The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Pioneers – Review

The Ninth Doctor’s adventures are continuing with Big Finish, giving Christopher Eccleston a chance to shine as the all-too-short-lived incarnation on television. Now into its third series which kicks off with Pioneers, which sees the Doctor having some quieter adventures this time around getting to meet some historical figures that we may never have heard of before, (I certainly hadn’t) as well as facing off against an old villain who likes to think of itself as a boss.

The opening story, The Green Gift by Roy Gill picks up where the previous set ended with the Ninth Doctor travelling with a new companion. I remember really hoping that the Ninth Doctor would get a new companion in these audio adventures, though with Ecclestone’s recent announcement that the only companion for him would be Rose, and how this adventure finishes it seems that on audio, the Ninth Doctor will always be destined to travel alone. Following on from the events of Red Darkness, the Doctor is now joined by Callen and his loveable talking dog, Doyle.

What is evident right from the beginning is how heightened Eccleston’s performance is playing off against two companions. Not only does it make him feel much more Doctor-ish, but it is also clear just how much chemistry he has with the two fellow actors, Adam Martyn and Harki Bhambra. It’s a shame that they won’t be sticking around for a few more sets but for a brief moment, we get to experience the Ninth Doctor in a much more traditional way.

When the TARDIS arrives on the Greenwood, which is borrowed liberally from the 1972 movie Silent Running – where the huge garden in space is concerned and it doesn’t take long for the listener to discover that is a sequel to 1973’s The Green Death, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. The Doctor, Callen and Doyle are soon surrounded by giant maggots, all intent on eating them. Luckily for us though, Gill is too clever a writer to simply re-tread the same ground as Death did fifty years ago, although we still haven’t learnt those lessons yet, and he turns the positive messages from Death on their head asking us what would happen if the Eden that the Nuthutch were trying to create did occur?

In much the same way as The Green Death, it’s pretty hard to empathise with giant maggots, but I feel this is partly Gill’s point that people can’t really emphasise with gigantic battery caterpillars and so much of the drama is left up to Louise Jameson as the calculating Fiacra, who runs the Greenwood who operates a bit of a one-in-one-out attitude on her ship. For the Doctor to leave Callen and Doyle on the Greenwood, they have to prove they can contribute to the running of the ship and not just get into trouble. Gill serves Callen and Doyle well, not only proving why they were good enough companions to stay with the Ninth Doctor a little longer but also making the listener care enough to feel a little down when they do leave, even if Callen’s departure is a bit of a re-tread of Jo Grant’s departure fifty years beforehand.

Unfortunately, the stakes aren’t overtly high in The Green Gift but that’s okay, sometimes you just want to listen to a story where the Doctor is trying to save a floating garden and not having to stop a universe-destroying threat! Where Gill’s script really shines is in its characters which more than makes up for the slightly simplistic script on offer here. The Green Gift is a deceptive little story, on the surface it isn’t much, but listening to it is a treat you don’t want to end.

The stakes are even lower for the following story from Robert Valentine called Northern Lights. The Doctor now travelling alone again, meets real-life Arctic explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen. It’s an interesting, if slightly sedate historical adventure with two historical figures I’d never heard of and although there is an alien threat called the Aurora, Valentine makes up for the lack of action by adding a little more of a biography feel than historical adventures usually do.

Unfortunately, it does end up feeling more like a history lesson told by a teacher who isn’t all that interested in what they are talking about. There are some moral questions about the value of human life rather than personal glory, and some talk about who gets to eat when the food runs out.

While it’s nice to hear the Doctor getting to geek out and meet two people he’s long admired, for the listeners this story might be a bit of a slog, and I felt quite deflated by the whole thing.

I did worry that this might continue into the third and final story The Beautiful Game by Katherine Armitage. I was surprised then that I did enjoy this outing, despite the fact that I can’t stand football! I’ll admit I’ve never seen the appeal in people kicking a ball around a field. Just give everyone a football and everyone can go home and not have to fight over the one! While the Doctor has to face off against the alien Strike, Armitage instead shifts much of the story’s focus onto women’s suffrage.

I am still a little unclear as to whether this story was supposed to be a comedy or not, there are some very funny moments littered through the script but any serious moments get a little undermined by the Strike, an alien species who get fixated on things, not only an allegory for football fans but probably us Who fans too. The result is that The Beautiful Game ends up feeling a little uneven. It begins as a look at where the English Football League began but quickly descends into an uneven run-around. There’s no doubt this is Armitage’s love letter to the sport, but it might have been better had the Strike invaded an actual football match and not gone back in time to kill the person who basically created the League.

It’s no surprise that Eccleston, a staunch Man United supporter sounds the most invested in this story. It’s a shame that this kind of electrifying performance couldn’t be put into the previous two scripts from Eccleston but that is a minor quibble. The Doctor gets some nice speeches on the unifying power of football, though I still fail to see how anyone can enjoy that sport. The commentary too on women’s suffrage feels overlooked despite playing a big part not only in this story but it seems the birth of the English Football League. Actress Rachel Fenwick plays a parlour maid called Daphne who really is the story’s emotional backbone and she allows us a good insight into Victorian men’s attitudes towards women, but neither the Strike nor Daphne’s storylines really gel together and might have made better individual stories rather than putting the two together.

The Beautiful Game is an odd story, on the one hand, it’s an uneven run-around, but on the other, it does try to deliver some important messages. It’s enjoyable enough if not the strongest story the Ninth Doctor has had up to this point.

Pioneers is a strange box set. While The Green Gift was a fantastic opening story, the following two adventures fail to reach the bar that has been set. But if Pioneers demonstrates one thing it’s that the one-and-done adventures for the Ninth Doctor could be changed. Isn’t it time that he started to interact like the other Doctors on audio, having his own companions and getting integrated into the wider Big Finishverse? Christopher Eccleston is a strong actor there’s no doubt, but these stories don’t really rise to his strengths and while it’s lovely to be getting brand new Ninth Doctor adventures, maybe it’s time the Ninth Doctor format did something new.