Doctor Who: The Suffering

A First Doctor story from the perspective of Steven and Vicki, this was the first of what became an annual tradition of double-length (2 hour) Companion Chronicle releases. Here, the format is that Steven narrates the first half of the tale, while Vicki does the remainder, with some chit chat and interaction between the narrators at points along the way.

Indeed, there is a distinct change in tone at the half-way point, as the story alters direction. Steven's half of the tale is largely played for laughs, and based loosely around the Piltdown Man hoax of 1908. In the second half, Vicki heads off to London and becomes involved with the suffragettes, in a story that highlights social injustice. Some of this is perhaps a little heavy-handed, given that there can't be many listeners who wouldn't think that the suffragettes were in the right anyway.

Having said that, the story works well, with the darker and more political elements of the second half offsetting the lighter ones of the beginning, without making the story feel disjointed. Purves and O'Brien do a good job of re-capturing their characters of days gone by, helped by a well-written script that has more room to breathe than the shorter, standard, format allows. The feel of Edwardian London comes across, too, and there's an implied link to one of the televised Hartnell stories for continuity fans.