Farewell, Great Macedon

Lost Stories #2.1a

Released: 10 November 2010

Listened: 1/1/20

All of the stories in this part of the project so far have been on the shorter side. Companion Chronicles and other such formats run about an hour. Which is unusual, because this early era had some lengthy stories, and this is one of them. Also written by Moris Farhi, this is a true historical in the way that they really only did them in the First Doctor’s era, hanging out with historical figures, getting tangled in historical events, and yet not changing the overall course of history. The chronology establishes this as the first true historical, before “Marco Polo” or “The Aztecs,” but it does rely on the listener having some knowledge of those stories, and how this team behaves when they’re in Earth history. Alexander is presented as nuanced, mostly being a good man with strong ideals and some rather progressive ideas about race relations, but also prone to flying into rages and jumping to conclusions, which can make him look quite stupid at times. The villains, on the other hand, are straight-up baddies; if they had mustaches, they’d twirl them. But the villains’ plot isn’t really the important part of the story, because the course of history is set, and there’s nothing the travelers can do about it, except get caught up and falsely accused. This leads to the Doctor using his scientific knowledge to do something unexpected, and Ian being unexpectedly proficient at hand-to-hand fighting, both of which are pretty standard for this sort of story. The only divergence is that Barbara hides her historical knowledge of what’s going to happen from her companions, who have no idea until nearly the end of the story. As a production, Big Finish did this in a narrated style, with William Russell and Carole Ann Ford playing all the parts except for Alexander, who’s played by John Dorney (usually a writer, but he’s an experienced actor too). The music and sound effects are minimal, in a nod to how stories from this era were made. As with many historicals, how much you like it depends on how much you like that era, but I think it’s a fantastic example of both a First Doctor story, and a historical, one that Big Finish has only rarely matched.