Muse of Fire

Main Range #245

Released: 11 December 2018

Listened: 12/21/20

During the initial run of Main Range stories, poor Hex was trapped in a long string of unrelieved grim stories. Fortunately, entries recorded later allow for some lighter stories to be retroactively inserted into Hex’s time, and this is one of them. The TARDIS lands in 1920s Paris, and the Doctor says that he just wants his friends to relax and meet some famous artists, but in fact there’s a temporal anomaly he wants to investigate, a fact that Ace quickly picks up on, but Hex doesn’t. As it happens, Iris Wildthyme is here (because the story is written by Paul Magrs), and so is Panda, who hasn’t appeared in a Main Range story before. Iris is actually more sober than usual this time, but she doesn’t meet the Doctor until halfway through the story, and they end up at odds, as they often do. Hex meets her first, and is drawn to her; Ace, not so much. There’s also aliens who look like living Picasso paintings, which works reasonably well on audio. Gethin Anthony plays an American, and does a reasonable job of it. Rebecca La Chance, who actually is American, sounds slightly more stilted, making me think it’s something in the direction. Philip Olivier’s voice is older in this story, but it’s subtle enough that you probably wouldn’t notice it unless you were listening to them in chronological order like this. Ace and Hex’s relationship seems to be entirely companionable at this point, although they spend most of the story apart. As with all Wildthyme stories, you can’t take it entirely seriously, so it’s just a nice interlude for the characters.