The Many Deaths of Jo Grant is the most curious title that there has been with a Companion Chronicle adventure. Written by the ever reliable hands of Cavan Scott & Mark Wright (The Prisoner of Peladon, Project Lazarus, Project Twilight and Project Destiny). This story is very much in the same vein as stories like Recorded Time and Other Stories where there are multi stories in one release. Here we get three stories which start off like any normal story but then all end with the death of Jo Grant (hence the title).
The three stories are all fairly interesting with the curious part being why are they happening and if there not real or visions of the future then who is causing them and the answer is very good. Each story could easily have been tweaked to make a decent story. The thing that I liked best about this story is that it takes one simple thing about the character of Jo and exploited it into a 70 minute story. We all know that the thing that makes Jo special is her willingness to sacrifice her life for the Doctor’s. The most memorable moment came in The Daemons when she wouldn’t let the Doctor be killed and its where Azal could not understand someone willing to sacrifice themselves for another. This is where this story stands up and after the third time we find out the truth. It came at just the right time because any more and it would have left very little time for the explanation.
I was starting to get worried when in the final act we thought that the Doctor had been killed but it turned out to be another ‘dream’. I was worried for a moment that we were going to get a few more scenarios like this and this would be the point where I would have lost interest but credit to the writers they held back from this. I liked the little plot point the different scenario’s that Jo has been aware of has happened to her 412 times over the space of four days. This is a horrible thing to force someone to go through and its quite a relief when its over.
Katy Manning is superb in this story. Quite frankly I could listen to her in practically anything. I don’t know whether this has happened in other stories that Manning has done but when she is actually doing the Jo that features in the story as opposed to her narration voice, her voice is bang on to the voice used when she was on TV. Nicolas Asbury is good as the other performer and does well in each of the different segments of this story. To be able to do three different performances and make them seem totally different is quite impressive.
The Many Deaths of Jo Grant is a very good story that takes a simple character trait and uses it well to tell a very good story. I think that it might be my favourite CC of this sixth series and shows that even after 48 stories (not including Freakshow or Mists of Time), that the Companion Chronicles format is one that can achieve anything and its down to the limitation of the writer (or in this case writers) to show what can be done.
The three stories are all fairly interesting with the curious part being why are they happening and if there not real or visions of the future then who is causing them and the answer is very good. Each story could easily have been tweaked to make a decent story. The thing that I liked best about this story is that it takes one simple thing about the character of Jo and exploited it into a 70 minute story. We all know that the thing that makes Jo special is her willingness to sacrifice her life for the Doctor’s. The most memorable moment came in The Daemons when she wouldn’t let the Doctor be killed and its where Azal could not understand someone willing to sacrifice themselves for another. This is where this story stands up and after the third time we find out the truth. It came at just the right time because any more and it would have left very little time for the explanation.
I was starting to get worried when in the final act we thought that the Doctor had been killed but it turned out to be another ‘dream’. I was worried for a moment that we were going to get a few more scenarios like this and this would be the point where I would have lost interest but credit to the writers they held back from this. I liked the little plot point the different scenario’s that Jo has been aware of has happened to her 412 times over the space of four days. This is a horrible thing to force someone to go through and its quite a relief when its over.
Katy Manning is superb in this story. Quite frankly I could listen to her in practically anything. I don’t know whether this has happened in other stories that Manning has done but when she is actually doing the Jo that features in the story as opposed to her narration voice, her voice is bang on to the voice used when she was on TV. Nicolas Asbury is good as the other performer and does well in each of the different segments of this story. To be able to do three different performances and make them seem totally different is quite impressive.
The Many Deaths of Jo Grant is a very good story that takes a simple character trait and uses it well to tell a very good story. I think that it might be my favourite CC of this sixth series and shows that even after 48 stories (not including Freakshow or Mists of Time), that the Companion Chronicles format is one that can achieve anything and its down to the limitation of the writer (or in this case writers) to show what can be done.
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