The Dalek Trap

Now this is exciting.  Since I’m spending most of my Big Finish listening catching up through the massive backlog of stories (and I’m currently in 2013 and ’14), I don’t get to check out the newest releases yet.  With glee I watch them appear, and then sadly add them to the list of things to get back to when I’m caught up in a couple more years.  But then along came The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller and I rejoiced for a set of stories that I could actually listen to when they’re new!

These four stories are set squarely between series 1 and series 2 of the Eighth Doctor Adventures.  In the opening narration, Lucie mentions a few adventures she had with the Doctor, culminating in the events of Human Resources in which she elected to stay with the Doctor once they were finally free of each other by Time Lord mandate.

The Dalek Trap is the first story in the box set, and starts us off with a bang.  Lucie is keeping an audio diary, in which she narrates (and demonstrates) a brief autobiography that effectively catches up listeners who haven’t met her before, as well as refreshes the memories of those of us who have.  We get clips of several mad adventures involving her and the Doctor, but now the Doctor has fallen silent after receiving a distress call.  To Lucie’s concern and fright he pilots the TARDIS into a black hole…

Meanwhile, we’re being introduced to a pair of space explorers wandering around a dark planet, dodging flying monsters and stumbling upon a mysterious space ship that look intact enough to have survivors in it who may be able to help them.  It turns out that this ship is a Dalek saucer, but they neither know about the Daleks nor get themselves exterminated.  Instead the Daleks “agree” to work together to fight for survival and rescue, pooling their resources to send out a distress call, asking the Doctor for help (because the last thing they saw before getting pulled into a black hole was the Doctor’s TARDIS ejecting something into a supernova, turning it into a black hole).

The stage for the drama is set.  Spoilers after the picture.

One of the initial disappointments I had with this story is how little of the Doctor we hear.  I suppose “The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller” is meant to indicate a companion-focused series, rather than simply a revival of the “8th & Lucie Era.”  Still, Lucie bleedin’ Miller is one of the fun companions that I can enjoy listening to for a while, and the novelty of having her back is enough to keep my interest through the box set even if the other three stories are as “Doctor-light” as this.

There are a few mysteries set up in this story that aren’t solved, and probably are setups for further exploration in subsequent stories in the box set.  What is the “Cradle of Darkness” device that the Daleks have, and why are they keen to get it in the Doctor’s TARDIS (unless they really did want everyone rescued from the black hole)?  How did this planetoid exist, and support life, in between the event horizon and the singularity of a black hole?  What did the Doctor “shoot” into the supernova in the first place?  If the Doctor “reversed time” to rescue everyone trapped in there, doesn’t that create some sort of temporal paradox that will need to be resolved?

There’s also the question of memory loss.  The two main human characters that Lucie meets and spends most of the story with are losing their memories; Lucie begins to lose her memory too.  But the Daleks, while apparently concerned about the possibility, don’t seem to have been affected at all yet.  The Doctor was affected immediately with the distress call.  Even after they all escape, the Doctor and Lucie alternatively forget elements of the entire adventure that just took place.  Clearly there’s more going on here than we, the audience, are privy to.  So let’s keep listening and find out!

On its own, though, The Dalek Trap is an intriguing story.  It gives us lots of mysteries to solve, and we walk with Lucie (mostly) as she works out some of them.  We get pleasantly invested in the two human characters, enough to cheer quietly with Lucie to see them survive at the end.  We get to see the Daleks acting unusually cooperatively, which (again with Lucie) we take as a cue that something is seriously wrong here if they’re resorting to receiving so much assistance.  It’s a great first story of a set.  It doesn’t feel as epic as, say, Blood of the Daleks, but its quiet potential could go anywhere.