From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jphalt@aol.com
Subject: Re: jphalt's Doctor Who reviews

With Netflix still not having "Dragonfire" available, and it being a
story I'm not very interested in purchasing, I will save it for the
next McCoy run and instead move on to McGann.

The TV Movie having been covered last year, we're obviously in "audio
only" territory now.  The audios covered in this run will be:

The Company of Friends: Mary's Story
The Silver Turk
The Witch from the Well
Army of Death


Commencing with...

THE COMPANY OF FRIENDS: MARY'S STORY (BF AUDIO)

1 episode. Approx. 31 minutes. Written by: Jonathan Morris. Directed
by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Nicholas Briggs.


THE PLOT

Switzerland, 1816. At a villa rented by Lord Byron, the famous poet is
spending time with Mary Shelley (Julie Cox), her husband Percy Bysshe
Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron's doctor John
Polidori. After reading from a collection of horror stories, Byron
suggests that each member of the company prepare a ghost story for the
following day, as a sort of contest.

This friendly competition is interrupted, however, by the arrival of a
badly wounded stranger: A man so burned that Polidori pronounces that
he has never seen such injuries on anyone living. The man gasps out
that he is a doctor, followed by another word as he recognizes his
current company:

"Frankenstein!"


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Paul McGann gets to play multiple variants of his Doctor.
We see the self-assured Doctor of the last part of The TV Movie, a man
with seemingly no care in the world. We also see an embittered Doctor,
a man who has lost much and perhaps everything. Then there is the
burned and badly-injured Doctor who slips in and out of coherence.
Finally, there is the monster - a Doctor so wounded and mutated that
he becomes violent, out-of-control, more animal than man. Given the
chance to show so much variety within the story's scant thirty
minutes, McGann throws himself into it with relish.

Mary: The title of the story is Mary's Story, and the narrative is
seen entirely through her eyes. Julie Cox is very good as Mary,
depicted as having run off with the much older Percy at the promise of
adventures that never came. The young woman is already jaded by the
reality of a man who "does not believe in fidelity" and who is prone
to mania under the influence of laudanum. Writer Jonathan Morris is
very conscious of this as a companion introduction story, even if this
companion also happens to be a historical figure. His script makes
sure to highlight the traits needed in an engaging companion,
showcasing Mary as strong-willed, compassionate, and observant.
Further depth will likely be added by the full-length stories to come,
but Cox's performance and Morris' script already have her feeling like
a full character even in this short piece.


THOUGHTS

The best of the one-episode stories featured in The Company of
Friends, and the only of these four stories that Big Finish has to
date seen fit to follow up. Mary's Story is far from the first work to
explore the summer that spawned The Vampyre and Frankenstein. Like Ken
Russell's muddled film Gothic, this episode plays with the idea of
genuinely fantastical events inspiring the supernatural tales.

Bits of Frankenstein can be spotted throughout the piece. Percy
Shelley's mania as he cries, "He's aliiive!" is an obvious echo of the
Boris Karloff movie, as are references to fire and torch-wielding
villagers. There's even a line that winks at the confusion caused by
the later film series, wherein "Frankenstein" became the monster
instead of the scientist.

All of this is amusing, though the "monster" scenes tend to be the
most jumbled of the episode. Still, the real interest here is in the
glimpses of the different variants of the Doctor. This is effectively
a multi-Doctor story, showing the Eighth Doctor at two distinct points
in his life. The early Eighth Doctor, still innocent and hungry for
adventure, contrasts with the bitter, late-in-his-life Eighth Doctor,
a man who has traveled with so many companions and ended up alone at
the end of it.

Despite a few rushed moments that were probably inevitable in a single-
episode story, Mary's Story is a good one. An introduction to a
character worth following, and a glimpse of the Eighth Doctor's full
journey at both its start and its end. It's clever and fun, and I look
forward to seeing where the Doctor/Mary partnership goes from here.


Rating: 8/10.

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