Wild Animals

Stranded #1.2

Released: 17 June 2020

Listened: 12/30/21

Now that we’ve got the setup out of the way, it’s time to see how the Doctor handles ordinary life, which is to say, poorly. There’s enough examples of that from the TV show that we know how it’s going to go. The difference here is that we’ve seen plenty of characters who wander into a Doctor Who story by mistake, and can’t cope. This time, the Doctor wanders out of a story, and can’t cope when events don’t follow story logic. Liv has gotten a job at a nearby convenience store owned by the Akhtars’ cousin Sanjit, and she’s finding it rather relaxing…until there’s a robbery, and both Liv and Sanjit are shot. The Doctor goes a bit over the edge, trying to railroad the police into accepting his help, like he normally does with authority figures, and also investigating on his own. What makes it clever is that he knows he’s overreacting, but he’s still insistent that his methods will work, because they usually do, and then he’ll regain a sense of control. Without Liv, Helen is the one stuck trying to make him see sense, but it’s hard to talk the Doctor down from anything. He also surfaces some comparisons to his Third Doctor exile, but doesn’t tell his companions that he’s done this before, and how it affected him mentally. There’s a nice little parallel to “Walls of Confinement,” a Third Doctor Short Trip, if you’re looking for it. As far as plot and action go, it could be considered ordinary, even dull, but that’s kind of the point, and John Dorney does it so well, it makes for a compelling story.