Having recently been impressed with Tim Treloar’s 3rd Doctor voice, I took advantage of a recent Big Finish special offer to download Damascus, one of their “Short Trips” range of short stories, which features Treloar narrating a 3rd Doctor adventure.

DAMASCUS

The adventure is told from the perspective of Prime Minister “Jeremy”.  I’ve no idea who Jeremy is, or if I should know him from other Big Finish stories but, as this is set in the 70s, and there was no UK Prime Minister called “Jeremy” in the 70s, this immediately puts you on the back foot.  Are Big Finish telling us that the 70s Doctor Who adventures were set on some Earth other than our own?  I don’t get this sense from the TV series.  It’s quite off-putting.

Anyway, it’s brought to PM Jeremy’s attention that an alien spaceship has come to Earth.  UNIT don’t seem to be doing anything about it.  Being a little wary of their scientific advisor, Jeremy goes to visit the Doctor.  The Doctor is tinkering in his laboratory, musing over an odd device he’s just discovered, but is generally disinterested in the arrival of the aliens.

The Doctor tells Jeremy that these particular aliens are of no threat and, if no one engages them, they’ll go away.  Instead, everyone outside of the Doctor’s lab suddenly falls asleep.  The Doctor immediately recognises a “Listless Field” in operation and he goes, in Bessie, with the PM to the alien ship.  They get as far as the coast, then the Doctor gets them on board the ship using bluster and force of voice.

The Doctor tells the aliens to leave Earth alone, and they say that the “Listless Field” is nothing to do with them.  The Doctor then uses his angry voice and force of will to make them all leave, which they do.

On discussing that the “Listless Field” was created by someone who works at The Damascus Project – something the Doctor has apparently told the authorities to shut down previously but wasn’t, the Doctor takes umbrage with the PM and he drives off and leaving Jeremy to make his own way back to London.  The whole experience leaves Jeremy feeling that the Doctor is a dangerous man, and a major threat to the security of the UK.

This is the only mention of the “Damascus” of the title and it feels like we’re supposed to know what it is, and why the Doctor wanted it shut down.  The lack of any information about “Damascus”, despite the story being called “Damascus”, leaves the story feeling as shallow as the unknown character of “PM Jeremy”.  I appreciate that a 30-minute adventure can’t fill in all the blanks, but leaving blanks under two of the most vital ingredients of the story is not helpful.

The main positive about this story is Tim Treloar.  He seems to have a natural “Jon Pertwee” voice, such that when the story opens with the PM dictating into a recorder I thought it was the 3rd Doctor.  I think he’s going to be very good in a full-cast adventure.

The story itself is, for the most part, a very good one.  It feels set in the 3rd Doctor’s era, and involving the PM (whoever “Jeremy” is supposed to be) allows the kind of antagonism between the Doctor and figures of authority that this era was renowned for.

In some aspects, the adventure falls out of tune a little.  Not knowing this “Jeremy” is probably the primary one but, as the key character, you have to put up with that.  What I didn’t like was the Doctor’s behaviour on deciding to address the alien situation.  He goes to the beach, then uses a shouty voice, invokes the “Shadow Proclamation”, demands to speak with the aliens, then pretty much resolves the situation by saying “Leave the Earth, because I’m the Doctor and I’m telling you to”.  This whole piece felt far more like a modern take on the character as developed in the series since 2005, and not from the 70s.  The “shadow proclamation” is a bit of modern-WHO nonsense that is best forgotten, not revisited.  The Doctor making the aliens leave, not because of anything he does, but because he’s the Doctor and that should be enough for anyone to run scared, is another bit of modern-WHO drama-killing nonsense.

Oh, and on a minor note, this is another of Big Finish‘s stories in which “what the deuce” makes an appearance.  Is this a Big Finish catchphrase that they’re trying to put into every story?

In the final analysis, Damascus is a much better presentation (if not necessarily a better story) than my previous “Short Trips” audio – The Ghost Trap – largely because of it featuring a fair representation of the Doctor, but it’s not enough to make me want to buy too many more of them.