Home Truths, The Drowned World, and The Guardian of the Solar System by Simon Guerrier
2008 - 2010
This will be the marathon's second post about an audio adventure. I would consider Farewell, Great Macedon, which I reviewed back in 2017, a path not taken, an alternate history of Doctor Who, something which could have aired in 1964 if production had gone differently. Companion Chronicles by Big Finish are a different creature, an aberration. They're non-diegetic, in a way, a retcon (if canon was a concept I took seriously anyway). This isn't a reflection on their value, naturally! I happen to find the First Doctor era Companion Chronicles to be some of my favorite non-televised material for Doctor Who. Some of the credit can be laid at the feet of the author of this three-part series, Simon Guerrier, who I must say has an incredible knack for capturing both the feeling of the era and the characters.
This knack for character writing (which, I hasten to point out, is shared by many of the writers for this range, I'm only singling Guerrier out for credit as I'm a fan) offers something that was missing during these 1960s stories. As much as I have loved the journey so far, one flaw that jumps out to a 21st century first-timer like myself is that the characterization of many recurring characters in this era is... inconsistent. The only clearly defined arc I can identify at this stage is William Hartnell's as the Doctor, evolving over the course of the seasons. Origins and motivations for many of the companions remain murky, and the serialized format and seemingly lax script editing don't offer much room for recurring character beats. This doesn't make things like the Companion Chronicles for the black-and-white era a better version of the show, far from it, but it does make for a different version of the show, one which offers its own kind of might-have-been. In other words, a new relative dimension.
I'll start off on this particular character exploration by saying that no matter the fact that her time on the show was brief, I've loved Sara Kingdom. She's very different to any of the other companions prior to this point in the program, a professional killer who's even tried to kill the Doctor. Although she doesn't get much room to breathe as a character during The Daleks' Master Plan, I think Jean Marsh still does fantastic work in making Sara an engaging addition to the team. I'm really pleased that she's returned for so many audios, and these three in particular. When given something with more gravitas to act with, she settles back into a role she'd left more than 40 years before with surprising ease. Finally getting a look into the stoic Space Security officer's head is certainly a treat, and it's to Marsh's credit that it's done so convincingly.
The drowned world where the framing scenes for these three stories takes place is illustrated in a minimalist but rather compelling way. Small details slipped about the world being covered in water, about the regression of humanity's technology, about the Daleks living on as a monster story of sorts, and Robert's passing remark calling men in their 60s "very old", all give a good idea of what this world is like without needing to spend much time focusing on it. The pandemic that springs up in the second part of the trilogy hit close to home right now, for obvious reasons... I was amazed how much more I connected with Robert's anxiety over his daughter's illness than I did the first time that I listened to this.
Within this setting as a framework, Sara regales the officer, Robert, with three stories from her time traveling with the Doctor and Steven Taylor. Her first involves her visit to this very house on Ely, ending with the maybe not-so-shocking revelation that we're not speaking with the original Sara Kingdom, but an imprint of her left upon the psychic building. The real Sara left with the Doctor and died on Kembel, while a piece of her was left here and grew old, never knowing what happened to the "real" her. Robert immediately raises the question that Sara has already seemed to ask herself, whether she's really Sara or just a memory, a ghost in all but name. Even though she clearly still thinks and acts human, feels the happiness and pain from her time before coming to the house, she doesn't wish that for herself, almost doesn't want to be real, as if it makes suppressing the hurt she still feels over killing Bret easier. She can't even say that she did it outright until the last part of the trilogy.
If one quality of Sara from the televised serial is highlighted throughout this trio of audios, it's her selflessness. Sara made an oath as an officer to protect the innocent; Sara surrendered an imprint of her own mind, her self, her most precious thing, to the house to save her friends; Sara gave herself up to the Silver Sea in order to keep it from swallowing up the miners; Sara, ultimately, gave her very life for the Doctor, on a forgotten planet far, far away. And now she lives her eternal life granting every wish of each passing traveler. She tells us that the House wishes nothing for itself, but as Robert admonishes in the final part, "We both know that's not true." Selflessness is all well and good, but you should never give and give and give away until there's nothing of you left. You can't live only for others, but never for yourself. It's okay to want and need things, it's okay to have that weakness because all of us do. And it's only once Sara realizes this that she finds her escape at the end of this story.
Sara is trapped in what she calls "the machine", a vicious cycle of guilt, blame, and bad decisions. She almost breaks in the third part when she realizes, that by breaking the Great Clock and speaking with her brother in her personal past before she killed him, she has set into motion the events of The Daleks' Master Plan and her own eventual murder of Bret. The realization that she can't change the past absolutely crushes her. But nobody can change the past, they can only grow from it, something which Sara seems to come to terms with by the end of the story.
So, to the question of whether this Sara is the same Sara, the answer is yes and no. The Doctor will tell us far in the future that "A man is the sum of his memories," and the same experiences, the same pain, are stuck with Sara throughout this trilogy. But can Sara the character written by Simon Guerrier, and Sara the character written by Nation and Spooner in the 1960s, really be the same when they are separated by author, and by five decades?
Can the Doctor who lands outside the house on Ely at the end of the story really be the same man Sara knew, when his face has changed?
Can the Doctor in any future part of the series really be the same character as the one who departed Totter's Lane in 1963?
Can the Doctor Who of today really be the same program it was in 1966, long after the original cast and crew have all been replaced a dozen times over?
The answer is still, yes and no. The soul is there, even if the continuity is not. That soul, that constant strand of DNA, makes all of these things the same to us in their essence, even if the particulars have all been changed out like the parts of the ship of Theseus.
Call it a ghost, if you like. I'd prefer calling it my favorite TV series.
The Sontarans is next.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 9 April 2020.)
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