Defender of the Earth: Freedom or Death

"Desperation is a motivator."

Writer: Alice Cavender

Format: Audio

Released: November 2023

Series: Tenth Doctor Chronicles 2.03

Featuring: Tenth Doctor

Synopsis

While awake, May campaigns as a Suffragette. However, whenever she sleeps, May dreams of a war she cannot comprehend. A war on a world full of impossible things.

May needs a doctor. Luckily for her, one's just arrived.

Verdict

Freedom or Death was another great audio to continue my way through the Defender of the Earth second series of Tenth Doctor Chronicles! This has been a very consistent series so far and whilst it is a shame there’s no kind of continuity across the stories and them all being standalone adventures, I’m very much enjoying! Jacob Dudman did another decent job in the role of the Tenth Doctor and I think his strengths with this incarnation are certainly in calmer dialogue. I do think he stretches a little more into Eleventh Doctor territory when it comes to action or requiring a raised tone, but as a whole it’s a welcomed addition to the Tenth Doctor library! There’s a lot of potential for what can happen with this Doctor travelling alone as there’s plenty of room with the Specials or even the gap between Series 3 and 4. His reaction when discovering he was in London was fun and really fitted in with the umbrella title of the series as he was delighted to be on his favourite planet. I’m surprised he’s not sick of London by now though! Having him encounter the time of the Suffragette Movement is brilliant and that’s a period in history I’m mightily interested in. It’s actually frightening to think just how much the upper echelons of society were in control of politics and therefore life with the requirements needed to vote. Women were excluded outright but as the Doctor pointed out a man still needed to own property to be eligible. I liked that. May was a superb character as the suffragette who filled the companion role and I enjoyed the relationship she built with the Doctor. The plight of women at this time of a century or so in the past is not all that long ago and I like positioning the Doctor on their side. He wouldn’t be anywhere else of course but it was a nice visual to have him wearing the pin badge. It was a simple way to show support. May was more than just a suffragette though because she had something of a telepathic link that the Doctor could feel seeping out of her. She had nightmares of a war she didn’t take part in, but they were so real that it was almost as if she was actually there which was terrific to explore. I thought the regeneration effect for her psychic wounds was intriguing although it didn’t quite feel accurate. Harold was a decent character as the man in the episode that was going to be needed with a focus on suffragettes, but he was a little deranged. The enemy being Cosmo was good and I liked the idea of a single subconscious spread across numerous hosts. It made the enemy a little more difficult to defeat, even if it was quite predictable how they would be stopped. I liked the concept behind the Symbiol in feeding on anger and the bitterness of the Suffragette Movement with the likes of gender dispute and hunger strikes meant this was a rife time in history. Feeding aplenty! So the human embrace that produced oxytocin was the way to defeat it, and that was something the Doctor could easily tap into. It was a triumphant and rather feel good ending, and I really liked May’s reaction to the TARDIS. She couldn’t believe the scale! The Doctor pondering on how she would be if he took her with him was a nice touch as well, although I’m not entirely sure she’d be the right fit as a companion. But for a one off here, this was great stuff! Overall, a really strong and important episode.  

Rating: 8/10