The Outliers

"We consume our own brains."

Writer: Simon Guerrier

Format: Audio

Released: October 2017

Series: Early Adventures 4.02

Featuring: Second Doctor, Polly, Ben, Jamie

Synopsis

The TARDIS takes the Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie to a flooded underground town on an alien world. The streets are empty. The houses are bare. Not a trace of life. 

The miners working here are vanishing. And it isn't long before the time-travellers are suspected of being responsible for the disappearances. But even the authorities haven't fully realised the scale of the problem.

There's something else on this world. Something dragging people away. And it won't stop until it's taken them all.

Verdict

The Outliers was a good story to continue my way through the fourth series of Early Adventures! I think there’s a lot of potential to expand on the stories of this quartet as unfortunately we didn’t get too many of them on screen and those that did are almost either wholly or partially missing from the BBC Archives. Thankfully, the wonderful animations have done a brilliant job of providing us with visuals of their adventures but getting more and more from them is just wonderful. With Elliot Chapman effortlessly stepping into the role of Ben and Frazer Hines doing his usual stellar job of taking on the role of the Second Doctor, this feels so genuine and of the time. Authentic is the word I’m looking for and I certainly do think this kind of adventure would more than slot in somewhere in Season 4. The term outliers is a fun one and I wasn’t expecting the TARDIS team themselves to be part of the reference. It’s always fun to have unexplained data! I absolutely adored the continuity from The Power of the Daleks with the Doctor still having the Earth Examiner badge. Of course, we know it wasn’t his but who said he can’t re-use the credentials again? It’s a fun way to bring a new element to the frankly overdone examiner method of getting the Doctor and his companions ingrained into the story so I appreciated the different take. He actually had evidence! Some of the characters here were good with Richard Tipple a strong villain, although I must admit I was less interested when the mysterious creatures actually emerged. The concept of them talking through time was really intriguing and something more could have been made of that, especially with Polly pointing out that they travelled through it so they were perceived differently. I liked that. The cliffhanger to part one was pretty stellar as Chatura realised thanks to Polly’s fixing with the equations that twenty people going missing over a decade was far from the truth. Whilst she thought that was actually a selling point of the safety accomplishments, it turned out people had been going missing at a rate of one every two hours! That is quite the difference. The threat of arconite was good and the shock the Doctor had when it was present sold just how dangerous it was. I thought the creatures trying to communicate by showing the future was decent stuff and the Doctor getting a glimpse of the Time Lords and being surprised by that was a nice foreshadowing of The War Games to come. Hinting at Polly seeing events of Mondas Passing was also a lovely niche reference! I thought the discussion with the creatures in part four was decent but I would liked to have known more about them. The line about eating their own brains was quite something but the Doctor didn’t seem too surprised by that! He always applies a scientific head which is welcomed. The creatures dying at the hands of Tipple was strong stuff and provided the means of the conclusion with our TARDIS crew stopping him. It almost felt like things petered out slightly and I think a bit more of an impactful conclusion could have increased the rating. It just never felt like the stakes were huge. Overall though, still a good listen!

Rating: 7/10