Mary's Story

Main Range #123

Released: 28 July 2009

Listened: 7/11/21

Although the last couple of stories were fun and games, this one isn’t so much, except for the paradoxes. It’s the infamous trip to Villa Diodati with Percy and Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont and John Polidori. A horribly burned and scarred Eighth Doctor drops into their laps, mentioning companions that clue us in that he’s late in this incarnation’s life (Charlie and Lucie, but also the unknown Todd and Rita, but not Liv or Helen, because they hadn’t been introduced yet). Shelley and Byron really take it on the chin here, as neither of them are particularly nice people (although the Doctor admires Byron’s outfit, in an inside joke), but Shelley is particularly mad, wanting to conduct medical experiments that will inspire Frankenstein. Another, much younger Eighth Doctor turns up to set everything to rights, more or less. The older Doctor is rude and ungrateful, but he’s probably envious of his younger self’s carefree existence. All of which leads to Mary going off with the Doctor for a while, which leads into the next set of stories. That would all make perfect sense if it didn’t conflict with the Thirteenth Doctor’s “The Haunting of Villa Diodati,” and I really can’t see any way of reconciling the two stories, which is a shame, so the only valid response is to just ignore the conflict. It’s a decent story, but it’s really just an intro. On the whole, the four stories in this set don’t really hang together, as their styles are quite different, and it’s probably best to consider them that way.