The Blood Furnace

Main Range #228

Released: 15 August 2017

Listened: 2/1/21

This one is a bit of a showcase for Mel’s character development, as the TARDIS lands in Liverpool in 1991. There’s a shipyard there, run by Mel’s college boyfriend, who’s apparently developed a new kind of steel. Except we almost immediately find out that’s not the case, and he’s been contracted by aliens to build a ship. Specifically, the kind of aliens who use magic in place of science, and this particular strain is vulnerable to electronics, so most civilizations aren’t a great place for them. For a bit, Mel seems like she wants to get off the ride -- she’s back in her proper place and time (more or less), she’s met up with her ex-boyfriend, and he’s offered her a job that uses her tech skills. But as the story goes on, she realizes that she’s changed while she was away, and she’s not ready to stop yet. The aliens in this one are interesting, as they seem mostly human, but they’re operating completely effectively within their own framework. Most of them are even fairly reasonable, once they get past their goals. There’s also a fair amount of early-90s economic hardship. Many of the human workers realize that something’s not quite right here, but nobody’s questioning it because they need the jobs. As for Ace, she gets to break things and even beat stuff up in a VR fighting game (with quite accurate-sounding effects), but she also expresses remorse for an enemy who may have died. I remember being unimpressed by this one on first listen, but I liked it better this time.