The latest Emperor of Eternity is written by Nigel Robinson who previously wrote the Fourth Doctor story Stealers from Saiph. This is the second story to feature two companions though this story is Victoria’s story rather than hers and Jamie’s. It seems like Frazer Hines’ involvement in this story was just because he was around for the Sixth Doctor stories. The story took me a while to get into because I could quite work out what exactly it was suppose to be. I think because we have just come off an adventure where there were two companions it felt to me like it was trying to be something big.
The setting was quite a different one. We have had pure historical stories in the past such as The Transit of Venus but with this was perhaps more heavily involved with historical events that the Transit story. This story is set in 210BC China where the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie meet Qin Shi Huang who was the first emperor of China. The TARDIS collided with a meteor though we don’t actually get to hear that. We soon learn that people want to kill the emperor. The Emperor is after the Ninth Wonder which will guarantee immortality which will meet that the gods won’t punish him for what he’s done in this life. A lot is made of the monk, this is partly down to Jamie. His primitive mind jumps to the wrong conclusions. At one point I thought he might have been an alien or even the Meddling Monk. Its then a bit of a surprise then when it turns out that the monk is the real emperor and he wanted to see what people thought of him. It did annoy me slightly when at the end he decided that he didn’t want immortality. What was the point of the story? It was a bit of a weird end and after all the work that had been done to set up the story I thought the conclusion was weak.
The visual images that are used in this story are quite dark in tone. The opening bit where all the villagers have been killed because they saw the meteorite which was deflected by the TARDIS was quite a sad moment. It was made even sadder when Victoria felt responsible for their deaths. Debroah Watling does a reasonably good job however the main problem that there is in this story is there are way too many characters. This isn’t helped by Watling not really doing much to make the characters sound different. That said I think the excessive number of characters was more down to Nigel Robinson than Debroah Watling. Frazer Hines’s performance does deserve a mention. Even though most of his work was in the first episode his contribution was needed and it meant that there was one voice that Watling didn’t have to do. On a production note, I felt that the tracks were way too long. They were normally about 10 minutes long whereas a normal track length would be 3 or 4 minutes long. If I fell asleep during a story then I know I could start at the beginning of a track and only have to listen through a short period before getting back to where I was. A slightly positive point is that I thought the music was really good and at time was almost on par with TV Who.
Whilst this story did take a bit longer to get going than most Companion Chronicles, I did feel this was a better offering than Stealers from Saiph. The use of Frazer Hines was an added bonus and even though the story could have done with fewer characters it was still a fine adventure. Not the best Second Doctor story but worthy of a listen especially if you’re a fan of Chinese history or of historical Doctor Who stories.
The setting was quite a different one. We have had pure historical stories in the past such as The Transit of Venus but with this was perhaps more heavily involved with historical events that the Transit story. This story is set in 210BC China where the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie meet Qin Shi Huang who was the first emperor of China. The TARDIS collided with a meteor though we don’t actually get to hear that. We soon learn that people want to kill the emperor. The Emperor is after the Ninth Wonder which will guarantee immortality which will meet that the gods won’t punish him for what he’s done in this life. A lot is made of the monk, this is partly down to Jamie. His primitive mind jumps to the wrong conclusions. At one point I thought he might have been an alien or even the Meddling Monk. Its then a bit of a surprise then when it turns out that the monk is the real emperor and he wanted to see what people thought of him. It did annoy me slightly when at the end he decided that he didn’t want immortality. What was the point of the story? It was a bit of a weird end and after all the work that had been done to set up the story I thought the conclusion was weak.
The visual images that are used in this story are quite dark in tone. The opening bit where all the villagers have been killed because they saw the meteorite which was deflected by the TARDIS was quite a sad moment. It was made even sadder when Victoria felt responsible for their deaths. Debroah Watling does a reasonably good job however the main problem that there is in this story is there are way too many characters. This isn’t helped by Watling not really doing much to make the characters sound different. That said I think the excessive number of characters was more down to Nigel Robinson than Debroah Watling. Frazer Hines’s performance does deserve a mention. Even though most of his work was in the first episode his contribution was needed and it meant that there was one voice that Watling didn’t have to do. On a production note, I felt that the tracks were way too long. They were normally about 10 minutes long whereas a normal track length would be 3 or 4 minutes long. If I fell asleep during a story then I know I could start at the beginning of a track and only have to listen through a short period before getting back to where I was. A slightly positive point is that I thought the music was really good and at time was almost on par with TV Who.
Whilst this story did take a bit longer to get going than most Companion Chronicles, I did feel this was a better offering than Stealers from Saiph. The use of Frazer Hines was an added bonus and even though the story could have done with fewer characters it was still a fine adventure. Not the best Second Doctor story but worthy of a listen especially if you’re a fan of Chinese history or of historical Doctor Who stories.
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