France, the year 1770: by special invitation, the famous ‘Doctor’, friend of Voltaire, arrives at the lonely estate of the lovely Marquise de Rimdelle – once a hostess to the highest of high society, now isolated by the strange, pernicious mist that lingers round the countryside.
But there’s more in that fog than mere vapour, confesses the Marquise’s strange niece to the Doctor’s ward, Nyssa. She senses some uncanny machine circling the fringes of the estate, in the space between the shadows. Watching. Always watching. She’s given it a name: ‘The Steamroller Man’.
Meanwhile, the man in the cellar talks to the Doctor; a dead man, trapped behind the cellar walls. The Steamroller Man is coming, he says; coming to smash the place down. It seems the Doctor has been drawn into a very dangerous liaison…
SPOILERS AHOY!
So this was an interesting thing. First off, the setting carries with it shades of clockwork robots, which don’t turn up, of course. Second…well, there was something done at the end with one of the characters that I really didn’t want to have happen. But let’s move on.
The story features the Doctor, Nyssa and Hannah just suddenly showing up at a nice little place in pre-Revolutionary France. There they find your basic spoiled aristocrat of the stripe that makes one long to bring out the chopper. At first all seems prosaic and normal, but after a bit we start to notice that the Doctor and his friends are all taking their cover stories a little too seriously, and seem to actually think they’re the people they’re pretending to be. Then there’s the various other people who are native to the area, and the sinister Steamroller Man, all of which combine into one serious, rather Moffat-esque, headscratcher.
There was much to enjoy here. Davison and Sutton are in their usual fine forms, and all the guest actors do great. It’s also nice to see Hannah settling in to her new role as a companion. The writing was also nicely tense and enjoyable, and did a great job of feeling simultaneously like a story that belonged to the 1980s period between Time Flight and Arc of Infinity (which is where all the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa only stories take place), but also felt like a modern story. This would not have been out of place in New Who.
The one complaint that I feel I must make, and, sorry, but I have to get into spoilers here, is what became of Hannah. At the end of this story, her character appears to have been written out. That’s a very unfortunate thing if it proves to be the case. She’s a welcome addition to the TARDIS crew, especially at this point in the series, where we basically have two scientists traveling around together. She offered a nice contrast to that. But that complaint aside, I really did enjoy this story, and to be fair, it felt like the writer “earned” the fate of her character, rather than just tacking it on to shock, so that’s always good.
This probably isn’t a great story to start ones Big Finish experience, but if you’ve heard the previous two, you’re certainly going to want this one. Highly recommended!
Written By: Stephen Cole
Directed By: Ken Bentley
Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Rebecca Night (Helene),Victoria Hamilton (Marquise De Rimdelle), David Chittenden (Vicomte de Valdac),Andrew Dickens (Steamroller Man), Sean Brosnan (Dead Man)
Masquerade is available now from BigFinish.com and via the Amazon link below.
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