The Marian Conspiracy

Tracking down a nexus point where time threatens to skew off its normal course, the Doctor meets one Dr. Evelyn Smythe - a history professor specializing in the Tudor period. Evelyn claims to be the descendant of one of Elizabeth the First's trusted aides, but the Doctor has no recollection of the ancestor she names. With Evelyn's very existance threatened by the divergance in history, the Doctor takes her back in time to the court of Queen Mary, while Elizabeth languishes under house arrest, only to discover a plot of kill Mary and put Elizabeth on the throne - a plot that will not only wipe Evelyn out of time but rewrite history.

As a story The Marian Conspiracy doesn't actually break any new ground for Doctor Who; we've been back in time on loads of occasions and seen plans to change history thwarted left and right, the Doctor has rubbed shoulders with royalty and saved the day and the companions have caused a stir with their modern ways and bizarre dress sense. All those ingredients are here, so we are treated to a traditional historical Docor Who adventure devoid of lurking alien hoardes or sly renegade Time Lords.

So what makes it exceptional?

Evelyn Smythe.

Ever since the start the Doctor has surrounded himself with the younger set when it came to companions; I daresay that nobody who stepped through the doors of that old police box on a regular basis was a day over 25 (although one must point out that the seventh Doctor would travel with a more mature set in the forms of thirtysomething Bernice Summerfield and fortysomething Roz Forrester). Evelyn, however, is somewhere in her fifties, a career woman who knits in her spare time, and has a particular addiction to chocolate. She's smart, she's well respected, and she's almost a motherly figure for the Doctor. Their interplay does not follow the usual "What's going on Doctor?" question sessions, and it is even more easily avoided when placing Evelyn in an adventure where she already knows a lot of about the time period, even if she almost gets herself killed for an innocent act of spoken treason. The obvious parellels between Evelyn and history teacher Barbara Wright are all there, although Barbara specialized in the Aztecs as opposed to Evelyn's fascination with the Tudors, and Barbara's usual student set was some years younger than Evelyn's. The new companion's of sly humour when dealing with the Doctor almost evokes some of Peri's more clever attempts at breaking the ice, but they do not set off the usual firestorm of yelling that they might have before; has the Doctor mellowed even more, or has his separation from Peri made him more sensitive to the way humans behave? Or is he, in fact, nostalgic about Barbara in some way?

I found myself enjoying this adventure a bit more than I did the first time I listened to it many years ago, and I credit that to having at the time just finished watching The Tudors and having more or less been given a crash course in the years just before The Marian Conspiracy takes place. Of course there is so slim muscled King Henry at this point, and we are just privy to the schemes and plans of his daughter, but it's a fun look at history regardless.

And Evelyn is saved. The show goes on. The Doctor promises her a trip to the Galapagos Islands. And they get there. Eventually.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SPECTRE OF LANYON MOOR