In addition to the basic
-ness of the lifts, there are certain universe rules you shouldn't break just so you can resort to lazy genre tropes. To wit: the Doctor should never, ever have to look for a fucking keycard.
MEANWHILE, IN RADIOLAND:
An Earthly Child has some good character moments and a whole lot bubbling under the surface but it's largely a wasted opportunity.
It's an Eighth Doctor story, and goddamned if I have any more of a bead on him after listening to it than I did before. He's a perfectly decent line reader, and when there's good dialogue he delivers it well. That's pretty much all I can say about him at this point.
The story, as you can probably infer from the title (leastways if you've spent a bit of time on the original series), features the return of Susan -- and the introduction of her son Alex (played by McGann's son).
The story picks up 30 years after The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Human civilization has still not recovered; technology is stranded somewhere back in the mid-twentieth century (which I suppose is a decent enough retroactive explanation for why they didn't have cell phones in 2050).
A lot of the plot beats show promise. Alex as a young member of an anti-alien extremist group is a nice touch, but it forces some serious suspension of disbelief -- Susan never told him she was an alien? Really? The Doctor's great-grandson doesn't know what a TARDIS is?
Susan's arc fares a bit better: she's an eloquent voice arguing that the Earth should solicit help from aliens, that they're not all evil -- and then she proceeds to beg for help from the first aliens she can contact, who of course turn out to be monsters intent on conquering the Earth.
From there, though, it's kinda lame. The monsters are lame, the plot is predictable and often contrived, and really the whole thing feels pretty rote.
On the plus side, the reunion between Susan and the Doctor is quite satisfying. There's a brief acknowledgement of The Five Doctors, and a good bit of banter about how that was already three regenerations ago now. The show raises the question of how Susan had a baby by a human, and never actually answers it, and the fan-wanky question of "Is Susan a Time Lady, or are there Gallifreyans who aren't Time Lords?" is skirted. (That said, the TV series has hinted pretty strongly that she was killed in the Time War along with the rest of them -- a subject never broached in this story but which pretty much has to be implicit in any post-2005 Eighth Doctor story.)
The ending's pretty satisfying too -- predictable as hell, sure, but the subtext plays out nicely. The Doctor doesn't come off so well here; he's plenty needy in begging his family to travel the universe with him, but you know as well as Susan does that as soon as he's gone he's going to forget about her for another 25 years. That much is overt in the dialogue, but really the whole story plays out as something of an indictment of the Doctor's wanderlust and distractibility -- he leaves his granddaughter in a postwar wasteland and then just takes off and leaves the survivors to fend for themselves, not popping back in until 30 years later when he's in the neighborhood and gets a distress call reminding him that, oh yeah, things are still pretty shitty here.
Anyhow, real potential in this one, but most of it's left unrealized. A sequel could be neat but it's probably not a good idea to hold your breath.
Don't think it's actually available for purchase on this continent, so I can't really give a recommendation; I'd definitely say it's not worth the import price.
