Tony’s gathering evidence.
‘If you stop enjoying it, give it up. It’s
stopped being fun, Doctor…’
With those and a few more
words, Tegan Jovanka ran out of the Fifth Doctor’s life after the absolute
massacre that was Resurrection of the Daleks.
Big Finish is a company
that believes in opening up the cracks in the canon and seeing what could lurk
inside. The further adventures of Tegan were, when The Gathering was released,
just a glint in the company’s eye. This was Janet Fielding’s first, and as far
as anyone was concerned, really her only likely reprisal of Tegan’s role, and
it was set some years after her departure.
What happens to a
companion after they’ve seen time and space, travelled the dimensions with the
Doctor, and run off, somewhat sickened by the lives he lets be lost?
Sometimes…not that much.
The Gathering (part of a
loose trilogy of Cyberman stories which dared to re-imagine them, their
tactics, and what they were able to do) finds Tegan older, and while she’s not
exactly bitter, it’s true that her potential has somewhat evaded her. When she
gets involved in the plans of her friend Katherine Chambers, whose life was
radically altered by a Cyberman stratagem in the previous release, The Reaping,
Tegan is dragged back into adventures with alien threats – and meets up again
with the Doctor.
More than anything else –
more than the innovative things they did with the Cybermen, and more than their
dislocation for any kind of mainstream timeline, what the three ‘odd’
Cyber-stories, The Harvest, The Reaping and The Gathering, do best is push
Doctor Who into the more adult territory that New Who had begun to make its
own. Events and decisions have consequences in these stories, and while Joseph
Lidster’s Gathering is perhaps the least strongly Cyber-plot-driven of the
three, what he gives us here is absolute, 100-proof Tegan and Fifth Doctor
arguing. But this isn’t the kind of arguing they used to do when he repeatedly
failed to find Heathrow Airport the mid-80s. This is real arguing. Arguing that
matters. Twenty years have passed, and Tegan believes she has a life. Mates. A
purpose.
The Doctor, by contrast,
feels she’s just marking time, hanging about, not engaging with people, as
though her glimpse into the vastness of space and time, and the effect it had
on her has stunted her, harmed her, broken her ability to connect to a single
real life and her ability to make the most of it. Tegan’s response to his
assumptions is a blistering tour de force, more challenging and powerful than
anything Fielding was given to deliver in her TV years as Tegan, and while the
pair absolutely have to deal with the imminent threat of Cyber-technology (somewhat
confusingly left behind in Katherine Chambers’ past by the Doctor’s future
self), and to some extent Tegan accepts his alien authority when it comes to
the ‘removal of deadly tech’ side of their time together, there are revelations
here that take Tegan’s character far beyond her TV persona, and there’s a
moment of crisis for the Fifth Doctor when he realises a very particular truth
about the Tegan he meets twenty years on. She’s just as stubborn as she used to
be, but in some important ways, she’s outgrown the happily ever after notion of
rescue by a knight errant, even an alien knight errant with the best
intentions. Life has happened to Tegan, and through the events of The
Gathering, she determines to grab it more firmly by the lapels and take it on –
but she won’t take an easy way out of her troubles offered to her by the alien
in the cricketing flannels and the decorative vegetable. The ending to which
their strong personalities drive them in this story is more fully realised than
the running-off which saw them part on TV, more grown-up, more considered and
more implacable. Whether it’s more gentle and friendly depends on how you read
it, but this is a staggering end to the story of Tegan and the Doctor - or at least it would have been, had Janet
Fielding not enjoyed the experience so much that the ‘younger’ version of her
character rejoined the Tardis for more adventures.
Ultimately, whether The
Gathering now fits in the story of Tegan and the Fifth Doctor is highly
debatable – and we’re fans, there’s ultimately nothing we like more than to
settle down with a cup of tea, a plate of biscuits and a point of
canon-contention, so it gives us that opportunity. Whether it’s ‘real’ within
the canon or not though, The Gathering gives you a reunion story between Tegan
and the Fifth Doctor which compromises not even slightly on their
personalities, makes you sit up and take notice of what you’re being served,
and appreciate the more grown-up, realistic tone than we’re used to in the vast
majority of our favourite science fantasy’s stories.
Straighten up your spine,
just possibly bring your hankie along, and tackle The Gathering today – you’ll
never look at Tegan and the Fifth Doctor in quite the same way again.
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