The Other Side

The Ninth Doctor Chronicles #1.3

Released: 4 May 2017

When Big Finish started doing the “Doctor Chronicles,” they didn’t have access to any of the Doctor or companion actors, so they used what they could. In this case, that’s Bruno Langley, who played Adam ever-so-briefly. You thought there was no gap between “Dalek” and “The Long Game”? Well, there is if Adam doesn’t visit a different planet, so for him, this story takes place in Birmingham, 2012 (Rose’s future, Adam’s present, and the past when it was recorded and released – yay, time travel!) The plot itself isn’t all that great; there’s a temporal anomaly, left over from the war, and it bounces both the Doctor and Rose back into separate parts of history. It’s the characterizations that are spot-on: Adam acts like a normal human would when confronted with strangeness, which is to say, not like a companion. He also acts like a young genius who’s used to being right all the time, and who held a position of importance up until yesterday, but is now thrust into a situation where he can’t really cope. Rose is displaying way too much faith in the Doctor, because he hasn’t failed her yet. And the Doctor is being unnecessarily snotty towards Adam, somewhat possessive of Rose, and possibly not liking what that says about him. He does change his tune by the end of the story, which is somewhat pointless, given what will happen next. Don’t expect Bruno Langley to appear again, as the actor has been convicted of assault.