Pioneers: Northern Lights

"You're one of my heroes."

Writer: Robert Valetine

Format: Audio

Released: May 2023

Series: Ninth Doctor Adventures 9.02

Featuring: Ninth Doctor

Synopsis 

The Doctor crashes to Earth and finds himself in the Arctic – but not quite alone. The Aurora Borealis are even more unearthly than usual...

Intrepid explorer Fridtjof Nansen is trying to get home as alien forces close in. The Doctor knows Nansen has a part to play in history – can he save the future?

Verdict 

Northern Lights was a decent story to continue my way through the Pioneers ninth series of Ninth Doctor Adventures! This particular boxset certainly has a feeling of being three isolated stories which is an absolutely fine format, and there really was not even a mention or hint of a reference to the previous adventure of The Green Gift. That’s not a problem in the slightest, but I do find it slightly odd given the bridging we had in that episode to have the latest two series overlap. Whilst I did enjoy this episode, I can’t help but feel slightly misled or somewhat oversold on the umbrella title for this series. Maybe that’s just my ignorance but I wouldn’t consider there to be a well known pioneer in the previous episode and I didn’t think that Nansen and Johansen were particular pioneers either! They were really fun characters though and I enjoyed their quest for scientific knowledge. They’d done incredibly to get so close to the North Pole and just hearing their struggles was very realistic. They were hunting for a polar bear and looked at it purely in terms of how long it would feed them. That’s a dangerous place to be in not knowing where or when your next meal was coming from. I was a big fan of their explanation to the Doctor of why they turned around when they were so close to the North Pole being that they were scientists not adventurers. Despite the achievement and time away from their families, this was all about knowledge and I thought that was great. I must admit I was quite taken aback by the amount of time they’d been away from their loved ones and missing out on family time without any communication must be incredibly tough, especially with a young daughter. My little boy is nearly two and even though I do have the odd football trip or day away from him, the beauty of Snapchat and FaceTime make me feel like I’m never far away and I can always see what he’s up to. But of course technology here wasn’t what it is now so that just wasn’t possible! Their reaction to the Doctor’s arrival was a little bit disappointing given they were men of science, but it was easily forgotten after the humour of the Doctor revealing that the very place he was stood would one day be named after the two people he was meeting! That was a brilliant Doctor moment and he immediately tried to cover his tracks. But he put his foot in it again later in the episode by having the pair of scientists basically overhear their future and the significance they’d play in humanity’s history. Although at this point that was the future. I thought the Aurora was an interesting element in the story and the idea of a sentient being made of similar stuff to the northern lights was fascinating. I wasn’t a big fan of their voice and that’s a shame given the format was audio as that’s all there was to go on for them. The fact they fed on organically because there weren’t any other energy sources left on Earth for their needs was good and that’s where the Doctor stepped in to defend Nansen and Johansen when it seemed the Aurora may feed on them. The Doctor demanded they were off the menu.   Sadly, once the Aurora departed I felt the episode really petered out and I couldn’t believe how quickly the bulk of the story had ended! We basically then had a twelve minute epilogue with the Doctor catching up with them in their future once receiving the Nobel Prize and having achieved their contributions to history. Whilst fine, it was a little underwhelming and lacked oomph for the story as a whole to finish on. Regardless, a good little adventure. Here’s hoping for a strong finale!

Rating: 7/10