The Queen of Time

The TARDIS comes to a dead stop and a face on the scanner screen invites the crew to come outside. The Doctor leads Jamie and Zoe out into the realm of Hecuba, the self-professed Queen of Time, where the clock is her favourite motif and games are her pastime to ease the boredom of eternity. The Doctor is separated from Jamie and Zoe and they are all subject to Hecuba's tests of courage and skill, and although she promises freedom at the end of the ordeal, they all know that letting them go is the last thing Hecuba wants to do.

This is another of the Big Finish Lost Stories, one which was considered for the screen back in the day but was not optioned. The opening scene of the face of Hecuba on the TARDIS scanner sounds a lot like one which was rumoured to be called The Face of God, but its not mentioned in the interview segment of the audio. The whole thing was pulled out of a two page treatment that was submitted by Ice Warrior creator Brian Hayles; I had a feeling there was a lot of stretching done to the existing material but now I can see why. It's not like there are long dragging bits of silence - that's the death of audio really - but there's this ongoing bit where Hecuba entertains the Doctor by having a several course meal served while Jamie and Zoe are being put through hell, the meal itself being a parade of grotesque dishes made ever so revolting, although I'm not entirely sure what the point of it was. Hecuba for all her refinements and schoolgirl giggling (which... yeah gets on the nerves after a while as do her sudden vicious turns which get predicatable) keeps company with hideous beast servants and eats so truly hideous food; one would think with the power she has she would be surrounded with loincloth clad studs and sipping at the champers. Is her enjoyment of gross food supposed to remind us that she is evil? Trust me, we get it, she's a dreadful selfish creature.

The Doctor knows her kind though - this whole episode is reminiscent of The Celestial Toymaker - so he plays along when he must if only to keep Jamie and Zoe safe. This is the second of the Lost Stories to feature a female protagonist with designs on the Doctor (Prison in Space) so I have to ask: is there something I am missing about Patrick Troughton as a sex symbol? Or in the age of new-Who is some of the theme of the Doctor being desirable to all women starting to creep into the Big Finish theatre?

Jamie wouldn't say no to a go with Hecuba, though, he makes that pretty obvious. In fact, his comments about Hecuba's appearance are very much of the time this was written for with a lot of objectification and so on. There's a notion that this sort of sexism might have been a reason why it might have been declined by the production office; it was the late sixties after all and the concept of the sex object female had really departed with Polly two seasons earlier; Victoria insisted on being treated like a lady and Zoe was too smart for it, and although there were no female villains in those seasons one assumes that they too would not be treated like an object.

There's no real signpost to say if this tale does indeed fit here towards the end of the series; no references to other stories to make it easy to drop in. On the other hand though there's nothing to say not to place it here to extend the last days of season six so long as the quality of the story makes it worthwhile. Despite parts of Queen feeling padded and the whole premise feeling a bit recycled it's a fun tale, fun to hear the regulars still having fun in their roles including Fraser Hines doing the second Doctor again.

And there is still one more of these.

NEXT EPISODE: LORDS OF THE RED PLANET