The Shadow Heart (2012)

The Shadow Heart is the final seventh Doctor story of the year and after complaining that there wasn’t much of Sylvester McCoy in the main range, that has more than be sorted out in the bonus releases and this story. As the final story of the multi-Doctor series, there is a certain amount that this story has to achieve. The responsibility falls to Jonathan Morris who has had a cracking year with the what I consider story of the year adventure Protect and Survive and the equally entertaining The Curse of Davros. The thing that I knew about this story was that it would feature a character who would be getting her own series. Vienna Salvatori will be appearing in her own story in 2013 but now she plays someone who is after the Doctor.

Sylvester McCoy has had a really good year. After his relatively light involvement in the main range, he has been great in everything he has been in and it continues in this. As much fun as it is when the Seventh Doctor is with Ace and Hex, he seems to thrive when he is on his own. Two of the three stories that he did in 2011 were brilliant and he is just as good as in those stories. He was superb from start to finish. Chase Masterson plays Vienna and she has some history in the sci-fi genre having played Leeta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1995-1999). She was exactly what this story needed. She sounded like she should have her own TV show and the way that Masterson plays the role in a way that is never dull, never repetitive and something that the Doctor Who world hasn’t had before. I loved the character of Talbar and Horval. It seems like Morris has taken a leaf from Robert Holmes’ book of having an amusing double act in his story. Eve Karpf (Talbar) and Alex Mallinson (Horval) worked brilliantly well together and at first I thought were better than Vienna. As the story settled down and Vienna took her rightful place.

As the story deals with timey-wimey things it only works because Jonathan Morris has done it and he has form with the 2003 story Flip-Flop which had two cds which could be listened to in either order and managed to make sense. I did at times lose what was going on but it wasn’t long before I found a thread in the story again.  I found the idea of Monkey bats and flying snails to be highly amusing and it could only happen in Doctor Who.

I thought it was a rather good story end for this series. It starts off really well and settles down in the middle before picking up again to give a solid end. But for me what makes this story worth listening to are the characters. That is what you get in a Jonathan Morris story, a good plot but very strong characters. As a series, I would say that it’s the second best series behind the Seventh Doctor series. I thought that The Burning Prince was the best story of the series followed by this one. It was an interesting idea to build a series round three different Doctors and it worked rather well. Whether a Vienna story would, only time would tell but on the basis of this story I think there is potential.