The Gathering

"That's what he does. He takes away your control."

Writer: Joseph Lidster
Format: Audio
Released: September 2006
Series: Main Range 87

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Tegan

Synopsis

On the morning of 22 September 2006, Tegan woke up. She was expecting to spend the day relaxing at home and, that evening, tolerate a party thrown to celebrate her 46th birthday.

But things don't always go as expected. It's been over twenty years since she chose to leave the Doctor. She's got a job, mates... a life.

Meanwhile her friend, Katherine Chambers, makes a decision that could change all their lives, and Tegan discovers that you can never really escape the past...

Verdict

The Gathering was a great story! It was a rather emotional one and after 87 releases, Janet Fielding finally reprised her role as Tegan for Big Finish. Although she didn't quite reprise the role in how we were used to seeing her on screen with the Fifth Doctor. Instead, we got to see her after her departure in Resurrection of the Daleks and back in her native homeland of Australia. I thought it was a brilliant idea to have the Doctor reunited with Tegan 20 years after she had hastily left him. There was a lot of emotion there and the dialogue and relationship between the pair really was excellent. It was the highlight of the story for me and learning that Tegan then had a brain tumour made the story all the more heart-wrenching. The Doctor's reaction to that was quite saddening as he could see that she was just plain miserable and wanted to know why. Tegan's reaction to seeing him at her birthday party was good and I liked how she immediately deduced that she wasn't the reason why he was present. The connections this story had with The Reaping were wonderful and I rather liked how it served as both a prequel and a sequel. I can't imagine how difficult something like that is to write but Lidster pulled it off. The flashbacks of that story and setting up some important elements of it here were great and I liked how Kathy Chambers was back for an immediate return. I really liked her but I was quite surprised by her actions. Seeing the effects that The Reaping had on her was most intriguing and in a world where we rarely see the aftermath of the Doctor's adventures, seeing how his appearance in her life changed her really brought a new dynamic to Doctor Who. Tegan's life had been turned upside down and after seeing the world things could never be the same for her and even after only one encounter, Kathy's life had been drastically altered. Her relationship with James was quite shocking and given how she had seen first hand how deadly the Cybermen could be, the fact she wanted to use their technology, as well as killing Eve, to save Nate was deeply disturbing. The Doctor's brief visit to the Gogglebox was great and I loved how Alan was a huge fan. The references to An Unearthly Child, The Chase and The Visitation were terrific and I also loved the comment about the Doctor's seventh incarnation. The references to Planet of Fire and particularly Logopolis and The Caves of Androzani were very good too. The way the threat of Kathy using Cyber technology was dealt with was pretty good and I liked how this story also loosely set up the events of The Harvest but whilst being a tremendous story, a little bit more needed to happen in the opening part I think. The story only being two parts was different too and hearing just the Fifth Doctor and an older Tegan was welcomed. Overall, a great audio!

Rating: 8/10