The Sleeping Blood

Susan remembers a time when the Doctor fell ill while exploring on a strange new planet, and as conventional cures failed and his illness progressed she was forced to leave the TARDIS and strike out on her own to find help. After several tries the ship put down in a disused medical research facility far in the future; antibiotics were obsolete and all medical treatment was now administered through use of nanotechnology. Susan's luck, however, changes with the arrival of a squad of exosuited security personnel; the nanotech which has permeated their society has been hijacked by a terrorist named the Butcher, and they're here to take him out before he kills everyone in the world.

Another tale from before the Doctor and Susan arrive on Earth, which is now becoming the norm for Companion Chronicles with Carole Ann Ford reprising her role as Susan, and quite right, too; William Russell has his own episodes to come once Ian and Barbara leave the TARDIS, and they will have enough flashbacks between televised episodes. Enough care is being taken to ensure that there are no big reveals of series monsters before their time (although in The Alchemists Susan notes that gold is useful for "fighting certain things" which can only mean Cybermen, although where she gets that knowledge from is anyone's guess) and the pre-series continuity is being maintained. The TARDIS still functions properly enough to blend with its surroundings even if the shape it chooses in this episode is not the best fit (signs of the mechanism starting to break down, perhaps). Susan still manages to keep her head though and not go into panic shrieking over the Doctor's health as she did in The Daleks, and as it is being told in a past perspective Ford makes sure to pitch her voice up somewhat to sound like her younger self when engaged in direct dialogue with other characters, and to speak normally while performing the narrative.

As I listened to this one in the car I realized that I was hearing a bit of a statement condemning the health care system, where ordinary people are not always given the best and most effective treatment and the rich and powerful get top notch service when they need it. It's not really anything new in itself but it's not often that Doctor Who makes a big political statement in any of its media. I'm not sure if Martin Day's script is focussed on health care in the United States where it's always been a battle to get care for the poor, or if there's something he is trying to say about the National Health System in the UK. Again, though, it's a theme that is not unique to a Doctor Who narrative, it's just rare when it does happen.

This makes the last of the current Companion Chronicles with Carole Ann Ford providing exclusive narration; she will be back later although the story will be told in other perspectives, and no doubt Big Finish will have her back doing more stories with just her and the Doctor, and some more under the Early Adventures banner now that the role of Barbara Wright has been re-cast to fill out the TARDIS crew that much more.

Big Finish have gone off in some other directions, though, playing around with the possibilities of how things could have been different for the Doctor if he had made other choices. I'll be going there next.

NEXT EPISODE: UNBOUND - AULD MORTALITY