Home Truths

"It's not the props that are important. I want to hear the story..."

Writer: Simon Guerrier

Format: Audio

Released: November 2008

Series: Companion Chronicles 3.05

Featuring: First Doctor, Steven, Sara

Synopsis 

There's a house across the waters at Ely where an old woman tells a strange story.

About a kind of night constable called Sara Kingdom. And her friends, the Doctor and Steven. About a journey they made to a young couple's home, and the nightmarish things that were found there. About the follies of youth and selfishness. And the terrible things even the most well-meaning of us can inflict on each other. 

Hear the old woman's story. Then decide her fate.

Verdict 

Home Truths was an excellent audio adventure and a great start to the return of Sara to Doctor Who! I must admit when I first delved into the Companion Chronicles range on the Big Finish website, I we rather surprised to see that Sara had three audio adventures because well, she kind of died in her one and only television appearance alongside the First Doctor and Steven in the absolute epic that is The Daleks' Master Plan. It's twelve parts of joy and the story absolutely holds throughout its entirety, including the much talked about part seven which aired on Christmas Day and saw the Doctor break the fourth wall to wish us all at home a merry Christmas. There isn't really a lot of room to manoeuvre a new Sara story but they just about managed it with the amount of moving around that went on between episodes seven and eight of The Daleks' Master Plan. It was a clever little inclusion and there is no doubting that there could be an extra adventure, or three as I assume with the later audios to come, in between. Jean Marsh read the story very well though I wasn't entirely sure about the revelation that we were being told the story and memories of Sara through her apparent ghost. I really don't know why they just didn't have the story go in real time as would later be the case with quite a few stories, such as The Jigsaw War which was fantastic. Some of the moments described for the First Doctor were magnificent and so brilliantly characterised for William Hartnell's incredible incarnation. The moment where he thought he'd worked out the concept of the house and thought that by willing the kitchen door open it would do just that, but instead he walked into it, was just golden. I really found myself laughing at that one and I must say I think it was the biggest laugh I've had in a Doctor Who story for a long time. The curiosity of both the Doctor and Sara in this story was lovely to see as ever since The Daleks I've just loved how passionately curious this first incarnation of the Doctor is. I say is and not was because we're still getting new adventures with this Doctor, over half a century since he debuted on our screens in a junkyard with an impossible box. Sara telling her story to Robert, or rather the latter wanting to come and here the former's account was very interesting and I did enjoy how he worked out what was going on eventually. He built things up as the story went along and tied everything up very well. I'll give it to him, he was quite the listener! The many references to The Daleks' Master Plan were good and it was fantastic to hear Sara reflecting on some of her questionable actions in that serial, particularly murdering her brother before she could bare to hear the truth. I loved how we explored Sara's history as a police officer and that being linked in with the present setting of the story was really well done which was nice to hear. The concept of the intelligent house was rather intriguing and the use of wishes, from within the mind, was an interesting direction to go I must say. It provided a lot of my mystery and questions which was good. The cliffhanger was really well done which pleased me as sometimes in Companion Chronicles they tend to be a bit weak but that was far from the case here! It appeared Steven was all but dead. Overall though, a really interesting and entertaining story with just some questions over its telling! Did it really happen? Well I guess it's up to me to decide Sara's fate...

Rating: 8/10