DOCTOR WHO, THE LOST STORIES:

Season 2, box set #1, story 1

THE FRAGILE YELLOW ARC OF FRAGRANCE

Doctor: First

Companions: Susan, Ian, Barbara

Main actors: Carole Ann Ford (Susan, Barbara), William Russell (Ian, the Doctor)

May 2023

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance is a curious little beast of a story. It’s only one part, clocking in at a little over half an hour, and it’s from the Lost Stories—let’s talk about that.

So, side effect of running a 60 year or whatever television show: sometimes potential scripts get turned down, replaced, or go unmade for whatever reason. Big Finish audio productions eventually decided “hey, what if we took those scripts and turned them into audio plays?” which is (if you ask me) a very cool idea. It started with the season that would have been season 24 (but then there was a hiatus, and season 24 became Trial of a Time Lord) with the sixth Doctor and Peri, but then branched out into other scripts that were turned down. The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance (which is an obscenely long title now that I have to write it out) is a script originally written by Moris Farhi and submitted (and then refused) as a spec script very early on in the production life cycle of Doctor Who—a short ways into season 1. He then followed it up with Farewell, Great Macedon, which I intend to listen to and review after this one.

Fragrance follows the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan as they leave after their stay on the planet Fragrance. It’s sort of halfway between an audiobook and a full radio play (in the style of Storm Warning), meaning that there’s a significant amount of narration—which is fine. The story is also very light on background noises or music, which apparently is to match the format of Doctor Who stories at the time of original writing. It’s narrated by Carole Ann Ford (Susan) and William Russell (Ian) as the surviving actors who played this TARDIS crew, which is wonderful: it’s obvious listening to them that they’re no longer the same people of the same age that they were in 1963, but they carry their old performances with charm and they’re still recognizable, which is great. Ford also voices Barbara, and Russell the Doctor, which work to a slightly lesser extent, but it’s not actually bad per se—just different.

The actual plot of Fragrance feels very thin on the ground in a weird way—it’s only one episode, which is really not a thing that Doctor Who ever did in its original run (excepting Mission to the Unknown, which is a story that ties into a later one, and arguably the pilot episode), and this doesn’t really give it a whole lot of time for, you know, character or anything. A significant portion of the episode’s runtime is dedicated to a slow, meandering sort of exposition and some lighter conversations. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a strongly different thing when compared to, say, The Chimes of Midnight, which is action-packed.

For this reason, I feel like there’s not a whole lot to say about Fragrance. It does what it does and it does it in a fine way. It’s small enough that it doesn’t get in the way. It attempts to represent a sort of tragedy, which is an interesting turn for (especially early) Doctor Who, which does this very little if at all, and I’d say it pulls it off fairly decently? It’s fun that Barbara apparently is constantly having little flings with alien people (throwback to that one Thal in the Daleks), even if it tends to end rather poorly. My main problem with it is that it doesn’t really feel like anything happens. People talk about some bad stuff that will happen if X person does Y thing, and then...it happens. It’s nothing really special: I think the most exciting part of it is the format, and the fact that it reunited Carole Ann Ford and William Russell. It’s not bad! It’s better than, like, Galaxy 4, which I also find myself considering rather average. I think the short runtime helps with the bite-size nature of this story. But really, I’m just thinking of this as a sort of warm-up to Farewell, Great Macedon, which is by the same writer and is in a box set with this story.

Overall Thoughts:

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance is interesting and small. Listen to it if you want to try and get a handle on these early-Doctor lost story recreations and their format; it’s small enough to be basically entirely inoffensive.

Next time, I’ll be looking at Farewell, Great Macedon, a historical which is supposed to be very good. I look forward to it!