The Rosemariners [AUDIO/2012.9.19]

★★★☆☆

  This might just be a personal thing, but I love roses in fiction. They're beautiful to look at, they allow for some ingenious compositions on artworks and book covers, and they often symbolise the bitter beneath the sweet, the darkness hiding in the face of beauty. To have a Doctor Who story that doubles down on the rose motif and calls itself The Rosemariners... scratches that very special itch I have satisfactorily.

  I admire the motif, yes, but (only a little, I guess) sadly, The Rosemariners itself doesn't stray far from your typical laboratory-and-space-station bound Doctor Who adventure. The story beats are familiar, the character archetypes (the willing boffin, the oddball side character, the arsehole villain) are nothing out of the norm, and so on and so forth. Frazer Hines provides a wonderful performance as both Jamie and the Second Doctor as always, and Wendy Padbury gets to don a cute French accent for one of the characters. There's enough entertainment value present to warrant a listen of The Rosemariners, sure; beyond that, however, I don't expect anyone to exactly wear out the CD.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  The funny thing is that beyond the performances and the basic motif, I actually think it's a fascinating idea — about a former prisoner taking over a space asylum and using what is ostensibly a rose-based drug used to sedate "dangerous prisoners". Already, I can see that a few sharp-edged messages could've been thrown into the mix had Donald Tosh intended to; it doesn't really matter that he didn't, since it's not as if every story needs a message, but I do believe the central premise and story beats were a little bit wasted on such a by-the-numbers structure.