‘DARK CONTRACT’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
Dickensian London with the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric
This ‘Doctor Who’ story could have been aided by an extra episode. 😀
‘Dark Contract’ is a fascinating instalment featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric – my favourite TARDIS team from Season 19 of the classic TV series. This is especially as it’s a 70-minute audio episode, produced by BBC Audiobooks, not Big Finish.
This is one of the Audio Originals range from BBC Audio and my second experience of one. The Audio Originals have been with us since 2018. ‘The Thing From The Sea’ with the Fourth Doctor and Mrs. Wibbsey from ‘The Nest Cottage Chronicles’ is the first story.
There have been a variety of Doctor and companion team ups in every story featured in the Audio Originals range, including the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria, the Sixth Doctor and Peri, the Eleventh Doctor and Clara, and the Thirteenth Doctor and Graham. 🙂
My first experience of an Audio Originals story was ‘The Mind of Magnox’, which was part of the ‘Time Lord Victorious’ series. I didn’t realise it was part of the Audio Originals range at the time, but then I wasn’t particularly that fussed about these audio adventures.
Until now, of course. I wanted there to be one of these stories featuring Nyssa, whether it was set in Season 19 or Season 20. Thankfully, that happened with ‘Dark Contract’ featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric and I was looking forward to hearing it.
Essentially, ‘Dark Contract’ is like one of those ‘New Series Adventures’ original audios such as ‘Pest Control’ and ‘The Forever Trap’ that just had new series Doctors and tended to last either one or two episodes. I wish the two-episode approach was the case here. 😦
Not that I didn’t enjoy ‘Dark Contract’. Far from it. I was eager to hear this audio episode when I played it on CD. It’s just with it featuring the Fifth Doctor TARDIS team from Season 19, I was expecting more story to be told, and it felt like it went by abruptly and quickly. 😐
The story is by Will Hadcroft, who previously wrote the Audio Originals story ‘The Resurrection Plant’, featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. I don’t know that much about him, though he’s done quite a lot of books over the years, according to his website.
He’s written the ‘Anne Droyd’ series and a non-fiction book about Asperger Syndrome. I know Will Hadcroft comes from Bolton, as, according to a Facebook post, he thought about going to the ‘Comic Con Mania Bolton’ in May with Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton.
That sadly never happened because ‘Comic Con Mania Bolton’ was postponed till August 2024 and the guest list was unfortunately revised. I hope Will Hadcroft will get to see Peter and Sarah someday at a convention and maybe Janet Fielding and Matthew Waterhouse.
Speaking of which, Matthew Waterhouse is the reader of the ‘Dark Contract’ audio story. This, I’m fine with. I would have liked it if Sarah Sutton was the story’s reader, but I know Matthew Waterhouse to be great for reading ‘Doctor Who‘ audio stories, including this one.
This is quite different for Matthew, since he previously read his own stories ‘Watchers’ and ‘Prisoners of London’, which were audio novels. This is a single audio episode, so I imagine he only recorded this story in one day as opposed to maybe two or three days. 😐
In ‘Dark Contract’, the TARDIS visits Earth in the 1830s where they ended up in Dickensian London. Tegan is keen to explore the place, which is quite unusual, considering she’d been wanting to get to Heathrow Airport in 1981 and she complains when it doesn’t occur.
Incidentally, this story takes place between ‘Black Orchid’ and ‘Earthshock’. Mentions are made of the Doctor causing the Great Fire of London in 1666 in ‘The Visitation’ and the Doctor and his friends visited Cranleigh Hall in the 1920s in ‘Black Orchid’. Nice to uncover. 🙂
At this point, I assume ‘Dark Contract’ takes place after ‘The Merfolk Murders’ and ‘Dream Team’, since ‘The Dream Team’ box set was released in April 2024 whilst ‘Dark Contract’ was released in August that year. I could easily be corrected over these points, of course.
It was fun to hear the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric dressing up in Dickensian-like clothes as if they were characters that stepped from the pages of ‘Oliver Twist’. ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Bleak House’ also gets mentioned in this story, which I really appreciate.
It was easily to visualise the world of Charles Dickens whilst hearing this audio story. I’m sure if ‘Dark Contract’ was made into a full-cast production by Big Finish instead of an audiobook reading by the BBC, Sarah Sutton would have enjoyed playing Nyssa in this. 🙂
As they explore Dickensian London, the Doctor and his friends witness what the grim realities of poverty and destitution are like, despite the introduction of the New Poor Law, which was established in 1834. I believe that ‘Dark Contract’ takes place in the year 1835.
However, in London, not everything is as it seems, as it seems people are having their life-force being absorbed by alien entities who have initiated certain ‘contracts’ with humanity. The Doctor, as ever, gets swept into the investigation of what’s happening here.
As you’d expect in a Season 19-era story, our heroes get separated from each other. The Doctor is arrested and taken for questioning before being made to work in a workhouse, I believe, before an Admiral enlists the Doctor to help him investigate the current mystery.
Nyssa and Tegan find themselves abducted by a brutish pair of ‘ne’er-do wells’. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a ‘ne’er-do well’ is a lazy and irresponsible person whose only interests seem to be cards and boozing. ‘Ne’er-do well’ scenes are likely to be uncomfortable.
I’m not sure I fully understand what’s going on in Nyssa and Tegan’s scenes with the ‘ne’er-do wells’, since we don’t get enough time to explore that in the story. I imagine Nyssa telling one of them that they’re using women for ‘commodities’ would be very unpleasant.
Whether that’s to do with hard labour or prostitution, I don’t know. It’s actually a brave thing for an audio story like ‘Dark Contract’ to do, and I can imagine that those scenes would be very horrific, whether it’s done visually on TV or in a full-cast audio drama sense.
Adric has an unusual journey in this story, as he struggles to find the homing device he lost when someone pickpocketed him in the London streets. I like how the name ‘Artful Dodger’ gets mentioned in the tale, as it’s one of the inspirations for Adric’s development.
Incidentally, the musical play ‘Oliver!’ gets mentioned in conversation among the TARDIS team when talking about Dickensian London. I’m familiar and prefer the Terrance Dicks-produced ‘Oliver Twist’ by the BBC and to an extent the Disney TV movie with Elijah Wood.
Going back to Adric, I’m surprised the Doctor didn’t give homing devices to all three of his companions in case they end up splitting up, which they do, in the story. Surely Adric can’t be the only one with a homing device once he and his friend go and have adventures.
Nyssa is also given the TARDIS key, I believe. At this point, I wonder if all three companions are given TARDIS keys. I mean, if Rose, Martha and Donna were given their TARDIS keys at some point in their TARDIS travels, why not Nyssa, Tegan and Adric during their travels? 😐
Adric finds himself enveloped in some kind of alien mass, I think, which is causing the malaise of ill-health affecting the capital city of London. The Alzarian finds himself falling asleep and at peace when inside the alien mass and he also dreams of being on Alzarius.
This includes him seeing his brother Varsh, his parents, the Deciders and being on the starliner from ‘Full Circle’. There are also images of him being with the Fourth Doctor and Romana and it touches on how much he misses them. I’m surprised K-9 wasn’t featured among them.
This builds up to Adric’s anxieties and wish to return to Alzarius in E-Space as established in ‘Earthshock’. This would be covered in the story ‘Iterations of I’ where Adric left the TARDIS console room at the story’s end to sulk, but I like how ‘Dark Contract’ adds to that.
Thankfully, Adric is freed from the alien mass when they consider him incompatible and not of human standards. He reunites with the Doctor, and they reunite with Nyssa and Tegan where they confront the aliens at this house belonging to two aristocrats in the tale.
I do think the resolution of the Doctor negotiating with the aliens to end their ‘dark contracts’ by absorbing the life-force of the people of Earth was handled rather swiftly. This is especially with the story running out of time and with things are being crammed in.
It’s a shame, as I quite like ‘Dark Contract’ and wish it had been a two-episode story instead of a single-episode story. At least more time would have been permitted for the characters to breathe in terms of their development, and to allow the story’s plot to unfold.
It was funny when the story ended and the Doctor asked the Admiral character, who had been involved in the police investigation, what his name was. The Admiral points out to the Doctor that he never gave his name either. I currently wonder how deliberate that was.
Both in the narrative sense and behind-the-scenes point-of-view. Did Will Hadcroft really intend not to give the Admiral a name throughout this story. If so, why? Was it just a joke due to the Doctor not giving his name, or could the Admiral turn out to be a Time Lord? 😀
I’m a little disappointed that ‘Dark Contract’ didn’t end with the end credits music, as it just ended with the opening Peter Howell theme music for Peter Davison’s era. But at least the sound design for ‘Dark Contract’ is nice and better than earlier BBC audiobooks.
‘Dark Contract’ has been a very intriguing and entertaining audio story to listen to, featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric. I would have liked this audio story to have been longer, since I enjoyed the Season 19 TARDIS team visiting Dickensian London.
I hope this won’t be the last time I’ll hear a ‘Doctor Who’ audio story penned Will Hadcroft. I’d like to think he’ll go on to write Big Finish audio stories of ‘Doctor Who’ someday. And it was brilliant to hear this story with Matthew Waterhouse being the narrator throughout.
‘Dark Contract’ rating – 7/10
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