The Apocalypse Mirror (2013)

The latest Companion Chronicle sees Fraser Hines and Wendy Padbury join up to tell a story that sees the TARDIS land on Earth. This story has been written by Eddie Robson who’s last story was the very good ‘The Jigsaw War’ and in the past he has been a writer who I feel has been a little bit inconsistent but after his last story I was confident that this would be just as good. I like the combination of the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie and its good that both Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines are here to tell this story.
The story starts with the Doctor trying to do keepie-uppies in the TARDIS console room. The Doctor then manages to break something on the TARDIS and they land on earth in far future (even for Zoe) which has been devastated by flooding. The setting of this story is rather well done. Credit to Richard Fox and Lauren Yason who created the right sounds to help me imagine this rather grey and broken down place to be.

The main threat of the story is a meteorite which is making its way towards the earth and there is around five hours before it hits. This helps force the story into movement. The fear is now trying to save the residents lives and the main problem was that I didn’t really care about them. Despite Eddie Robson’s best efforts I just found them to be a bit annoying.

Despite this featuring two of our favourite companions, it’s really more of a Jamie story as Fraser Hines features largely throughout. Even in the interview at the end its only Hines and not Padbury that features. It’s not very often that speeches stand out in my mind but the speech that Fraser Hines gives towards the end is one of my favourite speeches that I can remember in the companion chronicles.  

Fraser Hines is very good in this as he usually is and this isn’t just because he does a great Patrick Troughton impression but he also have a wonderful way of telling the story and he’s like William Russell in that respect. In the interview, it was revealed that he is one of the most popular people in the range and it’s not hard to see why. Despite being slightly side-lined at times, Wendy Padbury is a great presence here and is entertaining from start to finish.

We’re going to get at least one more Jamie story before the Companion Chronicles end next June (2014). I cant say that I was totally bowled over by this story as there were things that I found a little difficult to follow but there were things in this release that I enjoyed and think that it’s a story that has some ideas even if it isn’t quite as good as some of the stories that we have had in 2013.