The Emperor of Eternity

Victoria remembers how the TARDIS once brought her, the Doctor and Jamie to China after colliding with an object in space. While the TARDIS recovers the crew are suspected of being first spies, and then of being keepers of a secret of eternal life; the Doctor is taken away to the Imperial City where he is commanded to surrender that secret to the Emperor, and Victoria and Jamie are left to mount a perilous rescue.

As a Companion Chronicle the story is again a shorter romp than usual, but it still feels like a more involved episode with both Deborah Watling and Fraser Hines reprising their roles as Victoria and Jamie (this was actually the first time they had worked together since Fury From The Deep). Despite being what is referred to as a "two hander" with two actors delivering the tale, this is still very much a Victoria narrative with Jamie's lines only providing dialogue, not anything of the narrative. The result there is Jamie doesn't so much feel under-used as he just feels peripheral... same sort of thing which happened in House of Cards with Anneke Wills. The Doctor doesn't seem to suffer this fate though, even if he never has a voice of his own; Victoria relates his words as they were spoken to her and her recounting is tinged with her own observations of the Doctor and his mannerisms, and the emotional connection she has with him as a sort of second father.

Emperor is a bit at odds with its placement within series continuity, being that it is a purely historical tale dropped into the "monster era" where every story had a new nasty monster to combat; there had not been a purely historical episode on TV since Jamie's debut in The Highlanders although the expanded universe of Doctor Who has provided a few more as well as this one. This is, however, the first time Victoria goes into the past; everything else has been the future (from her perspective anyways) or a few alien worlds. She is not a history buff herself, but she knows China to hear it mentioned, and being on Earth in an area she recognizes (kind of) should come as a great relief to her, until she realizes that people in the past could be just as horrible as aliens and future people. Still, as far as she's concerned this is all in the past, all hindsight; she's made her choice to live a normal life without the daily horrors, even if she can still remember them with startling clarity. Her personal continuity at this point is not really established but although she does not mention any family she could be telling the tale from anytime in her future. This might not seem very important at this point, but given where Victoria's future will take her, it will matter eventually.

Just not yet.

NEXT EPISODE: THE STORY OF EXTINCTION