Doctor Who review: The Companion Chronicles: The Crumbling Magician is a great final story for The First Doctor: Volume Three
By James Aggas
The First Doctor, Ben and Polly find themselves trapped in a rather deadly hospital, in Guy Adams’s excellent Doctor Who story The Crumbling Magician.
The last story in The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor: Volume Three is a little bit different from the others. Don’t get me wrong, all of them have been highly original and fantastic stories. But while previous stories E is For…, Daybreak and The Vardan Invasion of Mirth have featured at least some narration, The Crumbling Magician is more of a straightforward drama. Albeit one with a very limited cast.
In this story, Anneke Wills plays her usual role of Polly. But she also has to take on a couple of other roles. The first is Continuity – an artificial intelligence running a hospital. The hospital takes on Polly’s voice to comfort her, but it very quickly becomes extremely unnerving. It doesn’t help that Polly finds herself bouncing backwards and forwards in time.
Wills is great at Continuity. She knows how to make the computer sound almost friendly, but always with a hint of superiority lying just beneath the surface. It’s refreshing to hear Wills play the villain as much as the companion, and she does a fantastic job managing both.
Of course, that’s just two of the roles Wills plays in this story. The third one? Well, that’s best left as a surprise…
Elliot Chapman, Anneke Wills and David Warner all give brilliant performances in The Crumbling Magician.
(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.
Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)
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Excellent performances and brilliant ideas
Elliot Chapman also appears in this one, playing his usual role of Ben Jackson. Originally played by the late Michael Craze, Chapman has done a fantastic job playing the classic companion and honoring Craze’s legacy. That very much continues in this story as he gives a wonderful performance opposite David Warner, who plays Allie in this story.
I don’t want to give too much away about Warner’s character. Not that it’s anyone major to Doctor Who history or anything like that. Just that there’s a really interesting twist with his character, and Warner (rather unsurprisingly, considering he’s one of Britain’s very best actors,) plays it to perfection.
The scenes he has opposite Chapman are especially fantastic. There’s a bond that develops very quickly between these two, and Ben gets to find out what it’s like to be seen as a hero.
Like his previous Companion Chronicles story The Plague of Dreams, Guy Adams has written another brilliantly clever story with The Crumbling Magician. Exploring similar themes as Plague did while taking them in a new direction, Magician provides not just interesting ideas but really fantastic drama, too. A strong follow-up to his earlier story, and a great finale for this box set.
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What stories have you enjoyed where actors had to play more than one role? Have you listened to other audios with Ben and Polly? Let us know in the comments below.