The Doll of Death

Long after her time with UNIT is over, Jo Grant remembers a time when the Doctor investigated an anomaly where time began to run backwards. The temporal effect is rooted to a strange artifact closely guarded by a Professor Saunders who refuses to let anyone near it, despite the strange haunting by dolls he is experiencing. The enigmatic Mrs Killebrew seems to know more about the item than she wants to admit, and everyone is at risk from a pack of hounds which is hunting for the item backwards across the timelines.

This is the first Companion Chronicles audio to feature Jo Grant and Katy Manning steps almost effortlessly back into her television role after an absence of  thirty five years by that time. Fan author Marc Platt delivers a script that only he can deliver: a creepy nasty setting and a confusing runaround across bisecting rewinding timelines. Platt's very first foray into Doctor Who was 1989's Ghost Light and he has utilized some of his best devices again here in Doll such as the creepy Victoriana (in this case, the dolls), an isolated group of people under threat (people moving in reverse can see the "normal" time flow but can't interact with it and can't call for help) and a convoluted premise (again, time running backwards).

It's been a long time for Jo Grant; she's still married to Cliff and is back in London for a conference and can't help but think back to the old days when alien invasions seemed to happen on Fridays without fail. As far as series continuity goes, this one would have taken place somewhere during the Doctor's exile, possibly between The Daemons and Day of the Daleks. Once the Doctor realizes that Saunders' artifact is possibly a temporal device of sorts it's logical that he wonders if he himself can use it to escape from Earth at last.

Everyone else who should be there is there - the Brig, Mike Yates, Sergeant Benton... it's a proper return to the UNIT days for Jo's first flashback tale to new (to us) adventures. And there are plenty more out there to enjoy...

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