Year of the Pig

Main Range #90

Released: 18 December 2006

Listened: 3/22/20

The Doctor actually manages to take Peri for a holiday, to Ostend in 1913. The Doctor seems to want to relax and read Proust (and ends up insulting the writer himself at dinner), but they run into a bizarre range of characters played by rather significant actors: Maureen O’Brien (Vicki) plays a fanciful upper-crust woman; Adjoa Andoh, who has several roles in the modern series and Big Finish, plays a nurse; and Michael Keating, Vila of Blake’s Seven, but also several Big Finish roles, plays an outlandish French inspector. It’s a fairly bizarre story, revolving around genetically engineered humanoid pigs from the future, although no one is exactly who they appear to be, and being set in the early 1900s, everyone is unfailingly polite right up until they try to kill one another. I’m sure it’s got lots of Proust references, but I’m afraid I don’t get them. This one is also fairly long, at two 75-minute episodes. It’s a bit of an odd story, and not really all that good.