The Apocalypse Mirror

The TARDIS makes an accidental landing in a city is a state of terror; the people rarely go outside and when they do they are attacked by fearsome metal bird-like creatures and then vanish. The leaders of the city are incapable of making any decisions about how to deal with any crisis - including the imminent impact of a meteorite which will wipe out everything when it strikes. And on top of this, the odd time someone can see another city overlain on this one, a better one where it is bright and clean and more pleasant than this cold dingy one. If only they could get there.

Well this is different. It's not a very complicated tale for starters; there's a mystery afoot and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe are as usual suspected of having something to do with it until they start to persuade the powers that be that they are there to help; it's pretty standard "base under siege" formula for the Troughton era. Fraser Hines does most of the work here providing voices for the entire cast save for Wendy Padbury in a supporting role as Zoe again.

As far as continuity goes here, though, The Apocalypse Mirror could really be dropped anywhere in season 6 after The Isos Network; there's no preamble set it in Zoe's future along with the previous three stories nor in Jamie's post War Games amnesiac life, it's just the TARDIS crew on an adventure. Jamie speaks in past tense but there are not enough clues to really place it anywhere specific. And without the framework of retrospection, to me a Companion Chronicle adventure doesn't really seem to be doing what they should: telling the story from the companion's point of view but from some time after the events. What we have here is really just a simple short tale with a bit of a cut down cast, not something that is being looked back on in horror or joy from the future. With Jamie and Zoe, though, it's not like there are a lot of ways to keep them telling stories; as I said before the device of sudden recall for Jamie will only work so many times, and with Zoe the interrogation of the Company is probably going to drive her mad or kill her. There's far more potential for Zoe to tell these stories within her future framework, but maybe as a boxed set of a few together linked by her escape from the Company, maybe desperate to reconnect with the Doctor once everything comes back to her.

Of course Big Finish can do what they want, and they show good judgement in almost everything they do produce, keeping within their limits as defined by the BBC's license but also being mindful of the universe they themselves have created in the nooks and crannies of the established series. My grumbles about continuity are my own; I would have preferred to have known this was not being told from the future perspective so I could have slid it in between The Final Sanction or The Colony of Lies. That said I have but two more to go before I am moving onto the next Doctor's era, so we shall see where they should be placed.

NEXT EPISODE: THE DYING LIGHT