The Sleeping City

Ian has been detained by the authorities; the disappearance of two school teachers and a student in 1963 London attracted a lot of attention, and now that Ian and Barbara have returned two years later without Susan there are questions that the authorities want answered. When Ian tries to explain the Doctor he finds that his interrogators already know of him, but they want to know more and they want to know what happened to Ian and Barbara while they were with him. Ian begins to talk about the time the TARDIS brought them to the city of Hisk; a city where people's minds would come together when the dreamed, but shared dreams do not guarantee safety for the dreamers.

It's not exactly Nightmare on Elm Street but it does owe a bit to it, even in a vague way. Then again it could owe more to the Otherworld series of novels where people are bound together in their sleep on a virtual reality platform. In either one, though, the dreamtime boogeyman is a common notion. This is not to say that The Sleeping City has a particular stalker figure who bumps people off in their sleep, but if you dream of a certain avatar - a nasty black bird - then you typically don't last long. The purpose of the shared reaming in Hisk is to bring the minds of the citizens together in harmony and realize dreams they have that they cannot live in the real world, but it does turn out to be a handy means to murder. There's atmosphere to this story, that sense of dread that comes with nightmares and terror that can't be escaped even when you open your eyes.

Ian's calm under the heat of interrogation is now second nature to him after being with the Doctor; he keeps his cool while he speaks of things people would never believe, only getting angry when he believes that Barbara may be mistreated, or if he thinks the Doctor himself is in trouble and needs his help. The implied setting in Ian's own continuity would be in the few days following The Chase, but as William Russell is now 91 it's a bit harder to envision him as his young self again when you can hear his older voice. Makes it easier for him to do his bang-on impressions of the Doctor, though, when he needs to. He can't quite do the girl voices for Vicki, though, and it actually gets turned around into a bit of a joke as the tale carries on.

And dig that cover art - there's Toronto's CN Tower right there in the cityscape!

So here ends this run of the Companion Chronicles. There are heaps more, though, but Ian's turn at narration has for now come to and end. Ian himself does return in future a few times in a couple surprises, and there are still more Companion Chronicles and Early Adventures out there from Big Finish, so this story will still go on for quite some time. Life after the Doctor, at least as far as Susan and now Ian are concerned, does go on.

But now that Ian and Barbara have left, the TARDIS is feeling a little empty, and life with the Doctor is still a reality for Vicki...

NEXT EPISODE: THE TIME MEDDLER