Daughter of the Gods

Early Adventures #6.2

Released: 13 November 2019

Listened: 10/7/20

This release got a lot of hype when it came out, because it features the chronologically earliest multi-Doctor story (assuming you count such stories as “belonging” to the “newest” Doctor involved). In this case, the Second Doctor’s TARDIS collides with the First Doctor’s, immediately after “The Myth Makers” and Katarina joining that crew. This is remarkable because Katarina dies in the very next story, “The Daleks' Master Plan,” and there’s no room between them to fit another story. Further, actress Adrianne Hill passed away in 1997. But by this point, there’s no temporal restriction Big Finish can’t get around, and they cast Ajjaz Awad to take over the role. The TARDIS collision did a lot of damage, and both TARDISes end up on the same planet, with the First Doctor arriving about three months before the Second. This means the events of “The Dalek Master Plan” didn’t happen, and both crews find themselves in the middle of an alien invasion. Writer David Barnes splits everyone into pairs, so that Steven is with Zoe, and they work quite well together (although Steven finds Zoe a bit arrogant); Jamie is with Katarina, which works because they both relate to the Doctor and the TARDIS in similar manners, and Katarina triggers Jamie’s protective instincts. Of course, the highlight of any multi-Doctor story is putting the Doctors in the same room and watching sparks fly. The First Doctor has always been irascible, and going by the other multi-Doctor stories, the Second Doctor always seems to bring out the worst in...himself. There’s some awareness that this is Peter Purves and Frazer Hines, rather than Hartnell and Troughton, but if anyone’s earned the right to play the Doctor, it’s the two of them. Katarina, of course, is the core of this story, and while I haven’t seen enough of Adrianne Hill’s portrayal to tell how Ajjaz Awad imitates her, she definitely sells the character as someone mostly confused by her surroundings, but trying to cope based on what she knows. The story doesn’t shy away from her destiny, and if anything, the plot falls down a bit because the whole goal is to get history back on track, not to fix what’s going on in front of them. It’s not a huge triumph like “Day of the Doctor,” but it’s a very good two-Doctor episode.