Jamie is in an interrogation room being grilled about his
involvement with the Doctor and Zoe and the trouble they have caused for the
ruling class of the planet they have landed on. There is a revolt afoot outside
the prison, and Jamie feels confident that if he waits it out the Doctor will
come get him. The Doctor always wins. But Jamie is experiencing his time in the
cell out of sync with the rest of time, and moments are happening out of order
around him. The way out is a door only he can see, and the only way he can
escape is to sort the order of events around him out and find the door’s
release code. If only he were clever.
Now this one was interesting. Big Finish have experimented
with the notion of events around characters happening out of sequence for
dramatic effect, not quite to the same extent as a Quentin Tarantino film but
along those lines. In those cases, though, the characters were seen in their
respective timelines and were part of the sequences being presented; Jamie here
is fully aware that things are not happening in the proper order while his
interrogator, Moran, is unaware and thinks it’s a tactic to convince him that
Jamie is mad. The increasing din of trouble outside the door, though, adds the
pressure to the goings on inside the room and the interrogation gets a bit
frantic and heated in spots, then snaps back to a quieter moment in contrast.
The overall feel of the tale is one of two people trapped in an elevator, even
if one gets to leave sometimes.
On his own against an interrogator and an unseen presence
Jamie has to rely on himself to get out of this situation. Fighting his way out
is more his style – indeed, as the Doctor states at one point, he was born into
it – but when he has to think he’s at a bit of a loss. He muses that this would
be more Zoe’s thing, but if the whole point of what is going on is a test then
surely that’s exactly why Zoe is not the one locked in the room. Despite his
self-doubt, though, Jamie manages to grasp what is going on and realizes that
he has to save himself this time because there’s no way for the Doctor to reach
him. But through it all Jamie’s unfaltering loyalty to the Doctor is there,
summed up so well in his simple statement: “He’ll win. Take it from me, he
always does!”
Jamie’s particularly awesome if you ask me. He’s often
referred to as the Doctor’s most loyal companion ever and really, he is.
They’ve all had their doubts at times, they have questioned him, they have
challenged him, but Jamie stood by him always, convinced that the Doctor was
doing the right thing. Fraser Hines brings this out in Jamie so well even now,
years later; you can hear the pride in his voice at being the Doctor’s best
friend in the universe. And it’s that faith and determination which helps Jamie
survive in this ordeal.
THE WAY OF THE EMPTY HAND
Jamie is put to another test on the planet Combatia, where a
ruling overlord snatches warriors up from all across the universe and pits them
against each other to see who is the greatest. While Zoe and the Doctor try to
find him, Jamie and another captive, a warrior from Japan named Funakoshi, bond
and set up a revolt against the overlord to free themselves and all the other
kidnapped warriors.
A simple tale here; it’s one of the Short Trips variety so it only runs 27 min and tries to do a lot in
that limited time. As a result there is always going to be an aspect which… I
hesitate to say “suffers” but perhaps is not as well developed as others, and
this time it’s the bad guy. His motivation isn’t really there, he’s not really
distinct or anything – he could be anyone. He could just be really bored and
watched too much WWF.
It’s not as violent as it could have been but that’s the
point: Jamie may be a warrior in his own right but being with the Doctor he
knows there can be another way, and Funakoshi realizes this in him.
And with two back to back audios done, it’s a return to the
screen and the return of an old enemy…
NEXT EPISODE: THE SEEDS OF DEATH
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