Doctor Who

Feminism and Doctor Who haven’t exactly been easy bedfellows. Most female companions are notable for their lack of character development, their tendency to scream and get captured rather than do anything useful, or having been hired mainly as eye candy. Even when the show has tried to embrace feminism through the companions, it’s not really worked – cf Liz Shaw (fired for being too independent and self-confident) and Sarah Jane Smith (marked tendency to scream, get captured and just hector people a lot about women’s lib rather than actually do anything).

So it was with an air of trepidation (and the idea that the play’s title would be only too accurate) that I began to listen to The Suffering, a Companion Chronicle featuring both Steven (Peter Purves) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) that’s set during the time of the Sufragette movement. My fears were calmed slightly by the fact that:

1. It’s written by a woman, Jacqueline Rayner, who can do reasonably good Companion Chronicles.
2. It’s a Hartnell Companion Chronicle and they’re usually better than the others

I’m not going to say it’s great and it does tread a very fine line between bludgeon-level subtlety and something a little deeper, but it’s okay. But did it really need to be two CDs-long?

No. It really, really didn’t.

Continue reading “Review: The Companion Chronicles 4×7 – The Suffering”