Gallifrey to Trenzalore #17: Destiny of the Doctor - Hunters of Earth by Nigel Robinson

Destiny of the Doctor #1
Hunters of Earth
Written by Nigel Robinson
Directed by John Ainsworth
Released: January 2013
Heard: 23rd February 2016

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BUY:Amazon UK | Big Finish

Our final stop on our pre-An Unearthly Child adventures is the first entry in the Destiny of the Doctor series, Hunters of Earth. This series was launched by Big Finish Productions and AudioGo and was designed to celebrate the 50th Anniversary with a different story dedicated to (at the time) all eleven Doctors.

I remember being incredibly excited about this range at the time. Not so much about the earlier Doctor releases, as their deaths had rendered them unavailable, but for the release of the first ever audios for the New Series. In the early days of 2013, not much detail was given about the later releases and I was excited to hear David Tennant and Matt Smith on audio. Alas, Matt Smith proved unavailable and the entire series was like a run of The Companion Chronicles.

Not that I'm complaining too much, but I so wanted some proper full-cast audio dramas for the New Series. Of course, fast forward two years and we have Sir John Hurt recording War Doctor boxsets, Alex Kingston back as River Song on audio and most exciting of all, David Tennant and Catherine Tate returned in May for The Tenth Doctor Adventures.

Anyway, moving back to Hunters of Earth. If you were asked to do a First Doctor story to celebrate the show's 50th Anniversary, then you'd definitely be tempted to do a story set pre-An Unearthly Child and use Susan as the key figure. So, I really can't blame Nigel Robinson for that. I also can't blame him for having this story dripping with the atmosphere of the early 1960's: mods and rockers, The Beatles, John Smith and the Common Men, bombed out buildings, transistor radios, Magpie Electricals!

The entrance to Coal Hill School.

Thankfully, Robinson hasn't just used the 1960's as a bit of window dressing and a nod to the anniversary. He scratches beneath the surface and looks at all of the social changes that were occurring in Britain during the era, especially the rise of the teenager. No longer were they miniature adults in training, now they were separate entities with their own music, their own fashion, and their own lives away from their parents. Obviously, the rise of the teenager scared many of the older generation and this was presented in this story, especially during the Doctor's encounter with the mods.

One of the other major changes in the years leading up to the 1960's were the arrival of many immigrants from the former holdings of the British Empire, and those that had fled to Britain during the war years escaping the Nazi's. Through the character of Rosa, a former refugee from Europe, the hostility and fear that foreigners meet when they arrive and true to establish lives are touched upon.

In short, then, Britain in the 1960's was a melting pot and all it needed was the unearthing of an experimental German weapon in a bomb site to stir the pot a little. The science of producing hypersonic sounds that only the young can here is nothing new. It's application through music is also not much of a leap. Robinson may indeed remember news reports from a few years ago which saw a few stores setting up loudspeakers outside and either playing classical music or hypersonic sounds to stop teenagers loitering outside.

What Hunters of Earth really exceeds at though is really drawing out the character of Susan. We really delve into her life at Coal Hill School and come to understand how difficult it must have been to avoid letting slip some knowledge of the future (as evidenced in "An Unearthly Child") and even touches on her latent telepathic abilities, which is later evidenced in The Keys of Marinus, The Sensorites and The Transit of Venus. Away from the supernatural, though, and we get to see that she actually had friends and enemies, a social life, and, most interestingly a budding romance with Cedric.

Susan "feels the beat".

Cedric was Susan's rock throughout this story, acting as a confidante, defending her when the teenagers had turned and either tried to attack her with a knife at Rosa's cafe and even putting himself at serious harm when he was protecting her from the mob that formed at the bomb site. You could tell that Susan held real affection for him, but perhaps the Doctor's reaction and mistrust of him was a good signpost of what was to come.

Cedric was working for his uncle, Colonel Rook and a top-secret military crew. When Susan had arrived at Coal Hill months earlier, Cedric had quickly noted her "other-worldliness" and reported it to his uncle. Rook quickly took a role at the school himself and became interested in the girl and her grandfather, especially as their arrival seemed to coincide with the detection of alien signals, which it turns out, emanated from the unearthed German device. Once this is all revealed to Susan, she is understandably heartbroken at his betrayal and I couldn't help be reminded of Ace's relationship with Sergeant Gilmore in Remembrance of the Daleks.

The resolution of the story is a tiny bit bizarre, though. It is discovered by the Doctor that the alien signal has attached itself to the radio waves and seems to mostly affect the teenagers when they are listening to The Beatles. However, the Time Lord, having been kidnapped by Rook, is clueless on how to stop the signal and preventing the teenagers from killing him and Susan. This is the interesting bit: Earlier on in the story, while at Rosa's cafe, Cedric and Susan are listening to the radio and the DJ gives them a message from "The Doctor" (not our Doctor) who tells Cedric "it's all in the beat".

The Doctor is trying to repair his broken TARDIS.

It isn't until this final confrontation that Cedric realises what the message means and the Doctor and Susan, working with Rook and his associates, are able to tap into the communications satellite Telstar and broadcast the music of Bob Dylan to pacify the teenagers and resolve the crisis. The ending feels rather contrived, but Rook decides to let the Doctor and Susan carry on as they are, even though he has discovered that they are aliens. Still, one supposes they did just save the world.

In summary, then, Robinson had a lot of balls to juggle with this one, yet manages to pull it off well. The evoking of the spirit of the Sixties doesn't come at the detriment of the story, the background of the social war going on creates some of this stories creepiest and dark moments, from the Doctor's encounter with the mods to Susan's terrifying encounters in the cafe and the bomb site.

My only criticism would be that the resolution felt rather sign-posted thanks to the message from "The Doctor" and the scene with Susan and Cedric listening to Bob Dylan music and discussing how different it is to The Beatles and similar groups.

Taken as a stand-alone story, Hunters of Earth works really well and considering that it is the first part of an eleven part story, there aren't that many plot threads to be picked up by other stories, just a bit of intrigue regarding the sending of the message and the Destiny of the Doctor. I can't wait to hear how it unfolds, but there's a long way to go yet.

7/10

Next Story

An Unearthly Child

Continuity Corner

• The story is set in October 1963, and the Doctor and Susan arrived in Shoreditch "four months earlier" in June. This is consistent with Susan statement in An Unearthly Child that "the last five months have been the happiest of my life", and also dates that story as occurring in November 1963.
• Susan began attending Coal Hill School at the beginning of the Autumn term (early September).
• The Doctor has been trying to obtain parts to fix his broken TARDIS. He refers to finding a replacement for a faulty filament in "An Unearthly Child".