Doctor Who Review: Eighth Doctor Audio ‘The Last’
By James Aggas
The Eighth Doctor, Charley and C’Rizz are trapped on a dying world, and face one of their most desperate adventures yet. But is ‘The Last’ as dark and bleak as it seems?
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After the considerably lighter fare of Faith Stealer, we move onto The Last. If the title wasn’t enough to give you an idea of just how bleak this story is, the cover certainly should. An absolutely desolate and war-torn landscape, with nothing but a single rocket in sight. It gives a good idea of what the actual story is like, I must say.
In some ways, this is a story that takes a few risks. It pushes the Doctor and his friends into situations they’ve never dealt with before. And there’s little that they can do to actually help anyone.
When they arrive in this particular zone, most of the population is dead already. The war’s come and gone all too quickly. The planet’s getting ready to break apart. There’s hardly anyone left to save. It’s almost refreshing to explore such a helpless situation as the one that’s presented in ‘The Last’.
I said the story takes a few risks in some ways. In another way, though, it hardly takes any risks at all. Not in the long term, at least. Terrible things happen to our favourite characters in this story.
And yet, you know that this isn’t a finale. Nothing truly devastating is going to affect our characters for the rest of the series. Ultimately, you know that by the end, they’re going to be OK. This is something that’s made clear, even while you’re listening to it.
That doesn’t make The Last a bad story to listen to. I think part of the fun (for lack of a better word) is finding out exactly how the main characters will be OK by the end. Is the answer satisfying? Not quite, but it’s interesting.
At almost 2 and a half hours, it’s also quite long. It keeps its plot going at a fairly reasonable pace. There’s a lot going on with the Doctor and C’Rizz, especially when they’re separated. We also find out even more about C’Rizz’s background. Particularly his family history and his faith.
The Doctor, meanwhile, faces some very difficult decisions and situations. He’s lived a long life, but he rarely faces the possibility of terrible things happening to his companions. Or facing the terrible things that have happened to them. This story is keen to explore both, at least. It also explores just how badly the Doctor wants to live.
There’s one other thing that I noticed on re-listen. Specifically, that there is a lot of foreshadowing in this story. More than that, there seem to be common themes across all the stories in this season. Faith. Life. Rebirth. I’ll explore these ideas in more detail later, but I am glad that I decided to revisit the Divergent Universe arc. It’s interesting the things you miss the first time.
The Last is a pretty serviceable story. In some ways predictable, but not a bad listen overall. There are a lot of little things that I liked about this release. Especially the exploration of the characters and the arc development.
Next: Inside Look At ‘Knock Knock’