Frozen Time

Main Range #98

Released: August 2007

Listened: 2/26/21

Once again, some time seems to have passed since the last story, as an Antarctic expedition discovers the Doctor and the TARDIS frozen in ice, apparently having been there for millions of years. I’m not a fan of that particular trope, but I can mostly ignore it. As a result, the Doctor spends a large chunk of the story at least partially amnesiac, so he behaves much like he’s just regenerated, rather than the older, somewhat maudlin Doctor of the last story. There’s some frozen monsters down there as well, and the story spends a ridiculous amount of time setting you up to believe they’re Silurians, when they turn out to be Ice Warriors. I’m not really sure what that suspense accomplishes. The Doctor gets a temporary companion in Genevieve, played by Maryam d’Abo of The Living Daylights fame, and she seems to be pretty good companion material, both in her willingness to face danger and her scientific level-headedness. In fact, it’s strongly implied at the end of the story that she went away in the TARDIS for a while, returning the week after she left, although she’s not in any other stories. There’s a fairly high body count, but that’s pretty normal for this Doctor’s era, and this era of Big finish too. It’s a serviceable story, but not much more than that, as large chunks of it are spent waiting for the Doctor to remember things the listener already knows.