The Defectors

Main Range #198

Released: 15 April 2015

Listened: 3/2/21

This story is part of the “Locum Doctors” trilogy, which is actually a seven-six-five trilogy, so for the purposes of this project, I’m doing it backwards. The Seventh Doctor gets swapped with the Third, and dropped into the middle of a UNIT story. Fortunately, it’s after “The Three Doctors,” so Jo Grant is conversant with the idea of regeneration, but her spy training leads her to be suspicious of this new Doctor at first. Conveniently, the Brig, Mike, and Benton have all been shuffled somewhere else, so Big Finish didn’t need to pull in any more big-name actors (although Richard Franklin gets a small role). The Doctor and Jo end up at what’s ostensibly a secret base, but it’s pretty clear from the start that something fishy is going on, as all sorts of details don’t add up. The Seventh Doctor is a lot less transparent than the Third, to Jo’s annoyance, but he also trusts her implicitly, and lets her investigate (and get in trouble) on her own rather than fret about her too much, which allows for two separate plot threads. Although he’s not maudlin, as he is in a lot of stories in this era, he does spend a lot of time questioning why he’s swapped places with his earlier self, and thinking maybe he’s supposed to change something he did before (but doesn’t remember). He’s a lot less human-centric than the Third Doctor would be, and Jo definitely notices. In the end, though, they’re both stuck in an impossible moral dilemma, which is kind of appropriate to the era. I normally regard Nick Briggs as a middle-of-the-road Big Finish writer, but this time I think he nails it. A tight plot, and good characterization. Katy Manning is a pro at this sort of thing, and although Jo gets a bit more agency than usual, she carries it off as well as she always does.