|
In 1929, Lord Barset’s expedition to the Antarctic
was lost without a trace. Or so it seemed... Nearly a century
later, in 2012, his grandson funds a much-publicized return
to the icy wastes. His mission: to discover what happened
to the original expedition. What he finds instead is an enigma
- a battered London police box frozen in ice millions of years
old. But something else lies in wait in this awful place,
something from an era before humankind set foot on the continent’s
cold soil. A menace frozen in time. Until now...
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
Though you don’t need to have heard the 1989 not-for-profit
Audio Visuals story Endurance in order to follow
Frozen Time, this is a kind of sequel to that earlier
tale, which was set in 1929 and concerned an expedition to
Antarctica led by one Lord Barset (then played by Joseph Howard).
There he and the Doctor (then played by Nicholas Briggs) encountered
some Silurians. Here Barset’s grandson (Anthony Calf)
searches for the reptile people (and, more importantly, their
technology) that were discovered all those years ago - though
the creatures he finds are not the reptile people he was expecting...
If you are familiar with the plot of Endurance,
the revelation of the creatures’ identity may come as
a big surprise, thanks to a cunning bluff on the part of writer
Briggs, who penned the original Audio Visuals play
under a pseudonym. However, I was not familiar with that earlier
story (though I’ve done my research afterwards) and so,
ironically, I was not surprised when the Ice Warriors were
revealed. This is because the Antarctic is such a fitting
location for an Ice Warrior adventure, and the initial set-up
- that of technologically advanced humanoids being thawed
out from the ice - is very similar to that of the creatures’
debut serial, The
Ice Warriors.
The notion of the TARDIS being excavated after millennia also
recalls the beginning of the Fifth Doctor comic strip The
Stockbridge Horror, in which an imprint of the vehicle’s
police box shell was discovered in a limestone quarry.
Despite the running time of Big Finish’s episodes being
restricted to 25 minutes each nowadays, the plot feels somewhat
low on incident. The guest cast is good, though, including
former Bond girl Maryam d’Abo as the eager French scientist
Genevieve. She stands in as a kind of companion for the solo
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy). In fact, there’s a
tantalising possibility that she joins him for some travels
aboard the TARDIS before he returns her to Antarctica at the
end of the story.
Though its production code would suggest that this drama takes
place after Valhalla,
Briggs, in an interview among the CD’s extras, states
that it is set at a different point in the Seventh Doctor’s
timeline. Perhaps the Time Lord’s forgetfulness (caused
by him having been frozen in a self-induced coma for aeons)
and references to Mel, Ace and Hex place this tale earlier
than Valhalla, not long before Return
of the Daleks, in which he recalled the same
companions. His amnesia might also explain why he referred
to those individuals rather than more “recent” friends,
such as Bernice, Roz or Chris from the New Adventures novels.
The extra features also include several tracks of Steve Foxon’s
effective incidental music. It’s a good job this is on
CD, though - if this was vinyl, I might have been worried
about the fizzes and crackles that are part of Foxon’s
composition!
Though it didn’t surprise me as much as the production
team evidently hoped it would, Frozen Time didn’t
leave me cold.
Richard
McGinlay
Buy
this item online
We
compare prices online so you get the cheapest
deal! Click on the logo of the desired store
below to purchase this item.
|
|
|
£14.24
(Amazon.co.uk) |
| |
|
|
|
£9.49
(Play.com) |
All prices correct at time of going to press.
|
|
