Catch-1782

Main Range #68

Released: April 2005

Listened: 9/13/20

This story is by Alison Lawson, who has written some prose Short Trips, but this is her only Main Range story, and it’s very different in tone. Mel goes to visit her uncle, a scientist and historian, learns some stuff about her family history, and then accidentally participates in it due to some involuntary time travel. Mel behaves oddly in this one, professing an interest in science, but demonstrating the opposite, and spending an unusual amount of time in distress. She also treats 2003 as “the present,” even though that would be nearly 20 years after her time. The Doctor also behaves much more carefully than usual about disturbing history, but it is Mel’s family history we’re talking about here. The plot itself is slow, and takes a while to get going, with a bunch of exposition in Part 1, but the story overall is shorter than most Main Range entries. There’s a lot of effort put into describing a paradox that will snarl the web of time, but it’s undone rather simply in the end. It really feels like there should be a twist ending, but there isn’t one, and the story just stops. On the whole, a rather unsatisfying story.