Scenes from Her Life

Doom Coalition #2.2

Released: 3 March 2016

Listened: 12/7/21

We’re back to John Dorney again, and even if this one isn’t quite as puzzly as his stories usually are, it makes use of flashbacks to keep you guessing. It introduces Caleera, a Time Lord with extremely strong psychic powers and an axe to grind. The other Time Lords were frightened of her power, and gave her treatments to get it under control. When they succeeded, she was assigned a low-level post in the Archives, even though Caleera considered that beneath her. Meanwhile, Team TARDIS finds the Voord homeworld destroyed, and the Doctor tries to trace the attacker through the vortex, but runs into an ancient TARDIS with its outer shell stripped away by the time winds. Living inside are a couple of maybe-Time-Lords who seem to have gone insane, and are conducting horrible experiments on prisoners. Helen gets another try at coping with an alien spaceship, and does better, although she has a lot of questions. Unfortunately, she ends up tricked by a villain playing on her sympathies, which hurts her. There’s a couple of TV-series mums in this one, with Caleera played by Emma Cuniffe (the mum from “Night Terrors”) and Lady Sepulchra played by Jacquiline King (Donna’s mum Sylvia), but as is usually the case, you’d never know it’s her unless someone told you. In the end, there’s a twist about who’s the prisoners and who’s the jailer, with all being revealed just as the flashbacks catch up. Dorney stories are always good, but this one lacks the shock on repeat listenings.