The Alchemists (2013)

The only thing that I knew about this story before I started to listen to it was that it was due to come out earlier in the year but it got switched. The Alchemists arrives and its simply a historical story which takes place in Germany in the 1930’s where some of the greatest minds of that period are meeting. The history lesson was quite interesting as I enjoy history and especially this period so whilst there wasn’t a great deal of drama to speak of there was enough here to keep me interested.

I haven’t been a massive fan of the Susan stories in the companion chronicles as I don’t think that Carole Ann Ford has the same delivery style as William Russell or Peter Purves or even Anneke Wills and so I struggled to stick with this story. Susan never really takes the reigns of the story when the Doctor isn’t involved in the story. It’s one of the finer stories for the character of Susan because she doesn’t come across as annoying as she has done in the past and stories like To The Death and An Earthly Child for the Eighth Doctor shows what can be done with the character. Sadly this story doesn’t allow for that. Another problem with Ford’s performance is that when she has to do a German accent she cant do it. She seems to do a French accent and stick a few German words in there. It becomes a distraction which is a shame. Wayne Forester is quite good as Pollit though there are moments in the story where he’s not quite as nice and he delivers a rather disturbing performance.

I think that this is a perfectly fine adventure. It doesn’t have the dramatic feel to it that something like The Library of Alexandria has or Mastermind but I still found that there was something that was ok about this story. It certainly has the atmosphere to it and it’s a nice period of history and I think that different people will probably get something from it and some may even defend it but in this instance it isn’t one of my favourites.