The Child (#7.06)

  Big Finish, Companion Chronicles

The beginning of this story was a disconcerting for me as I expected Louise Jameson’s voice and instead there’s a little girl, apparently, telling the story.  Wait, huh?  But progress is made and what’s happening becomes more obvious.  Though I have to say that I don’t think this is actually Leela but a shadow of her, a reflection caught in something the Doctor and Leela experience, that captures her essence but lets the woman go free to continue her life.  Much like Sara Kingdom in her companion chronicles, captured by a security system in a house to become the personality of the house over eons.  But I hope we will find out more in the future, perhaps, as that mystery is not addressed here.

And so the story begins, with Leela in the snow and a snowdrop flower, the Doctor and Leela going for a visit to see the map of life, and the snowdrop flower coming around again as the framing device in this rather touching story about life and how someone can know when they are truly alive.  I didn’t rate this audio higher, though, because the story is very well done but the characters telling the story drove me a bit crazy.  And the Leela in the story seems to do a lot of standing around and letting things happen to her.  She guides the direction of how things progress, as it is from her perspective, but she just watches as the robots attack the Doctor then her.  Leela is a woman of action.  I do like how she copes with the child and the story as fairytale works great.  But Leela and even the Doctor don’t seem to do much but be present in the story and herded by the perceptions of the “bad guy.”


Louise Jameson (Leela) and Anna Hawkes (Emily)

Writer/Director: Nigel Fairs

Release: December 2012

© Laura Vilensky 2019