THE AUNTIE MATTER

The first story of the second season of the Fouth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish opens with a strange weasely man taking his fiancée home to meet his aunt and guardian.  It isn’t long before we discover that the aunt isn’t just giving her approval for the upcoming nuptials.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has sent the TARDIS (and K9) on a wild goose chase courtesy of the randomiser in an effort to get the Black Guardian off his trail (firmly setting this series of adventures after the televised season 16).  This effectively strands him and Romana I on Earth, posing as the Lord and Lady of a house with two servants – the maid Mabel, and the butler.

Bored with the Doctor tinkering on a gadget that’s intended to alert him to any extra-terrestrial energies, just in case the Black Guardian isn’t fooled by his ruse, Romana goes off to learn a little about Earth’s technological level.  In a bookshop, she meets a strange weasely little man who seems as interested in her topic as she is.  And he piques her interest enough to take her home to meet his aunt.

Meanwhile, the Doctor completes his gadget and it immediately picks up extra-terrestrial energies.  With Romana absent, he coerces Mabel into accompanying him to locate the source of the energy.

An intriguing, if somewhat low-key, first episode with sufficient peril and danger to keep the interest up.  There probably isn’t enough here for the traditional four-parter, so it’s good there’s only one more episode of it before we start something else.

Guest voices in this one includes Julia McKenzie (who has a tough time disguising her voice as someone younger).

It’s clear that it’s trying to pitch itself to the more light-hearted comedy/tongue-in-cheek aspects of the 16th/17th seasons, but this didn’t much work for me.  The behind-the-scenes chat talked mostly about being inspired by “P G Wodehouse” but it doesn’t matter how many times they say “P G Wodehouse”, if it’s not funny I’m not laughing.

Having the primary guest character behave like Terry Thomas and Julia McKenzie overacting didn’t much appeal to me.  Going to strange narrative efforts to ensure that the Doctor and Romana don’t actually meet while dealing with the same threat doesn’t really work either.  Comes across more like a Brian Rix farce on that side of things.

Lucy Griffiths, an actress I’ve not hugely rated in the past, was surprisingly good as the underused Mabel, though.

The Auntie Matter was enjoyable enough in itself, it’s just not going to be one of my top favourites.

The behind-the-scenes chat also spoke of the loss of Mary Tamm, interspersed with Tamm herself talking about being overjoyed to reprise her Romana next to Tom’s Doctor.  It’s clear that there was a lot of fun and enthusiasm during recording, made somewhat sad and sombre by recollections of her passing.