The Conservitors

Third Doctor Adventures #11.2

Released: 23 February 2023

Listened: 3/5/23

Jo’s first trip this time around is to a human colony in the 49th century. It’s a fairly well-developed planet, but it has a rather new-series concept: Every person has a personal risk rating, like a credit score, and if your score gets too high, you’ll lose privileges (up to imprisonment) to keep you safe. Of course, Jo and the Doctor have only been there a couple of minutes before deciding to join the rebellion, and because this is a one-hour story, they find a rebel group quite quickly. The Doctor spends a fair part of this story sidelined or hobbled, and Jo’s the one wielding the Sonic most of the time. Which gives the Doctor a chance to be protective (Jo has a family now, after all), and for Jo to thwap him upside the head with her lifetime of experience. She’s practiced at civil disobedience, getting arrested, recognizing when movements turn fanatic, and she’s even got form disarming bombs. Which is handy, because this rebellion isn’t just a civic movement; it’s also personal for several of the characters involved. Relatively new writer Felicia Barker leans hard into new-series influences here. You could probably swap out the Third Doctor for the Tenth or Eleventh with very little change to the story itself. But that’s OK, because it’s a Jo story.