The Doomsday Quatrain

Main Range #151

Released: 13 September 2011

Listened: 1/5/21

Main Range #150 was one of the anniversary anthologies, so this trilogy skips over that, and continues with the Seventh Doctor acting alone in the black TARDIS, although it’s only referred to as “dark” here. It sets up as a historical, set in 16th Century Florence, with Nostradamus as the celebrity guest. However, it becomes clear very quickly that this isn’t Earth, but a simulation, made of “biomatter” -- the “grey goo” from nanotech projections -- but the fact that simulated Nostradamus can actually see the future is significant, and worrisome. There are researchers here, mostly hiding a secret about the biomatter, and a violent race who just wants to use it for target practice. So that’s a lot of factions, and tossing the Seventh Doctor into the middle is a recipe for chaos. He’s got a streak of Time Lord Victorious going on here, possibly even worse than the last story, because he sets himself up as moral arbiter, and effortlessly plays the various sides against one another. He doesn’t get everything he wants, but he seems to be rather OK with that. He’s also using the sonic screwdriver a lot more in this story, but I don’t know if there’s any significance to that. There’s a lot of interesting concepts and characters in this story, but as a result, none of them get the full treatment that they deserve.