Winter is Coming
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Doctor Who Review: Eighth Doctor audio ‘All Hands on Deck’

By James Aggas

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In the latest ‘Short Trip’, ‘All Hands on Deck’, one important question is raised: whatever happened to the Doctor’s granddaughter?

The premise of All Hands on Deck reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from Series One:

"Before the war, I was both a father and a grandfather. Now I’m neither, but I’m still a doctor."

This quote from Dr. Constantine in The Empty Child was a line that really stood out for fans of the Classic Series. Not so much for the line itself, but for the Ninth Doctor’s response to it:

"Yeah. I know the feeling."

The implications of this line were instantly clear. It didn’t just remind us that the Doctor had lost his whole family in the Time War. It also gently reminded the fans of Susan, his granddaughter, who traveled with his First incarnation. More than that: it was a very strong implication that the Doctor believed she had died, like the rest of them.

The big question of course was: how? In the Classic Series, Susan was supposed to have been on Earth after a Dalek invasion. The Doctor effectively abandoned her there, but only because he knew she had fallen in love, and yet would never have left her grandfather willingly.

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Previous reunions

While Peter Capaldi believed that the Doctor had never seen his granddaughter again, that wasn’t quite true. He had seen her in The Five Doctors. However, there had been a lot going on in the twentieth anniversary special. As a result, we didn’t find out a great deal of what had happened to her since The Dalek Invasion of Earth. She never appeared in the television series after that.

Big Finish, of course, have explored what happened next, in three key dramas. The first, An Earthly Child, has the Eighth Doctor not only reunited with Susan, but also meet his great-grandson Alex. The second, Relative Dimensions, is a family Christmas dinner on board the TARDIS. (And yes, before you ask, it’s exactly as disastrous as it sounds.)

Lastly, in Lucie Miller/To The Death, the two-part finale to The Eighth Doctor Adventures, the Doctor has one more reunion with his family. But it’s a reunion during a second Dalek invasion of Earth, and by the end, everyone has suffered heavy losses. While there have been several stories to feature Susan since To The Death, all of them had been set during her travels with the First Doctor, making it Susan’s last appearance chronologically.

Until now.

From invasion to the Time War

All Hands on Deck is told directly from Susan’s point of view in a first-person narrative. Over the course of the story, she tells us what happened to her several years after the Second Dalek Invasion.

It’s a nice way of catching up, and at first, it almost feels like a rather small story. Not because it isn’t great to listen to, but because throughout the episode, Susan is constantly distracted by very small problems. She has no idea who or what is causing them or why. So it almost seems rather light-hearted at first.

Then we get to the last ten minutes, which makes it instantly clear just how momentous this story truly is. Now, I’ve had my suspicions on exactly what kind of story this would be for a while. Especially as it had been advertised months in advance as a story of Eight set in the Time War. But writer Eddie Robson does a decent job of distracting you from that fact until the moment actually arrives.

A short story with huge consequences

If there’s one thing I’m a little surprised about, it’s the format by which this story is told. As part of the Short Trips range, it’s more of an audio reading than a drama. Carole Ann Ford does a great job playing Susan again, and the story really does draw you in. However, I can’t help but wonder just how much more effective it could’ve been as a full-cast drama. Or even just with the addition of Paul McGann playing Eight. While the overall story does fit the Short Trips format rather nicely, the ending of All Hands on Deck is huge.

It’s not just in terms of mythology that it leaves an impact, either. There’s a beautiful and heartbreaking irony given to the ending that I just adore. It’s wonderful to hear, but I wonder just how much could’ve been added if McGann and Ford had performed it together. However, if I’m honest, this is a very small complaint, compared to how incredibly strong the overall story is.

I don’t think I had realized just how long I had been waiting to listen to the story told in All Hands on Deck until I finished listening to it. It’s just an incredibly satisfying listen, and achieves so much with so little. It doesn’t answer all questions regarding Susan’s fate in the Time War, but it answers enough. As both a vital piece of mythology, as well as a great short story in its own right, All Hands on Deck is highly recommended.

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