Here There Be Monsters

Susan has nightmares. In her dreams she hears the sound of explosions and a voice from the past which she cannot forget. She says it is a curse of her people to have such clear recall of events. And she remembers everything, remembers the time when she, along with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara arrived on a spaceship piloted by a sentient plant. The ship is on a mission to benchmark a trail across the stars for humanity, but the Doctor demands that the work be stopped immediately as it puts the whole space time continuum in danger of unravelling, and from monsters which dwell on the other side of fabric of space and time itself.

Here There Be Monsters is one of the Companion Chronicles range from Big Finish, bringing Carole Ann Ford into the studio for the first time to narrate an adventure from Susan's perspective. In the continuity of the series Susan speaks from a time after she has left the TARDIS but the tale is from a time when she and the Doctor had been travelling with Ian and Barbara for some time, perhaps in the series gap between The Reign of Terror and Planet of Giants. Although there is an additional co-star to provide a voice for another character, that of the First Mate, Carole Ann Ford alters her voice's inflection from time to time to reflect the lines which would have been spoken by the other series regulars. How does it sound? She admits in the CD extras after that there is no way she would be able to imitate everyone's voices, but it is still effective enough. Seeing a story completely from Susan's point of view allows for a bit more introspection than she was normally allowed on the TV series, and as the script was written in 2008 it has the ability to reference things seen in the new episodes of the show and build on them from her perspective; there are references to her home planet (without actually naming it - that happens later) and some other hints about why she and the Doctor left it behind, although she says her own presence on the TARDIS is accidental at best. She also hints that she is getting ready to leave the Doctor to start her own life, although when it actually does happen in The Dalek Invasion of Earth she is not immediately pleased about it as we have seen.

The story has a far more science fiction edge to it than some others; the TARDIS crew have been on spaceships before, such as in The Sensorites, but the technology being used on board is more in line with later scripts and stories. It's not as if the script takes the original crew into the realm of cyberpunk or any other radical departures, but the difference is noticeable and is almost refreshing; out of the stuffy small sets of the BBC studios it's easy to imagine a more vast setting with the tendrils of the pilot plant, Rostrum, hanging everywhere. The concept of the pilot itself is something which may not have been attempted in the original series out of sheer practicality, but other alien plants, indeed ones which can talk, would show up in later days. Human society in this tale has progressed to a point where the humans sound like idle creatures, spending their days creating art and poetry and breeding sentient plants to do their work for them (a theme which would be revisited in a 1986 tale called Terror of the Vervoids). Exactly how practical that would be remains to be seen, but some other author might pick that angle up and use it some more.

Susan's life on Earth with David carries on, but she will still remember her time on the TARDIS.

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