Station to Station [AUDIO/2022.5.4]

★★★★☆

  I'll be honest with you, this is the finest Ninth Doctor audio with Christopher Eccleston yet. Not just because it's a fantastically moody piece with an amazing job by director Helen Goldwyn, not just because it's a great use of location to enhance atmosphere, and not just because Eccleston sounds particularly fired up for this script (he's a great actor, no wonder he's got an eye for something truly special)... but because Robert Valentine wrote a script rich with empathy and love for its characters. Saffron, the one-off companion in this story, is obviously written with love and care for her, and Indigo Griffiths does a fantastic job at portraying her. Her and her band of merry folk lost to time and love are key to the story, they're the reason the Doctor fights so hard to survive, and their resolution becomes just that much more special because of Saffron's genuine connection with the Doctor by the end of the adventure. I absolutely love the final few minutes, where the Doctor is so convinced that nobody else is going to make it and he apologises to them, and they lament their final moments as well... before circumstance proves him wrong and everyone is allowed to live. It's the moment from The Doctor Dances, given the same amount of emotional weight and justification so that it's a genuinely uplifting moment to see everyone get a second chance at life. As the timelines converge and everyone's trains arrive for them to take, the music soars into its crescendo and the scene becomes something truly special indeed.

  Station to Station really impressed me, with all this and with a great use of the malevolent force at play (evil entities talking in rhymes are usually quite creepy). Plus, Valentine couldn't help sneaking in a Lungbarrow reference of all things, and it's quite amazing to behold if you're not expecting it (for your sake, then, I hope you're not reading this second paragraph). As I said, I fell in love with Station to Station as soon as I started listening to it; one hell of a release, it is.