Auld Mortality

"I have no interest in changing the course of history."

Writer: Marc Platt

Format: Audio

Released: May 2003

Series: Doctor Who Unbound 1.01

Featuring: The Doctor, Susan

Synopsis

What if...

the Doctor and Susan had never left Gallifrey?

In a marble mausoleum, deep in the cisterns beneath the Capitol, Gallifrey's favourite author faces his ultimate destiny. 

Who is the woman who claims to be his granddaughter?

Who is the sepulchral figure in robes of night?

Which path should Hannibal's army take to Rome?

And on a snowy mountain high in the Alps, the Doctor remembers the ultimate question: What if he and Susan had never left Gallifrey?

Verdict

Auld Mortality was an intriguing listen to say the least! I have always been fascinated by the idea of the Doctor Who Unbound range and I'm glad to have finally started here. I thought the funky new take on the intro theme was terrific and really set the tone for a unique audio story. I liked the idea of the Doctor being on Gallifrey as an author a lot as if he wasn't travelling the universe through space and time, then at least he was writing about it! The mention of a Thalek army was very intriguing and I'd love for that to get its own story at some point. I wasn't expecting the appearance of a Roman army, never mind a talking elephant! There were lot of different elements thrown together and it is far from what I would expect of a premise with the Doctor and Susan not leaving Gallifrey as we would eventually see in The Name of the Doctor. Geoffrey Bayldon's take on this alternate version of the First Doctor was pretty decent and I liked how the Doctor here was one of history. He was using the possibility generator as his own way of travel to acquaint himself with the past of other worlds. Badger was an interesting character and the idea of the Doctor being controlled on Gallifrey worked well. The echoes of Susan calling for her grandfather were brilliant and I thought it was good to have her arrive as a grown up character and quite different from the version we saw with the First Doctor on screen. That was quite refreshing. Susan's entry into the possibility generator after her grandfather was great and I was surprised that Badger so desperately wanted to delete her. There was clearly something fishy going on! The Doctor not knowing who Susan was and thinking that she was mistaken in being called grandfather was a powerful moment. Of course, with the alternate representation of the Doctor here it's difficult to take things at face value, but learning of the Doctor having a family that seemed to mutually disown each other was quite sad. That familial recollection allowed him to remember Susan and how she was the only one who saw things the same way the Doctor did. He was euphoric when he realised he was reunited with his grandchild all grown up and that was a marvellous moment. I thought it was also a nice detail to learn that Susan was the daughter of the Doctor's daughter as we never really get to learn of anything of that generation between the pair. The Doctor getting to vent about the Time Lords and how they only catalogued the universe is always fun and Bayldon pulled it off pretty well here. Susan revealing that she had her own grandchildren was a nice moment and the Doctor was absolutely delighted to learn of this fact. It's so rare for the Doctor, in any depiction, to show emotion like he did here so that was really nice. The talk of the moment where the Doctor did have an eye on a TARDIS crate ship was fun and I liked how he reminisced on how he was going to take Susan to travel the universe. When Susan tried to leave, things turned quite dark as the Doctor was controlled but she soon understood why. Quences was the great grand-uncle of the Doctor's family, but Susan knew that he was supposed to have been dead for hundreds of years. His consciousness had been linked to Badger after death instead of deposited into the Matrix which was an interesting development, but perhaps not as surprising as finding that Susan was on the verge of becoming President! It was she that had sent the presidential invitation that never got to the Doctor and I thought that was another sad development for this version of the Doctor as he had missed out. The Roman links in the story were not my favourites, but Quences having interfered with Hanibal's route was good. The Doctor's planned escape out of the possibility generator being the TARDIS, only to find that it was just a conceit, was great and they seemed to be stuck. Except, the Doctor questioned what if he had taken a different path in life with a line almost foreshadowing the plot of Turn Left! That provided escape as this was the Doctor's world and from there we were able to encounter flowers with the smell of time and possibility trees with memories which were fantastic. The Doctor questioning if Susan was real seemed a little odd, but his description of seeing alternate versions of Gallifrey and how they always did nothing was again quite powerful and you could hear the frustration. I loved how he had seen the mirroring of the Doctor we know spiralling across the universe. That was lovely and it was fun to play with the idea of so many paths to be chosen for him. Things weren't finished there though as Quences was always linked to Susan and we discovered that he was there for all previous Presidents of the Supreme Council, in the background in dark robes whispering in their ears. It was revealed that he was Auld Mortality, and after so long there was finally a President in the family. More could have been made of that in my opinion, as it didn't really take long for Susan to banish him with some help from the elephant tusk! The Doctor being helped by Susan to see that the TARDIS console was there all along under his endless paperwork was nice and she was pushing him to now escape and see the universe, and his retaliation of wanting her to come with him and be wonderers in the fourth dimension was a lovely way to end things. Overall, a fascinating and unique listen that probably should have been more focused on Gallifrey's ongoings. 

Rating: 7/10