As I’ve said a lot this week: Do you want to do it, or shall I? Space Nazis that look like dustbins are great little analogs for fascistic rule and horrible little thoughts, though 13 might use them as a weapon… twice. No, let’s do as I did last year when Chris Chibnall pulled the ultimate sin, ruin the lore of a show with so much of it that it doesn’t matter anymore. Except it does.

See, that’s the great thing about Doctor Who, you can start wherever you like now, because there are literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of it. There are nearly 60-years of the TV show, 20 years of audio dramas from Big Finish, and a catalog of books ranging from revised TV episodes to their own stories. You could spend a lifetime watching, listening, and reading Doctor Who. If you think any part of it will make sense in the end, you are some kind of mentally ill. Robert Shearman’s “Jubilee” is one episode in one small chunk of that pile of things that will make you ill, and it is held aloft for how great it is.

Set in England as Nigel Rochester sits atop as president of the English Empire, it involves the Doctor (6) and one of the (if not the) best companions, Dr. Evelyn Smythe. The Doctor, companion, and the T.A.R.D.I.S are held up as heroes of The Great Dalek War of 1903. This leads to the US Prime Minister bowing down to the glory of the English Empire, licking the boot as it were. This is probably the best point to mention we’re in an alternate timeline, with jokes being aimed squarely at the series we’re in. Plenty O’Toole, Lana Wood’s character in Diamonds are Forever, is playing a sexy and raunchy version of Evelyn, for example. 

“Well, you can forget about that. We have to keep the English race pure,” as Miriam, First Lady of the English Empire, puts it to the sheepish Prime Minister. I love this alt-history bit of nonsense. It adds a rather dark tone alongside the satirical (yet on the nose) potshots at the marketing of the Daleks. Though that somewhat depreciates and ultimately fetishizes the horror of what they are: Copper pot fascists with a slightly funny-sounding voice. It is a tone balanced beautifully on this knife-edge of the condescending misogyny and the comedy of the episode.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues I personally have, as I’ve never found the 6th Doctor to be all the brilliant. A man of haughtiness to the utmost, Colin Baker’s Doctor broke into the show with an at odds mood, one that made you not really like him. The character has always had an arrogance. In the first serial (I believe) the 1st says something about “Red Indians” that isn’t the lovable old man he later becomes, time and time again (until he becomes a she). This is ignoring Patrick Troughton’s “I wanted to Black up, you see?” comments once looking in retrospective upon trying to make his role stand out more.

No, Baker didn’t come into the role as the one full of pomposity, but he did butt heads with John Nathan-Turner’s style for the Doctor’s costume, who himself described the decision as “tasteless.” It is a rather frivolous and overly flamboyant patch-work clash of color that makes the 80s as a whole look tame with all its neon green and yellow workout wear. The design doesn’t really fit the ill-tempered and erratic 6th version of the Gallifreyan, and turns it into one of the most grating. I’ve previously spoken about my displeasure of Perri, but Baker’s early moments are putting her awful accent in a shining light.

Of course, by the time we’re talking about Big Finish in 2003, we’re looking at a rather different 6th Doctor, but still irascible nonetheless. Here we have another balancing act, one done so magnificently with the no-nonsense history teacher, Dr. Evelyn Smythe. A companion picked up in the 6th episode of the main Big Finish range, Maggie Stables’ wonderfully charming and homely tone makes you admire her and her love of history. Rather, as the Doctor puts it, “you’ve never seen history, you’ve seen someone’s present day,” and “History isn’t the past Evelyn, it’s a version of the past we choose to remember. It takes the past and tidies it up.”

Those two lines, just a few minutes in are fantastically Doctor Who in the best way. A little childish, but pitch-perfectly summarizing logic and sci-fi into one, making the inexplainable a little more acceptable with only a few words. How do you not remember the Great Dalek war of 1903? We choose to remember it differently, at least that’s how I’d like to think of it as a way of breaking down the wall and letting myself fall into the world of Who.

I’ve not spoken about the Dalek(s) of the episode for a reason. The episode is known throughout the fandom that explores the wider range of Who for its connection with the 2005 episode “Dalek.” That episode is set in 2012 with billionaire Henry Van Statten that seems to enjoy spending his money on Doctor Who props. Well, it was never going to be a one-for-one in that regard, as the villain (aside from the copper Nazi) is the politician lording it over everyone is still power-hungry but in a different way.

I think this is where, if I’m going to talk about it properly, I need to talk about one or two spoilers. So be warned! It is an episode from 2003 after all.

Nigel is a bit of a feeble man. One that projects power, but isn’t one to hold it well without overreaching and being cruel. All the while, his closest allies are plotting several ways of offing him at his Jubilee, all set to happen in the morning. The “last Dalek,” as it were, is set to be executed at noon, and those concerting are trying to make the Dalek not only talk, but do their dirty work for them. At the same time, the English Empire, conquerors of the Dalek invasion of 1903, are producing, selling, and in some cases literally bottling Dalek(s). The torture that the Dalek has been subject to for years leads to them producing a liquid, for which only the upper class gets to drink it.

The tone is wonderfully dark in all the right places, with Shearman’s fantastic understanding of how to turn the dark juice bottling into satirical comedy. That jab at the merchandising of the Daleks in our very real world, leads to Evelyn questioning simply why you’d do such a thing with creatures so horrible. To which I could make a comment on how many war-based games end up having you shoot a Nazi, but then again, no one is commercially producing a cuddly Hitler, yet. All of this builds to a climax of an incredible image in your head, as Nigel “makes new Daleks to play with;” something he does by importing people with dwarfism to sit in Dalek costume.

Again, I’m not going into this with nothing-but-praise, there is one thing I think overall about Big Finish. It does come off as a bit crap sometimes. It is more a criticism of the format, as having to reference characters as they walk into rooms can be as awkward as that sounds. Sometimes it is used to great effect, but most of the time it is like having clanging saucepans in both ears as you fall downstairs. That and the lines such as “or rather when?” trying to be clever about time travel, have become rather loud saucepan-like over time.

There is a lot to love, between the fantastic writing by Shearman, the beautiful soundscape from the team at Big Finish making the world so vibrant, and the cast. Jubilee is so beautifully put together that for all the complaints thrown its way, it is still a great reason to get into the Big Finish series. Ok, maybe not every episode is your favorite Doctor and/or companion, but I can honestly say, after not really liking the 6th from the episodes I’ve watched, he’s grown on me. That is something only Big Finish (and possibly some books) can do; make you love classic Who as much as you love some of the modern-era Who.

Call it on the nose if you like, but the villains being quite strict about contractions in speech is a brilliant little nod at who they are. They are literal grammar Nazis, then we find out about their “pure English race” nonsense, with a mix of commercializing the little Hitlers they call the villains. See, that’s a nice little nod, more so than asking when a time machine went.

Though I haven’t even gotten to the pacing yet: It is unconventional, at first. A bit more classic Who than modern, the two-and-a-half-hour run-time lets you into the world more in only the way audio can with our shorter attention spans. It is broken up into segments, on the likes of Spotify (where you can find a large amount of early Big Finish) and can make for a nice few minutes during a commute. If you don’t want to go into Big Finish Doctor Who from The Sirens of Time (a multi-Doctor story), you should at least try Jubilee. Though I do have a soft spot for The Genocide Machine (another Dalek story), a 7th Doctor story with my 8th love, Ace.

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Doctor Who "Jubilee"

£2.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Brilliant soundscaping.
• Nicholas Briggs and his ring modulator.
• Fantastic writing from Robert Shearman.
• Tongue in cheek self-satirization.

Cons

• Clangy introductions.
• Grating faux-American accents.