Operation Dusk

Far from Home #1

Released: 27 June 2023

Listened: 7/29/23

The Seventh Doctor is still hanging out with Harry and Naomi here, although they both talk about wanting to go home, to varying degrees. Thing is, for Harry, that’s definitely the 1970s, whereas Naomi has made some friends in the 21st Century, and also feels at home there. (It’s implied, but not stated, that Naomi prefers the state of race relations in the 2010s as well, a fact that goes completely by Harry.) Except before they can do anything about that, they answer a distress call from Winston Churchill, and head for WWII. Churchill doesn’t appear, but the Doctor gets to use his credentials and basically stomp all over the poor MI-5 agents trying to deal with this. Because it appears that there’s a shadow eating people, and we know what that means. We haven’t seen the Seventh Doctor with the Vashta Nerada before, although he sounds great saying their name. He’s also pointlessly cryptic about who they are and what they can do (the MI-5 folks think they might be an Indian resistance group), which very nearly gets people killed. Of course, Vashta Nerada are tricky on audio, because shadows aren’t known for their chattiness, so we get some other alien conspirators too. The bluffs and double-bluffs keep piling up, to the point where it’s tricky to know who’s on which side. And there’s a reference to the Forge that feels like it’s pretty random, but does get sufficiently explained. It’s got a lot of interesting parts, but I’m not sure the sum is worth it.