House of Cards (2013)

The second story of the year sees Jamie and Polly reunite for a companion chronicle. This is clearly based on the success of ‘The Selachian Gambit’ which I enjoyed and that was for two reasons. One it was a good story and secondly, it got me over the disappointment of ‘The Anachronauts’ which I just felt was a bit weak. So for the second year running,  I am hoping that a Polly/Jamie story can get me over the disappointment of the previous story. The story despite its title, isn’t about someone manipulating people to become Prime Minister or forcing the new king to abdicate from the thrown but is in fact about the Doctor, Ben,Polly and Jamie. Written by Toms Tardis Award winning author Steve Lyons, the story sees Ben get into debt and put in a game that could see him die and Polly trying to agonise about what she is being asked to do. There are plenty of characters in this story that make this seem much more than a story set in a casino. The descriptions of the monsters is the first thing that grabbed me when it started. It wasn’t a particular scene but the description of a creature that gets it going which isn’t something that I recall happening before.

In the early releases of this range, the stories use to be from the companions point of view with the Doctor’s involvement being relatively light. Over the years the Doctors involvement has got more and more so this story felt like a throw back to those early releases. Thankfully this isn’t really noticed until the end because Anneke Wills and Fraser Hines are both splendid. Anneke Wills is clearly the driving force of the story as it felt like she was delivering the vast majority of the dialogue. The particular highlight came around the half way mark arrives when Polly has to pick a button which may kill Ben or save him. The idea creates some remarkable tension which mirrors the fourth Doctor’s dilemma in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and I think that its credit to Wills that it works the way that it does. It’s always a joy having Fraser Hines in these stories because he does the best impression of a Doctor in this range and he wasn’t just there to make up the numbers. He gave a very strong performance and despite having worked mainly with Wendy Padbury on these stories I think that the Polly/Jamie partnership works better.

Compared to ‘The Selachian Gambit’, I must  admit that I wasn’t as wowed with this story as I would have liked. I still enjoyed it though and there will be more stories featuring Anneke Wills and Fraser Hines so all is right with the world.  With the news having just broke that the companion chronicles will end its run in 2014, I think that stories like House of Cards will be used to show how far the range has come in the last couple of years.