Gabrielle Ketley reviews the latest Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures release
Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Dark Tides (Tim Foley) gives us fantasy space knights looking for a long lost ship paved with gold and haunted by the holographic ghost of an evil scientist…what more can we ask for?
Sir Cal (Ben Arogundade), his wise man Holbrook (David Shaw-Parker), and squire/not so secret illegitimate son Mervyn (Sam Stafford) are on an epic space quest (because what sort of quest is it if not an epic space one?) to rediscover the legendary Vesterbold, a long lost vessel rumoured to be filled with precious maps and lined with gold.
Their mission takes them perilously near an area of liminal space, and onto the path of Rose (Billie Piper) and the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), who greets a nervy Marvyn with a cheerful warning that he is “probably going to die”.
(Really the Doctor should just have that printed out on white cards, to pass out whenever making a new acquaintance).
Danger and the Doctor are never far apart, and Dark Tides triples the threat by providing three antagonists, all working towards their own ends.
The “ghost” of the Vesterbold, the hologram of crew member Doctor Vivian Rest (Doon Mackichan), is delightfully vindictive. Long separated from her body and all humanity, twisted by prolonged exposure to the darkness of space, her unashamed love for killing is just one of her charms, right up there with her glorious evil cackle. As a hologram, Vivian is a particularly fun twist on the traditional ghost. Whereas ghosts generally count among those that go “bump in the night”, Vivian depends upon light, and it is in the light she is at her most deadly.
Lacking Vivian’s refreshing self-knowledge, Sir Cal is bigoted, hypocritical and driven by greed. As quick as he is to claim rights to the Vesterbold on the grounds of familial ties, his abuse and neglect of his son, Mervyn, just goes to show familial ties only go the one way. Even as he’s leaving poor old Mervyn to the tender mercy of Vivian, he cannot quite own up to the depth of his betrayal, insisting that even Mervyn should be able to defeat a “mere woman”. While the sexism of the sentiment is undoubtedly sincere, his belief in Mervyn’s survival seems significantly less so, especially when considering how quickly he’s able to come up with an excuse for Mervyn’s fate, that pins the blame firmly on Mervyn’s shoulders.
The final villain is space itself, and the effect of spending so long travelling through the darkness, away from home, away from humanity, and everything that holds us in check. Even Rose feels its malign influence, taking just a bit too much pleasure in inflicting pain upon Vivian in the final showdown, to her own shame and fear.
The Doctor, much more used to the darkness than Rose, and having had centuries to come to terms with it, reminds her that as long as they have each other, acting as the other’s light, they can leave the worst of the darkness behind them, even if they can’t always defeat it entirely.
Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Dark Tides is available on CD or as a download from
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