Companion Chronicles 5.05: A Town Called Fortune (spoilers)

Week 9 of the Evelyn listen through

notthebigfinishforum.freeforums.net/thread/4220/cocoa-cake-cd-evelyn-listen

This is his most recent story. One trope he loves to use is the star crossed lovers, which recurs in all the stories with Evelyn he's written. Time traveling Evelyn and Governor Rossiter, a soldier and a scientist, galactic criminal and posh woman, time traveler and Leo Tolstoy, and now this story!

Every time I start a story with Evelyn Smythe/Maggie Stables, I almost immediately think--always within the first ten minutes or so--"Wow, she's so good. Big Finish should record more audios with her."

And then I remember.

One thing i like to do is put-off finishing things. I like having stuff to look forward to, yeah? So, for example, I don't intend to listen to NABS 6 until Big Finish announces NABS 7; and I'm making my way toward my final five Paul McGann stories as slowly as humanly possible. Likewise the handful of Evelyn stories I've not yet listened to are delayed... I don't want this journey to end any time soon. I give Leela a lot of praise, certainly, but I think, hands-down, Evelyn is my favorite companion of all time. Few others come even remotely close.

So: A Town Called Fortune.

This story is... not one of my favorites, sadly. It is buoyed mostly by Stables' as-always masterful performance. But Westerns, to me at least, are mostly about atmosphere... and I don't think that can be conveyed very well through audio. So for me, the appeal of this story is mostly just in seeing Evelyn again, and how she interacts with various other characters in various scenarios. But is that enough to sustain a story?

Yes. Yes it is.

Which isn't to say the plot is bad or anything--the Doctor being a wanted man, and having been wanted for an entire year, in a town he'd never visited is a great hook for a story. And could potentially have been woven out of some deliciously timey-wimey shenanigans. The ultimate explanation for this, however, is far less interesting. I'm sorry, but "everyone was lying" is just never going to be a satisfying twist. It's only ever worked exactly the one time, and Christie only got away with it because it was new--and therefore novel. (Hot take?)

Also I gotta say, I was almost impressed with this story when Evelyn pointed out slave-laborers. Was Doctor Who finally going to directly confront some of the darker and more abominable areas of human history? Haha, nope, it was a bait and switch: these slaves are white and therefore the Doctor sees fit to interfere.

Which, I mean, is a huge missed opportunity. Obviously it would be very problematic (on multiple levels) for the Doctor to pop into the 1840s or 1880s an abolish slavery universally, but there's no reason he can't liberate a town of plantation or prison slaves, yeah? Not being able to fix everything is very emphatically not the same as being incapable of fixing anything.

But I digress.

Anyway, can we spare a moment to acknowledge how good the framing device for this story is? By bringing in a second actor to bounce off Stables, we effectively get a story that feels like a proper full-cast drama despite being, in practice, an audiobook as Evelyn merely relates the events of the story directly. It's a very clever use of limited resources. I think this is my very first Companion Chronicle? Color me impressed.

Also, that scene where the Doctor has them jump out of the moving train? "'Jump?' He said, casually." Lovely.