Erasure [AUDIO/2018.4.30]
★★★☆☆
I'm glad the spirit of the old Companion Chronicles range lives on with the recent Short Trips entries. Don't get me wrong, I love what they're doing with it now, and I've always had a fondness for Short Trips and their lack of narrative restraint... but hybrids like Erasure (a 30-ish minute runtime telling a focused story while also taking the form of someone telling someone else a story) are so good at presenting the macro and micros of a story. They have such a firm grasp on the madness and adventure of the outside as well as the personal drama within.
Erasure is no different. Coordinator Narvin, played by the brilliant Sean Carlsen, structures the story as a confession while his lover Leela is unconscious, his one big moment of repentence on what he had once committed — a total erasure of an entire species from existence because he couldn't trust them to keep at their word and refrain from developing time technology. It's a backstory that's shocking; I've known and loved Narvin for many years from the Gallifrey spin-off, but even I wasn't aware he had it in him to commit genocide on this scale. It's also something that adds much to the character, how ruthlessly loyal to the Time Lord ideal he used to be and how Leela changed him. In a moment of desperation when they are at peril, the former CIA agent decides to open himself up. He and Romana are too scared to tell Leela about what happened that day the Oubliette of Eternity was used once more, because they know the noble savage would never forgive them if she knew. Strong stuff, just what I expected from Gary Russell (whose personal connection to the Gallifrey crew wouldn't have allowed him to come up with anything less).
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ
Don't be mistaken; this may have the Doctor and Adric, but this is thoroughly a Narvin tale. Go in with wide ears if you're already familiar with Gallifrey (the Big Finish spinoff), and if you're not, you still get to hear a rather superb Tom Baker impression by Sean Carlsen.
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