DOCTOR WHO, THE LOST STORIES:

Season 2, box set #1, story 2

FAREWELL, GREAT MACEDON

Doctor: First

Companions: Susan, Ian, Barbara

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

May 2023

Farewell, Great Macedon is really quite good.

As one of the Lost Stories (in a box set with The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance), it was originally written for season 1 of Doctor Who by Moris Farhi, but was never accepted and therefore never properly created. It’s recreated here in a sort of half-audiobook format, and listening to it makes me wish that they accepted it instead of The Aztecs or Marco Polo or even The Reign of Terror.

Farewell, Great Macedon is a historical story: the only sci-fi elements are the time travelers and the TARDIS. It’s set in and around the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 323 BCE: i.e., it portrays the events leading up to the death of Alexander the Great, a.k.a. Alexander III of Macedon, known for basically conquering the entire known world at the time (if you’re from the Mediterranean), being gay, dying young, and having his whole empire splinter after his death, in classic conqueror format (see: Genghis Khan). Alexander is played by John Dorney here, who’s something of a regular in Big Finish audio plays as far as I can make out, and he plays him to exception here. Farewell is a historical that leans much more into the dramatic camp rather than the comedic, as evidenced by other stories like The Romans, which was the norm at the time of intended release: season 1’s historicals (Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Reign of Terror, and sort of An Unearthly Child) are all played for drama and pathos more than the half-slapstick nature of the Doctor impersonating a musician in Nero’s court. But I think that Farewell, Great Macedon pulls it off much better than all of those: it’s not blisteringly racist or cringingly royalist, for one thing, and portrays Alexander the Great, conqueror of the world, in a startlingly nuanced light.

The character of Alexander is sympathetic overall, and we’re meant to empathize with him and come down on his side against the conspirators angling for his murder. But he’s also very mercurial and often violent, enough to be legitimately startling, and John Dorney manages the balance excellently. It contrasts with the Doctor, who’s portrayed a little more in his “mercurial” character in season 1: but he comes off more charmingly than I found him in the first season of the show, possibly because he’s very evidently still not the sole lead, and he feels even a little sidelined compared to Ian and Barbara—or maybe I’m just used to him. I don’t know. He does feel like a funny old man, though, and I like him.

Ian and Barbara are really the stars of the show here, as per usual: both are given a lot to do and are well-acted, too, including Carole Ann Ford voicing Barbara. It’s notable that they finally are given a chance to show off their respective knowledges as teachers of science and history: Barbara is the one who places them in the time period and has all the knowledge of what’s to come, and Ian manages to construct an ad-hoc iron lung late in the story.

Really, it is an excellent story, and the pathos of arriving somewhere to be bracketed by death and destruction is wonderfully done. I was compelled by the machinations of the conspirators, as well as the ruminations of the plot on the nature of time and timelines, albeit brief—not to mention, of course, the great character work surrounding Alexander himself and the deaths. Alexander and his gay gay homosexual boyfriend Hephaestion have a relationship easily comparable to that of Achilles and Patroclus: while nothing is explicitly romantic, they talk much about their love for one another and how much close good friends they are. All the events are historically accurate, or at least loosely so: there is a theory that Alexander was poisoned by Antipater, and the deaths are all historically accurate, if a little condensed for time: in reality, they took place over several years and likely were not part of any possible conspiracy. It’s very compelling to see the tragedy play out in slow motion nonetheless.

And it is slow motion. This story miraculously doesn’t drag, even though it’s close to four hours in length: if it were broadcast in 25-minute episodes in its current form, it would make up nine parts, making it the third- or fourth-longest Doctor Who story ever (depending how you count). Here it’s divided into six parts, mostly over half an hour in length. It really is a miracle that I was never waiting for the plot to pick up, nor did I really feel that anything was padded. That might in part be due to the audio nature of the format: I can easily listen to the story and pay full attention while, say, folding laundry or on a walk, in a way that’s nearly impossible to do with a TV story.

Overall Thoughts

If this story was broadcast as part of season 1, it would probably be my favorite story from the season—better than The Edge of Destruction. It really is very well done, and an example of just how effective the historical format can be played straight. That’s not to say it supersedes the issues of the era: even Moris Farhi doesn’t know what to do with Susan, for example, and it leads to the effect that it feels more like Carole Ann Ford is playing Barbara...and also voicing Susan sometimes, rather than the other way around with the focus on her reprising her original role. Still, it’s a brilliant story, and I highly recommend it if you want a dramatic historical done well or more of the original TARDIS crew. I understand if the more audiobook-style format would put some off, though, so perhaps try The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance first—they’re in a box set together, and while I definitely prefer this one, Fragrance offers an easy in to the style.