Purgatory 12

Fourth Doctor Adventures #9.1

Released: 22 January 2020

Listened: 7/10/22

This series of Fourth Doctor Adventures promises to focus on the interpersonal relationships between the Doctor, Romana, and Adric, and boy, this one dives right in. Adric is already feeling ignored and out of place when the story starts, and almost immediately decides to leave the ship. The Doctor thinks he’s being clever by dropping him off and jumping 15 minutes ahead in time, but this is Doctor Who, where a whole lot can happen in 15 minutes. In this case, getting kidnapped by an entire prison asteroid full of convicts and very strange rust storms. Gotta give Adric credit for committing to the bit; for a while, he even insists he wants to stay at the prison rather than going with the Doctor and Romana. He’s really at his most petulant here, but the story makes the point that he’s never processed his grief for his brother Vash, and both the Doctor and Romana pretty much ignored that. He does get a bit of the “Artful Dodger” act that was supposed to be part of his persona, but rarely showed up. Unfortunately, that can undermine the reader’s trust in him. Romana does a decent job of sticking up for him, but she’s really not experienced at being the big sister, and I’m not sure she’s sorted out her own feelings about Adric. There’s some sci-fi in this story too, with a bodiless entity who feeds on brains, but honestly the resolution to that drags out a bit longer than it should have. Writer Mark Platt knows how to create interesting secondary characters, and there are a bunch of them here, all with their own agendas. It doesn’t leave a ton of room for the plot, though.