The Lady of Mercia

"You've always wanted to see history up close."

Writer: Paul Magrs

Format: Audio

Released: May 2013

Series: Monthly Adventures 173

Featuring: Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough

Synopsis

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa to the University of Frodsham, close to where the warrior queen Æthelfrid fought a desperate and bloody rearguard action against the savage Danes. Over a thousand years later, in 1983, battle is still being raged, with student activists taking on savage funding cuts... and disrupting a conference about Æthelfrid convened by history professor John Bleak.

Meanwhile, over in the Physics Department, Dr Philippa Stone is working night and day on a top-secret project – but can her theoretical time machine really be the solution to the university's problems?

Present and past are about to collide – and the results, as the TARDIS crew is about to discover, will be far from academic!

Verdict

The Lady of Mercia was a really strong audio adventure to continue my way through the monthly releases from Big Finish! I’m always a fan of exploring this quartet because we barely got a chance to see them on screen and they’re in a strong groove in the Monthly Adventures now. I thought this was a good chance to allow Tegan to shine and whilst the CD artwork made it clear that she would play the titular role, I thought how we got there was really good. The Doctor was a little mischievous right from the off in landing the TARDIS in 1983 and being on the hunt for something specific. He of course kept that quiet but the time traces on show were intriguing. Philippa Stone was a really strong character and her discovery of what was essentially time travel was rather impressive considering that this was essentially a contemporary adventure for this TARDIS team! The Doctor, Turlough and Nyssa not being human was fun as they still considered this incredible discovery as basic and primitive. It’s a fine dynamic to have four different species travelling in the TARDIS. The relationship between Philippa and Bleak was intriguing because they worked really well together in having the humanities and science interest combined. The idea of a university course that would involve the science of time travel and the history of first hand exploration in the past was a brilliant concept! That’s definitely a university course I would be interested in and whilst I did enjoy my methods studying History to a Master’s level, there wouldn’t be anything like first hand experience. The fact both of them were getting consumed by the work and actually were cheating on the other was almost humorous in how it was revealed when they thought they were going to die! Tegan getting transported back into the past thanks to the connection she felt with the sword of Æthelfrid was very interesting! The Dark Ages Queen was fantastic as a character and it was a really intriguing look into a period of history not often explored. I don’t mind admitting that I have no knowledge of the tenth century and I’d never heard of this monarch before, but Bleak was on hand to provide everything we needed to know which was really welcomed and certainly beneficial. Just hearing northern England referred to as Mercia was different and somehow not a name I had ever heard before. It was fun stuff though. The relationship Tegan garnered with Æthelfrid was really good and I loved that she took the place of Ælfwynn when the princess took the reverse route of Tegan and Bleak. That was a really fun dynamic and tied in nicely with the image of her on the artwork. She could get away with the likeness and she revelled in it! Tegan certainly was the star of the show here. I thought Turlough had a pretty quiet story but that’s not a huge surprise given that we have four main characters! I thought the exploration into the past was good and whilst the conclusion lacked in suspense, it was still nicely done to have the time machine destroyed. The death of the Queen at the hands of her brother was also great and explained definitively the history of her death! Overall, a great listen.

Rating: 8/10