Once and Future: Two's Company

"If you need me, I'll be in 1963!"

Writer: Lisa McMullin

Format: Audio

Released: August 2023

Series: Once and Future 04

Featuring: Sixth Doctor, Harry, Jackie, Lady Christina 

Synopsis

Back on Earth, the Doctor finds a clue in the search for the origins of the degeneration weapon. In his Sixth body, he meets Jackie Tyler and Lady Christina de Souza – thrown together by fate, or something more? – in pursuit of a powerful item of jeweller.

Meanwhile, a Time Lord renegade has duped Harry Sullivan into helping him stop the Doctor's travel before they begin – and all are set on a collision course.

Verdict

Two's Company was an excellent story to continue my way through the Once and Future celebration for Doctor Who’s sixtieth anniversary! I must admit prior to listening and when the story details were announced for this one I was a little sceptical by the assembly of familiar characters as they all just felt a little all over the place. I’d figured that the Curator’s appearance in The Artist at the End of Time would be all for Colin Baker’s involvement in the series, but alas he got a good chance to shine here in his signature sixie incarnation. I thought it was good though to get a little bit of an extended cameo from the Third Doctor at the start and that really helped with Harry’s involvement. I thought it was really intriguing that UNIT were in the business of collecting items related to the Time War as there’s a whole lot of potential there, and just mentioning it around incarnations of the Doctor prior to the eighth incarnation could be deadly for the smooth passing of time. He shouldn’t know about it, but on this occasion the version we saw here was actually suffering from a weapon fired within the confines of that war. Exploring the degeneration effect further was really good and probably something that was missing from the earlier stories in the series, but at least we’re getting it now and I am a big fan. I thought the reference to Planet of the Spiders from Harry was fantastic when it came to the Third Doctor degenerating into the Sixth, as he knew what should have happened and which face came next. But that was all in the past for the Doctor at this point. I thought the 2006 setting was fun to have Jackie Tyler involved and her worrying after Rose was done well. I thought it was quite funny for her to not be impressed with the items she’d collected on her travels despite the importance of one here! Lady Christina was another great character to pair alongside and she developed a strong relationship with Jackie which was nice. The idea of ‘Melody’ aka River Song setting them up was lovely and just a fun idea. I’d have loved to have gotten that meeting between Jackie and River though. Any more of them together is most welcomed. I thought the main enemy in the form of the Renegade was superb and with this being my first experience of this Time Lord who holds onto his incarnations, I’m quite glad it was early on in his life as the Two. It’s a fascinating concept and I look forward to exploring it further, but for now it was tremendous and Michael Maloney was outstanding as a Gallifreyan villain. The building of the misperception filter was really good and I found the whole device rather interesting. The Two being worried about regenerating in the future was brilliant because we know what’s to come with him and multiple voices of past incarnations inside his head, and it was just bad enough with one at the moment. Oh what he’ll become! One of the highlights of the audio was when Lady Christina got out the side cart for her motorcycle and the Doctor having to go in it! Jackie was on the back but the Doctor being in the cart was quite the image! I thought things ended a little lightly but as a whole this was a fine adventure. A really strong celebration story!

Rating: 9/10