Erimem

Exit, Pursued By A Plot Device

Big Finish Folly, Part 48 – The Bride of Peladon, by Barnaby Edwards

Ah, Peladon, how we have missed thee. Home to Aggedor and a seemingly endless strain of troublesome industrial relations, it’s a familiar setting with a few familiar characters too. And a strange place to take leave of Erimem, but we’ll get to that later. Meanwhile, let’s join the crew as they fall to Peladon in a damaged Ice Warrior starship, the Tardis inconveniently jettisoned into orbit by accident – there’s a coronation to attend, monsters to avoid, and somebody wants to corner the market in trisilicate…. so, business as usual on Peladon…! (more…)

Mind The Eye…

Big Finish Folly, Part 47 – The Mind’s Eye, by Colin Brake

Peri has settled down and now only has to fight for the affections of her would-be step-son Kyle. Erimem has become leader of the colony of New Cairo, a magnificent Pharoah in space. And the Doctor? Well, he’s struggling through an alien jungle, being attacked by telepathic plantlife and wondering where his companions have gone… something, quite obviously, is not right here. (more…)

Vlad All Over

Big Finish Folly, Part 46 – Son of the Dragon, by Steve Lyons

The Tardis arrives in the Balkans, and the Doctor quickly discovers that he has landed in the midst of a Turkish campaign against the Eastern Christians led by Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia. Treated with suspicion by the Turkish soldiers, only Erimem’s evident status as a noble queen keeps them from being kept as prisoners. And then the Wallachians attack and Erimem is carried bodily away by Vlad himself. Charming and brutal, he intends to take her as his wife. But while Erimem finds herself believing in his purpose, the Doctor knows what history records as the fate of the first wife of Vlad the Impaler, Son of Dracula… (more…)

Big Finish Folly, Part 43 – ROYGBIV!

The Kingmaker, by Nev Fountain

In which the Doctor, under contract to the educational publishing department of what appears to be an Angry Robot, attempts to discover what happened to the princes in the tower. Peri and Erimem meanwhile, stranded in the last years of the War of the Roses, discover that a time traveller is meddling with history, giving Richard of Gloucester glimpses into the future. Is this the Doctor? Or the Master? Or… somebody else? (more…)

Big Finish Folly, Part 42

The Council of Nicaea, by Caroline Symcox

The Doctor arrives in Nicaea to witness the infamous Council of 325AD at which the Roman Emperor Constantine oversaw the creation of the first uniform Christian creed. He believes he will just be doing some sightseeing, but as he and Peri and Erimem get caught up in popular riots in the city’s streets, so they stand in danger of unravelling the whole history of Christianity itself – and the biggest danger comes from Erimem herself…

Oh, now this is more like it. Once again we’re in ancient history (not that The Church & the Crown was that ancient), and once again there is no alien baddie to fight. That makes the peril within this story all the more believable. This is a straight-ahead time-travel-changes-the-course-of-history play, and it is all the more effective in that the major problem is caused by Erimem’s refusal to let things lie. Here, the two Carolines (Morris & Symcox) combine to give the Doctor a very real headache: for perhaps the first time I can remember, a Tardis companion openly refuses to do what the Doctor wants, choosing instead to affect the course of history for the  sake of fairness and justice. He has to spend the remainder of the play juggling Erimem (angry, obstinate) with Constantine (angry, obstinate) while also trying to stop history changing any more than it should.

This is the sort of thing Erimem should be doing all the time. She’s an Egyptian princess after all, not someone who strikes me as being placid, and her wilfulness not only drives the story but rounds out her character too. By contrast Peri becomes the Doctor’s “yes-girl”, and that’s a dynamic that would prove interesting if explored further.

My only quibble would be the slight characterisations of the minor players (Clement & Julius) and the slight complicating of the plot when there’s already enough to distract the Doctor aside from assassins on Arius’s tail. That aside, this is a well-researched piece too – again, exactly the sort of thing that Doctor Who should be doing, exploring moments of history and making educational points entertaining. This is an aspect of Who that the modern TV series sadly lacks (or, at the very most, drowns out with Daleks and sonic-screwdriver-powered Spitfires). I’m by no means a fan of organised religions, but the history of that particular period – the transition of Christianity from a minor, regional cult into a major power across the whole of Europe, just before the Dark Ages – is ripe for all sorts of storytelling.

A welcome return to form for the Fifth Doctor and his frustrated anger, then – and an excellent tale from Caroline Symcox.
****¾

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Big Finish Folly, Part 41

Three’s a Crowd, by Colin Brake

Earth Colony Phoenix has failed. The survivors, confined to their individual quarters for years in a bid to conserve vital energy, have become insular, agoraphobic, and socially inept as they await some kind of rescue. But when the Tardis arrives on the long-abandoned colony ship that still sits in orbit, the Doctor, Peri and Erimem discover that there is a darker secret behind the gradual disappearances of the survivors. And that the next transmat between cells might find one of them in mortal danger… (more…)

Big Finish Folly, Part 39

The Axis of Insanity, by Simon Furman

The Doctor is called to a dead-end dimension that acts as the graveyard of past Timelord mistakes and discovers that something is loose in this particular circle of hell. As locked-away timestreams dissolve into each other and crush the Axis, he and Peri and Erimem must battle an insane shape-shifting jester to prevent the primary timeline being infected with absolute chaos….

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Big Finish Folly, Part 37

No Place Like Home, by Iain McLaughlin

Now Erimem is a fully paid-up member of the Tardis crew, it’s time to show her all the nooks and crannies (and where the secondary control room has moved itself to this week). Unfortunately, the Doctor’s memory is playing tricks on him… or is something else moving the rooms in the Tardis and creating doors that lead only into the Vortex itself? And just who is that goldfish-bowl-headed person lurking in the shadows?

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