AWOL

Short Trips #12.2

Released: 2 February 2023

Listened: 3/6/23

Now that we're several stories into the Liz Shaw era...this one doesn’t feature Liz at all. Canon has established that there’s a substantial gap between “The Silurians” and “The Ambassadors of Death,” during which the Doctor took quite a while to cool off from his anger at the Brigadier for wiping out the Silurians. It takes a brave writer to tackle the conversation where they reconcile, but Angus Dunican proves himself up to the task. This is helped by the fact that Jon Culshaw is reading…in fact, contrary to Short Trips style, he’s not reading at all; he’s playing both the Doctor and the Brigadier (and a UNIT captain), with no narration. There’s a clear difference between Culshaw’s style and Tim Treloar’s, although we haven’t heard Treloar yet in this project. Regardless, he does both men well enough that you believe the conversation, which is good, because it’s well-written, and emotionally laden. I don’t know if the two of them really would have been that heartfelt in 1970, but it feels right in the here and now. Another note is that the music in this story is extraordinary. It’s intended to evoke the story’s setting in Peru, but it also underscores the emotions nicely.