The Time Tunnel and The Other Woman

Two of the Short Trips adventures from Big Finish are next, and although I placed them both within the last range of Jo's adventures with the Doctor, turns out only one belongs here...

UNIT are made aware of an alarming incident which has left everyone on board a passenger train dead. When the Doctor investigates he discovers that although the passengers only left the station minutes earlier they have all aged to death as if their journey has taken months. With no other alternatives, the Doctor takes the next train through on his own to discover the truth of what went on.

It's not a complicated story at all, fitting in quite well in the time after Planet of the Daleks and without any of the heavy handed foreshadowing of Jo's departure that has popped up in the novels set in this space. Nope, it's the Doctor and Jo (as read by Katy Manning) and a mystery to solve involving lots of dead people and a localized time distortion effect in an area of England which was once rumoured to have been the Devil's resting place. And all over in about a half an hour. Mind you, it was over a little too easily; time may be short on these ones but there's no reason to make the ending as rushed as this one was.


The Other Woman on the other hand takes place back before the Doctor's exile was lifted by the Time Lords and sees him still trying to escape from Earth. Enter the mysterious traveller Callandra whose own ship has broken down on Earth and she needs help. The Doctor obliges as he can relate to being stranded, but then all the men of UNIT are suddenly falling all over themselves trying to help as well, which sets Jo's instincts off. Good Samaritans all? Or does Callandra have some kind of hold over men?

A classic science fiction device that is - the persuasive seductive alien woman with the series regulars wrapped around her finger, and its takes the female protagonist to be immune to her charms to set everyone free. Smacks of the end of the fourth series of Angel with everyone under the spell of Jasmine and her beauty, meanwhile she's a rotting festering heap of maggoty evil. Callandra isn't exactly like that, but she's not far off. One would have thought the Doctor would be immune to that kind of thing but his desire to get away from Earth makes him more vulnerable to it than usual.

Now for some full length fare...

NEXT EPISODE: THE TRANSCENDENCE OF EPHROS