The Mummy Speaks!

"The forgotten magic of the Pharos."

Writer: Alan Barnes

Format: Audio

Released: January 2022

Series: Charlotte Pollard: The Further Adventuress 1.01

Featuring: Eighth Doctor, Charley

Synopsis 

The Carnaval de Paris, 1841. Amid the sideshow tents, the Doctor and Charley discovery something truly novel: an Ancient Egyptian mummy that speaks – despite being dead for more than 4,000 years!

But what the mummy has to say translates into terror for the TARDIS twosome... and proclaims doom for the entire world.

Verdict

The Mummy Speaks! was an excellent start to The Further Adventuress of the Eighth Doctor and Charley! I am so delighted that we have a brand new boxset with this TARDIS pairing as they really were a shining light of the early days of the Monthly Adventures, and now we get four brand new outings! It's nice to have a change of pace with them being two-parters instead of the normal four that occurred with this twosome, and taking them to Paris in 1841 was a brilliant start. The return to these two felt seamless and it was just a delight to hear the Eighth Doctor and Charley together again. They managed to get themselves into some comical trouble early on as they were three months following the funeral of Napoleon, and some insults with Charley thinking his coffin tiny and the Doctor calling him Boney as a nickname really didn't go down well at all! I loved the humour that came with Charley trying to speak French whilst getting to grips with the TARDIS translation circuit, and it was a nice familiar background as we arrived at the Carnaval de Paris, a terrific setting. I must admit that going from the title alone this wasn't where I was expecting things to take place, but the little links to Egypt coming in with the discovery of the sarcophagus and the un-decayed corpse was very interesting. Cagliostro was a fantastic character and his claim of bringing the mummy back to life was a lot of fun. Of course, this turned out to be the Great Khaset and he was far from an ordinary mummy! He wanted to be released from his master after a brave question from Charley in the audience as she asked of the pain he was feeling. There was a lot of action in the story with Charley having lost her scarf and also trying to invent the taxi, whilst the Doctor started speaking with and enlisted the help of a gorilla. It was all going on at quite a fast pace! I thought it was nice that Charley promised Khaset she'd come back but we quickly found the dark truth of Cagliostro and the literal hold he had over the mummy, with possession of his mechanical heart. The Doctor and Charley helped restore the heart to Khaset, but that turned out to be a pretty bad mood as Khaset could continue his mission now. And then a great cliffhanger with the Doctor and Charley blamed for the murder Khaset carried out and set to face the guillotine, something Charley feared upon arrival! It was great stuff. The Doctor escaping death through suspended animation was a little like cheating, but the humour that came from him having had some adventures with the now waistcoat-wearing gorilla was stupendously brilliant. I liked Charley realising the significance of the location and how it was close to where the R101 would come down, resulting in some nice memories of Storm Warning and the flight on the back of Ramsay. The story of how Cagliostro came into possession of the heart was good and a nice little flashback into the past, and the connection with Le Roi in the present tied things up nicely. The reveal of the Hatred as the insectoid beings and their seeing the dead as vehicles and the more preserved they were the better probably came a little late, but I loved the concept. The image of floating pyramids as the ships of those that were more than just the emissary was fantastic and I loved the control through the eye and the order to destroy the neighbours. That was a mid-story cliffhanger! I liked how the mothership had rotted after waiting in sub-space for three millennia, and it didn't take much to cause it to explode. Khaset jumping and proclaiming to return leads me to think we're far from finished with him and the Eighth Doctor, as it could skittle away to safety, albeit with no technology to help it. But what if stayed dormant until the 2020s? Time will tell. Overall, a romp of a start to the series! 

Rating: 9/10