The Crash of the UK-201

Early Adventures #5.4

Released: 11 December 2018

Listened: 7/25/22

This one is deeply timey-wimey, and in fact has a very modern-series feel, as it’s more or less “Turn Left,” but for Vicki. Something unexplained happens within the TARDIS that sends Vicki back down her personal timeline. It turns out the UK-201 is the spaceship that crashed on Dido, putting this right before the events of “The Rescue.” Given an opportunity like that, of course Vicki tries to set things right, particularly saving her father. Of course, that means she never meets the Doctor, which creates a great whopping paradox, but first we get to see Vicki’s alternate life play out. This gives Maureen O’Brien a chance to really stretch, as she has to play Vicki at various ages from 15 to 170. Peter Purves gets a break as well, as the Doctor is barely present, and Steven seems to randomly bounce around Vicki’s timeline, as he’s also caught in the paradox (without Vicki, the TARDIS may have never gone to Mechanus, so Steven never gets rescued). It’s hard to describe much more without spoiling, but Vicki goes through the same sorts of decisions and anguish that Donna does, and learns that even when you have foreknowledge, “fixing” things doesn’t always get you what you want, and even trying to put things back may not have the same results. It’s a pretty effective tearjerker, even though we know how it has to end up. On the whole, this boxed set brought a lot of newer concepts to an old team, and mostly executed on them successfully. With the Early Adventures winding up, this may be the last story in recording order for this particular team, in which case it’s a good ending.