up, will he be Doom's salvation?

Verdict

The Martian Dilemma was a decent story to continue my way through the Four From Doom’s Day contribution to the Doom’s Day sixtieth anniversary celebration from BBC Audio! This followed on nicely from The Steel Cascade with Doom arriving on Mars as her mission selection was told at that episode’s conclusion, and the expected encounter with the Ice Warriors. As far as releases go, starting with Doom encountering the very first pair of companions and now meeting the famed Martian warriors is some way to start! I’m enjoying her search for the Doctor more and more as I dive through the stories and going to Mars isn’t the worst place to be looking for him. I liked that she acknowledged that it was known that the Doctor had thwarted the Ice Warriors on numerous occasions, so going to their home world made sense because if he’d been there once, then who knows how many times he’d visited. He wouldn’t show up, and I was surprised we didn’t get much mention of him after the first minute or so, but what we got was entertaining and certainly fast paced. The half hour or so absolutely flew by and I thought Jaye Griffiths did a fine job in the narration. Her take on Doom didn’t quite feel in line with what we’ve heard so far, but it’s probably because the previous story was voiced by Sooz Kempner herself who is of course the face of the character. I liked that we incorporated the different classes of Martian in the story as we had Queen Kellix as the Empress and her husband Azlar as the Ice Lord. I thought it was great to be visiting Mars at a time of its first female leader and that made it no surprise for her to be the target of Doom’s assassination mission. I liked how Doom didn’t have too many details to go on but she understood once she found out who Kellix was and the significance of her in Martian history. I thought the lost city going down as a myth was terrific and it was quite sad that all of Kellix’s achievements would be lost to history. Doom suspecting she was a fixed point in time was intriguing and I really liked the discussion about assassins taking on the impossible missions. You couldn’t mess with history, not even for money. The way Doom worked out who hired her was great fun despite it being rather predictable, but the moment for Azlar when he was found out and his wife looked at him with shock and anger was magnificent. She was ready for progress but he didn’t believe his planet or people would accept her leading that. It was always the jealous husbands. I thought it was good that Doom killed her hirer instead of the culprit as that was a good way to get out of her mission with it being null and void now. However, I was less of a fan of Doom’s mission overrunning by about fifteen minutes. Whilst I thought it was brilliant jeopardy to have Doom removed from her vortex manipulator, and that really did frighten her as the prospect of getting stuck on Mars certainly didn’t appeal, I was just a little annoyed that the mission overran. We saw what happened in Extraction Point when the Ninth Doctor fiddled with the timer and added five minutes which resulted in Death getting very close to Doom, so for this to go a whole fifteen minutes extra felt like poor continuity. However, I am intrigued to hear where things move in the next story especially with Doom selecting a mission at random. Overall, still a good listen!

Rating: 7/10