Absolution

Main Range #101

Released: October 2007

Listened: 9/3/21

In Production time, this story came out a year after “Memory Lane,” during which time the new TV series had grown in popularity, and the “Eighth Doctor Adventures” series had launched (more about those in a bit). So the decision was made to wrap up the Doctor’s adventures with C’rizz and Charlie in the Main Range. Charley rather thoughtlessly opens a reliquary that belongs to C’rizz, freeing a bunch of souls that presumably C’rizz assassinated earlier in life, which draws the TARDIS to “Hell,” or a planet that’s a reasonable facsimile. Which is a good enough concept to get some dramatic scenes like the console room flooded in blood, but it’s not aiming for spooky metaphysics. Instead, there’s a bunch of scientists who’ve ended up trapped in Hell and abandoned technology...except they haven’t. And one of them isolates C’rizz and helps him expand his powers, believing him to be the fulfillment of some prophecy. How this guy knows who C’rizz is, or what he can do, or how C’rizz can vastly expand his psychic abilities, is never made clear. Charley doesn’t have too much to do this time, but her level of snarky banter with the Doctor has gone up a bit, probably a new-series influence. One of the Doctor’s hail-mary plans turns out to be rather riskier than intended (and doesn’t make any sense), putting everyone in desperate danger. (Spoiler: C’rizz sacrifices himself in an “absorb the energy of the explosion” bit, which I guess he can do now, but it kills him. So pretty much everybody dies except the Doctor and Charley.) The Doctor attempts to take the situation in stride, which is a little callous for any of his incarnations, but especially for this one. Charley reacts badly, because that’s what the plot calls for her to do, and asks to go home. I get that C’rizz wasn’t a favorite companion, and he was tragically underdeveloped, but he deserved a better departure than that. Very little of what happens in this story makes any sense at all. This is one of the more disappointing stories I’ve heard.