Alex Hewitt reviews Everywhere and Anywhere, the latest boxset in the current series of Eleventh Doctor Chronicles. You can also find our preview of the set here.
The boxset kicks off with Georgia Cook’s Spirit of the Season. It’s lovely that the Eleventh Doctor gets a Christmas special here, much as he would on TV. The pre-titles scenes bear a couple of jarring edits, but once the theme music kicks in you’re in for a good ride. The Doctor and Valarie awake in a mysterious mansion, where a young girl called Clara threatens to kill them. They also meet Edmund and Harpreet, who have both also been kidnapped from their respective timestreams. Spirit of the Season feels like a two-parter – the first half is wonderfully surreal, and establishes a thoroughly interesting set-up, while everything after the midpoint takes a far darker tone. Safiyya Ingar is, as ever, incredible here as Valarie, and they get numerous opportunities to display their range. Cook’s script encourages some seriously bleak imagery, and Clara is shown to be a highly sinister antagonist. In particular, there are some devastatingly unsettling scenes that take place in a slightly different TARDIS to what listeners may be used to. Valarie’s portion of the episode is handled with care and never steps beyond the boundary of good taste. This is essentially Doctor Who written by M. R. James, and it works so, so well.
Next up is All’s Fair by Max Kashevsky, which sees Roanna and Valarie going on the worst date ever. The story takes place at the Chicago World’s Fair, which serves as an excellent backdrop for the events which take place here. The rug is pulled from under the listener’s feet fairly early on in this episode, the majority of the runtime being spent unpacking the gloriously bizarre storyline that Kashevsky weaves. There are echoes here of tropes often associated with Steven Moffat-penned stories, and this allows All’s Fair to slip into the feel of the Matt Smith era perfectly. The guest cast of this story must be praised as well, in particular Christopher Ragland as Hayden, a character we haven’t met before but who it only takes seconds for us to get to know in depth. Ragland excels at creating the characterisation right from his first moments, and it’s immediately clear just how important Hayden really is. All’s Fair is perhaps the most important episode of this series so far, as it launches the arc forwards while essentially being a character piece. Bits and pieces from earlier episodes start to come together and there are some lovely teases about what’s still to come. The closing scene is genuinely beautiful and thematically ties the episode up into a neat bow. All’s Fair has the whole range of emotional moments and Kashevsky handles them excellently.
Rounding off this boxset is Sins of the Flesh, written by series producer Alfie Shaw. Right from the beginning, it’s clear that Shaw isn’t messing around with this one. The Cybermen are performing conversion therapy. There’s no ambiguity here, the story isn’t an analogy for anything – that’s literally what’s happening. Disapproving parents of gay children are being targeted, and persuaded to allow their children to be put into a ‘redemption suit’, with the promise that once the sinful thoughts have been expelled, the child will emerge unharmed. Obviously, Valarie and the Doctor have something to say about this. It’s rare that Doctor Who is this acerbically pointed, but this is how important issues should be handled. There’s no skirting around the topic, no watering down of anything, Shaw simply tells the story he wants to tell. Some of the dialogue in this episode rivals Moffat’s when it comes to emotional poignancy, and there’s a conversation between Maddison Bulleyment’s excellent Carmen and her father that wouldn’t sound out of place in a real-life conversion therapy documentary. Somehow, despite all this, the story is also able to continue the series arc, and Jacob Dudman gets several opportunities to shine as the Eleventh Doctor here, putting in his best performance in the role yet. Sins of the Flesh is gutsy, gritty, and proof that it’s possible to both spread the message and tell a damn good story at the same time. Nothing is lost here, this is absolutely exemplary.
Everywhere and Anywhere has somehow continued the trend of each Eleventh Doctor Chronicles boxset being even better than the previous one, and it’s consistently a joy to listen to a series that has been made to such a high standard. Simply marvellous.
Doctor Who: Everywhere and Anywhere is out today from bigfinish.com.
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