Jackie Tyler divides
Doctor Who fandom just as much as her daughter Rose and David Tennant’s Tenth
Doctor. If you’re a hater of any of that, this probably isn’t the release for
you.
By the end of his tenure
in the Tardis, there were two Tenth Doctors, as played by David Tennant. There
was the full-on chatterbox Time Lord who would go on to turn into Matt Smith
through what we rather laughably call the ‘natural’ process of regeneration.
Then there was The Other
One.
The one who was created
from the first Tenth Doctor’s amputated hand, a bit of a zing from earthgirl
Donna Noble, and a wallop of temporal jiggery-pokery courtesy of Davros.
We call it a metacrisis.
We’re not sure why.
Anyhow, this second Tenth
Doctor (or Mr Blue-Suit as it will, absurdly, be more straightforward to call
him) was only part Time Lord. He could, for reasons of scripting convenience,
age at a roughly human rate, probably die, apparently tell Rose Tyler he loved
her, and probably go off and have metacrisis-earthgirl spawn. As the end of the
on-screen Tyler arc, Mr Blue-Suit, our-universe Rose and our-universe Jackie
were left on an alternative universe’s Earth, while the Doctor we knew spun on
to his eventual Matt Smithy destiny and beyond.
Since then, precious
little has been heard of the Tylers and Mr Blue-Suit, a Doctor allegedly ‘born
in battle’ and as such rather too eager to just…erm…blow the bejesus out of the
enemy, rather than saving people.
Step forward Joseph
Lidster to give us a peek at life in the alternate universe.
The story of The Siege of
Big Ben is, on the face of it, a standard alien invasion,
oh-look-it-must-be-Thursday affair. Where it grows to be so much more than that
though is in the narration given to Jackie Tyler, and the wonders it reveals
about life, love and alien invasions on their alt-Earth.
We said earlier that if
you were a hater of the Tenth Doctor era and the Rose-Doctor-Jackie domestic
triangle, this wasn’t the release for you. Lidster does his best to tempt you
in though, hinting that all is not well in alt-paradise, with a Doctor who,
helping alt-UNIT, may not in fact be love’s young dream, and who remains
relatively untested in the business of saving planets and lives. In other
words, this is not the Tenth Doctor you think you know.
It absolutely is, however,
the Jackie you know. Camille Coduri returns to audio Who at Big Finish to give
a powerful and subtle performance as Jackie, mixing her trademark gossipy style
that’ll make you laugh out loud with that sudden drop to quiet and truth that
made her part in stories like Love and Monsters so wonderful and agonising, and
made you want to suddenly call your mother and live a slightly better life.
Jackie has lots to be thankful for, and she is, but she’s also a stranger in a
strange land, (a land without Eastenders, for God’s sake!), who misses the
world she left behind, and its people, and the Doctor who made people better
than they were, for all his bouncy bonkers chatter.
When the chips are down,
it’s Jackie who saves the day during The Siege of Big Ben, because she has
experience of the Doctor she knew (Mr Brown-Suit?), the one who solved
problems, and talked, and talked, and oh-my-life talked, rather than taking the
easy, explosive route that this new ‘dark’ Doctor seems all too eager to
embrace. That means she’s able to think things through and use compassion in a
tight spot, where his solution is a very big bang that would kill them both.
Lidster’s script has all
the zing and bounce you need if you’re putting Jackie Tyler front and centre,
but it makes some solid points about the difficulty of a happy ever after story
where you wake up the next morning and have to serve the chips. It’s funny, and
clever, and packed with extras for the die-hard geeks, and yet it tells a story
that feels true both to what was shown on-screen and to the reality that happy
ever afters take work, and often need people to learn lessons, to change, to
grow better than their lives have demanded of them before, if they’re ever to
be really happy.
Big Finish is currently on
a spree of new releases, spinning off characters and worlds from New Who. From
the evidence here, the company could do worse than commissioning a box set of
‘The Tylers – Earth Defence.’ After all, Rose was responsible for reminding the
Ninth Doctor of all the things it took to really ‘be’ the Doctor – courage,
compassion, the importance of the ‘little people,’ and the ability of anyone to
make a difference. Joseph Lidster and Camille Coduri work together, under the
expert directorial eye of Lisa Bowerman, to make us believe there’s no reason
the Tylers couldn’t do the same for the battle-born, angry, fallible,
perhaps-too-human alternative Tenth Doctor, Mr Blue-Suit.
If it doesn’t happen…well,
it will in my head.
And now, it probably will
in yours too.
You’re welcome.
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