An Alien Werewolf in London

Main Range #252

Released: 11 June 2019

Listened: 2/20/21

The Doctor and Mags arrive on Earth, England, in the early 1990s, in response to a call from Ace. It looks like Ace has been living there for quite some time, and maybe doesn’t always go by her nickname anymore, but she also slips right back into rhythm with the Doctor, so there’s no sense of long estrangement or animosity. She called him in because of strange goings-on, which turn out to be vampires. Not the “State of Decay” vampires, although that story gets a reference, and not the “Project Twilight” vampires either, which aren’t mentioned at all. That’s a bit odd, because you’d think Nimrod would have stuck his nose in somehow. This is the last Main Range story with Alan Barnes as script editor, so he decided to write it as well, so that he could fit in some concepts he’s always wanted to see. There’s certainly a lot of plot, perhaps a bit too much, as there are some talky exposition scenes. Since there’s a shapeshifter involved, there’s some identity confusion, there’s lots of people who aren’t what they appear, and there’s even a bout of temporary amnesia. Mags doesn’t really get any character development at all; her nature barely comes up. You’d think she might see some parallels between herself and the vampires, but it’s not there. Ace is more of a secondary character; even though she nearly pays a great personal cost, we don’t get any time to see how she feels. We don’t get inside the villains’ heads at all, which makes their decision at the climax seem odd. The direction is a bit odd as well, with the action cutting away just before the climactic moment a couple of times, leaving it up to the listener to fill in. (Spoiler: In the end, Mags goes off with the Doctor, and Ace stays behind. The Doctor doesn’t even invite her to come along.) So this era doesn’t really resolve, and it’s not at all clear where this story falls on Ace’s timeline. As an individual story, that’s no problem, but for people who are interested in the larger story (like me in this project), it’s kind of frustrating.