Embrace the Darkness

Main Range #31

Released: 29 April 2002

Listened: 8/2/21

This one is aiming for spooky and atmospheric, and as such, it’s a bit of a slow burn. The planet Cimmeria lost its sun under mysterious circumstances, and the Doctor has always meant to investigate. Of course there are humans in a base there, because humans always turn up where they don’t belong, and the Doctor and Charley get caught up in the rescue mission. The planet was believed to be uninhabited, but unfortunately it isn’t, and the natives have a thing against light, and a habit of burning out people’s eyes. They’re also the sort of aliens who speak in slow, whispery voices (supplied by Nick Briggs), and in this case, repeat the title of the story a lot. The secondary characters are fairly well-drawn and definitely distinct, but since they spend most of the story being blind, and justifiably angry or despondent about that, they don’t have a lot of agency. There’s also an unfortunate scientific misfire about how solar sails work, but I’ll let that pass. The plot actually resolves kind of slowly, and relies on people making the right decisions, which is a bit of a change from most adventures. Unfortunately, that leaves kind of a shortage of conflict in the story, which renders it not terribly memorable.