The Doctor's Tale

The TARDIS lands in England in 1400, mere months after King Henry IV has seized the throne for himself from King Richard II. In the guise of pilgrims, the Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Vicki attend the feast of Epiphany and fall under the suspicion of Archbishop Thomas Arundel, his ire stirred even more by Barbara's recitation of a tale by Chaucer, who was a favourite of the deposed King. While the fate of Richard II is unknown and his wife Isabella grieves, the travellers become further and further entwined in a history they know they cannot change even as events progress to their own deaths.

Yup, England and kings again. I suppose with a country so rich in the history of a monarchy there are bound to be heaps of opportunities for this kind of an adventure. Having them so close together, though, is a bit of a stretch. But there are always new adventures being crafted, maybe some can go between this and The Plotters to build a buffer.

The story goes the usual routes, with the travelling companions separated to divide up the story, but as with other adventures with the full(ish) cast the parts of the Doctor and Barbara are downplayed somewhat even if they are handled well by William Russell and Maureen O'Brien doing double duty with their own roles of Ian and Vicki. The Doctor and Barbara depart for Canterbury and leave Ian and Vicki to continue their own adventure at Sonning Palace; Vicki becomes a companion to the furious Queen Isabella and Ian greases the royal wheels by invoking the title bestowed on him by Richard the Lionheart: Sir Ian Chesterton of Jaffa. No-one makes too much of a fuss about the fact that the Crusades were almost 200 years in the past, though.

So lots of enemies all around, most prominent is Arundel himself who demands the TARDIS crew to recant their blasphemous ways or be send to be judged by God (ie: killed). Arundel is also on a mission to have Chaucer killed and all his works burned, including The Canturbury Tales which Barbara knows so well and has taken to read to the people. There's also the matter of the sneaky Sir Robert de Wensley who shifts his allegiances back and forth but has a real desire for Barbara, and taunts Ian with his proclamation that she will never be his. Ian, of course, doesn't care for that.

I think I personally would have enjoyed this one a lot better if it was not in among so many other historicals of the same ilk. It's not a bad story on its own - how could it be with Marc Platt writing it - and it is much more authentic in feel than The Plotters, but it's just a thematic rerun insofar as how it lands within the continuity I am putting together. That's just me, though; when Big Finish releases one of these I doubt all of fandom stops what they are doing and goes back to An Unearthly Child to start again. But there is a second volume of Companion Chronicles to come from Big Finish, as well as another series of Early Adventures with this crew, so my answer may lie there. The fact that at the end of the story the Doctor asks Vicki to find him the manual for the space-time visualizer he too from the planet Xeros in The Space Museum  allows for this tale to link directly to the next one, so whatever Big Finish do, I suspect, will place their next audios before this one somewhere.

But next, back to televised episodes.

NEXT EPISODE: THE CHASE