The Corruptions

Purity Unbound #2

Released: 30 August 2023

Listened: 9/22/23

After the cliffhanger, it seems we’ve moved from one bubble to another, as Purity tries isolating Mel this time. She’s in Pease Pottage in 1985ish, happy and fulfilled, with a vaguely defined job “in computers, somewhere.” Hebe owns the local cafe, and Elise is a florist. Ron doesn’t exist in this version. Presumably this is a prison where Mel and Hebe can stay preserved, and not threaten Purity’s timeline. Except that Mel is a complicated space-time event (even moreso than most companions, given how badly twisted her own history is), and the bubble starts to break down, letting in some kind of time-wraiths. The Doctor is trapped outside, literally; he’s imprisoned in a motorway services station on the M23, and simply told that he can’t interfere, or Mel will die. As if the Doctor is going to just hang out at a highway rest stop for all eternity. It’s kind of nice to see Pease Pottage again, and as a child of the 80s, I always appreciate stories set during that era, but this is more or less filler. It’s an extended version of “lock the Doctor in a cell for a bit,” which works as well as it ever does.