Doctor Who Review: Sixth Doctor audio ‘The Doomwood Curse’
By James Aggas
When fiction becomes reality and reality becomes fiction, the Sixth Doctor and Charley are trapped in the plot of a gothic romance in ‘The Doomwood Curse’.
Following on from the excellent The Condemned, The Doomwood Curse continues the story of the Sixth Doctor and Charley. Interestingly, the ongoing problem of Charley lying to this earlier Doctor is only really addressed at the start. It’s a good reference, though, as Charley keeps forgetting that technically, she’s a “new” companion. At least, as far as this Doctor sees her. So it’s nice that this is partly addressed at the start.
The rest of the story is more traditional. Well, as “traditional” as Doctor Who can be. The Sixth Doctor takes Charley back to the 18th century to retrieve a book. A book about the famous highwayman Dick Turpin. Charley is practically in love with him, or at least, the character she has been reading about. The Doctor has a much lower opinion of the real person. In his view, Turpin was little more than a ruthless thug. But what happens when the real-life figure becomes the charming legend from fiction?
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I always enjoy a story that explores the differences between reality and fiction, and that’s exactly what this story does. True, considering how strange and unrealistic Doctor Who is by its very nature, that almost seems like an odd tale for it to tell.
Gothic Romance
But Doctor Who has always been very effective at using other genres. For The Doomwood Curse, it uses the genre of Gothic Romantic literature. Writer Jacqueline Rayner seems very keen to point out how absurd some of the plot elements of those stories really are.
However, you can tell that this was written with an affection for those tales. While The Doomwood Curse points out the absurdities of some of the tropes of the genre, it never shies away from them. In fact, most of the time, it fully embraces those very absurdities. So I think enjoyment of this story could be affected by how much you may or may not enjoy the genre already.
Having said that, there is a good mixture of comedy, drama and even a touch of horror and tragedy to the story. So there’s enough for everyone to enjoy something from it, I think. I also like how it’s reminiscent of one of my favourite Second Doctor stories, specifically The Mind Robber. I absolutely adored that story and how it compared fiction to reality. This almost does the same, but in a very different way.
While The Doomwood Curse doesn’t develop the ongoing story of the Sixth Doctor and Charley significantly, it is an entertaining story to listen to. As well as being a lot of fun, Colin Baker and India Fisher continue to come across as a brilliant and effective pairing. Well worth listening to for these two alone.
Next: Do previous regenerations affect the next one?