CRACK OF DOOM!

The Eighth Doctor, River Song, the Meddling Monk, the Weeping Angels and a cabal of evil Time Lords. it’s Doom Coalition 4!

FEATURE BY DAN TOSTEVIN

Ship in a Bottle.

Last year, an audio Doctor Who episode broke all the rules.

Absent Friends had no villain, no monster. There was a mystery – why are residents of a particular village getting phone calls from the dead? – but its resolution didn’t follow the usual grammar of a Doctor Who story. The ominously named telecoms company that had recently built a mast was just French. Its oft-stated interest in world domination was metaphorical. The free phones it had given the villagers were an honest PR gesture. And its strangely oily executive just liked to moisturise.

The timey-wimey twist which served as the real explanation was almost incidental; Absent Friends was more interested in exploring grief and loss, as Helen Sinclair (one of the Eighth Doctor’s two current companions, a museum linguist played by Hattie Morahan) tracked down her now-elderly brother, and discovered the devastation her sudden flight from 1963 had wrought on those she’d left behind, while Liv Chenka (the other, a Kaldor-born medical technician played by Nicola Walker) got a final chance to speak to her late, beloved father.

As well as being a heartbreaking standalone character study, Absent Friends was the ninth instalment of something much bigger – the 16-part Doom Coalition, a story about the music of the spheres and the end of everything, which concludes in March with the release of Doom Coalition 4 – and it was indicative of the ambition that has made the saga special.