Embrace the Darkness

"Your eyes... You've lost your eyes!"

Writer: Nicholas Briggs

Format: Audio

Released: April 2002

Series: Main Range 31

Featuring: Eighth Doctor, Charley

Synopsis 

The Doctor and Charley travel to the remote Cimmerian System to unravel the mystery of its sun. But darkness has already embraced the scientific base on Cimmeria IV in more ways than one. In a fight for survival, the Doctor must use all his wits against a deadly artificial lifeform and an ancient race whose return to the Cimmerian System threatens suffering and death on an apocalyptic scale.

Verdict 

Embrace the Darkness was a pretty decent audio adventure but I did think it could have been a lot better. This was unusually not the greatest of stories which came as a slight surprise as I've absolutely loved the pairing of the Eighth Doctor and Charley in their previous adventures! Now don't get me wrong, the pair were still magnificent together here and were probably the saving grace of the story when it comes to the rating, but they haven't had what I'd consider to be a bad story yet. That is up until I completed this audio. Any story that scores below an 8/10 from me I would consider bad. Now that may be harsh as 70% is pretty good but when it comes to Doctor Who, I'm always striving for at least an 8/10. This story actually started off promisingly with the Doctor intrigued by the sudden appearance of a cluster of Type-70 TARDISes. I'm not sure what that was all about but after the narration in Seasons of Fear, I get the feeling the Time Lords are going to catch up with the Doctot about his saving of Charley in Storm Warning, an adventure that seems an awfully long time ago! I really liked Charley in this story and it was about time that she was angered by the Doctor. I really loved the way she stood up to him in the latter parts of the story and it was probably my highlight of the entire audio adventure. She was angered by the fact he'd ran off to the problem without her, in order to save her, and then she was almost outraged at the fact the Doctor accepted full responsibility for what he saw as interference. There did seem to be a more than feasible excuse I must say though. The Cimmerians were an intriguing race and I liked the revelation at the end of the story. Orllensa was a great guest character and I loved how she didn't want pity when she'd lost her eyes. Speaking of eyes, this is where things got lost for me sadly. I wasn't overly struck on the plot and the fact that the most likely hypothesis to the events was that we were dealing with an alien optician was pretty appalling in my opinion. The cliffhanger to part one was actually good but what followed wasn't. I just don't find it believable in any kind of way that two people, intelligent enough to be working as part of the team that they were, could possibly mistake their eyes being burned away for darkness. I'm sorry but that's balderdash. Rubbish. The games of draughts were a nice inclusion as I don't mind a game myself from time to time! I'm not entirely sure why they persisted with some of the quiet conversations either. That really was irritating me. The plot had tendencies to be quite boring at some intervals and although audio is obviously going to rely on a mass annount of dialogue, I felt this was perhaps too dialogue-heavy. But anyway, the story wasn't all bad. ROSM was pretty good! I loved how he immediately stopped the Doctor from saying his repetition at the start. But even he could get annoying. Overall, a slightly disappointing story that just didn't quite get going. It's a good thing Paul McGann and India Fisher were present to try and save something! 

Rating: 7/10