THIN ICE

I bought Thin Ice from Big Finish‘s range of audio ‘Lost Stories’ during a special offer in 2014, but I hadn’t got around to listening to it.  Now that I’ve listened to UNIT: Dominion and I’m more familiar with Raine Creevey as the 7th Doctor’s companion, it seemed like the ideal time to find out where she came from.  That led me to The Lost Stories.

Thin Ice by Marc Platt is the first of four stories from the unmade season 27 of the television series, that would probably have been made had it not ended.

The TARDIS is on course for London 1967, but ends up behind the Iron Curtain – in Moscow 1967.  The Russians have found a horde of alien artefacts that they intend to use for advantage during the Cold War.  One mysterious item is a helmet that, when put on willing volunteers ends up killing the participant.

From England, disguised as a purveyor of furs, comes Marcus Creevey, who’s under instructions to break in to the Kremlin, discover the location of the artefacts, and steal them before getting them back to London.  He’s aided in this scheme by Russian Lt Raina Kerenskaya, and a cohort who meets the Doctor and Ace with one such artefact before he’s killed when it explodes in a sonic wave.

Apparently Creevey has been told to expect the Doctor and Ace, but neither of them have a clue why.  They soon get mixed up in the theft, but not before discovering the the boss of Creevey’s boss is the Ice Warrior Lord Hess.  The Ice Warrior is there to reclaim the relics of an ancient legendary warrior, with which he hopes to reunite the separate factions of his fellow Martians.

Unfortunately, Kerenskaya inadvertently activates one of the relics and the old warrior is resurrected through her.  Hess realises he’s not the warrior he believed him to be.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is having secret conversations with a mysterious Time Lord.  The Doctor believes that Ace would find her calling if entered into Gallifrey’s Prydonian Academy.  As the only human to have been suggested for the position, the Time Lords are uncertain.  They wish her to undergo certain tests and the ones the Doctor’s already put her through are insufficient.  She must be allowed to deal with the Ice Warrior situation on her own.  When the Doctor involves himself too much, he’s extracted from the mission at the most inopportune moment for Ace.

When Ace is met by the Time Lord, disguised as a Russian colleague of Lord Hess, she realises that she’s been set up by everyone including the Doctor.  Her trust in him diminishes, but she’s determined to see the mission out and prove to the Time Lord that she deserves her place at the Academy.

Elsewhere, using the TARDIS to return to Earth, the Doctor takes Marcus Creevey and a newborn baby from the ill-fated Raina Kerenskaya – a baby to which Creevey is reluctant to accept that he’s the father.

Thin Ice answers a lot of questions, as it appears to be the first of a series of stories that develop the character of Ace into the version we hear on numerous occasions in other Big Finish audios, whilst introducing a new companion (the first baby companion?).  Things have changed a little bit due to the audio series not being restricted in the way that the TV series might have been, but it still feels like it could have been told on the TV.

Although this is supposed to be an Ace test/mission, the Doctor is amply involved and it feels like a natural progression of the character.  The only gap really is that we had no indication before this story that the Doctor was trying to get Ace evaluated to join the Time Lords.  Why would he do this for her and not for any previous companion?  Why is she so quick to join them when she learns of this?   There seems to be one heck of a missing link.  I get that they’re probably linking back to the “tests” of stories such as Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric on TV, but there is still the missing link.

The return of the Ice Warriors is not really as special as it sounds.  We just get a lot of rasping voices and complaints from Hess that Earth is too hot.  Their return would have been much more welcome in the visual medium.  Ice Warriors, Cold Moscow, Cold War, it all feels like someone just tagged all of these things together because they’re “cold”.  Fortunately, despite being the equivalent of four TV episodes, the story doesn’t outstay its welcome.  There’s plenty going on from one episode to the next, but keeping the attention is done better in hindsight if the listener is already aware that Creevey and Raina are the parents of forthcoming companion Raine Creevey.

The next story, Crime of the Century, is set in 1989, and sees the introduction of the “adult” Raine Creevey.  Some characters carry over from Thin Ice, as it’s only 22 years later, so it’ll be interesting to see how that’s handled.