1 episode. Approx. 31 minutes. Written by: Jonathan Morris. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Nicholas Briggs.
THE PLOT
Switzerland, 1816. At a villa rented by Lord Byron, the famous poet is spending time with Mary Shelley (Julie Cox), her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron's doctor John Polidori. After reading from a collection of horror stories, Byron suggests that each member of the company prepare a ghost story for the following day, as a sort of contest.
This friendly competition is interrupted, however, by the arrival of a badly wounded stranger: A man so burned that Polidori pronounces that he has never seen such injuries on anyone living. The man gasps out that he is a doctor, followed by another word as he recognizes his current company:
"Frankenstein!"
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Paul McGann gets to play multiple variants of his Doctor. We see the self-assured Doctor of the last part of The TV Movie, a man with seemingly no care in the world. We also see an embittered Doctor, a man who has lost much and perhaps everything. Then there is the burned and badly-injured Doctor who slips in and out of coherence. Finally, there is the monster - a Doctor so wounded and mutated that he becomes violent, out-of-control, more animal than man. Given the chance to show so much variety within the story's scant thirty minutes, McGann throws himself into it with relish.
Mary: The title of the story is Mary's Story, and the narrative is seen entirely through her eyes. Julie Cox is very good as Mary, depicted as having run off with the much older Percy at the promise of adventures that never came. The young woman is already jaded by the reality of a man who "does not believe in fidelity" and who is prone to mania under the influence of laudanum. Writer Jonathan Morris is very conscious of this as a companion introduction story, even if this companion also happens to be a historical figure. His script makes sure to highlight the traits needed in an engaging companion, showcasing Mary as strong-willed, compassionate, and observant. Further depth will likely be added by the full-length stories to come, but Cox's performance and Morris' script already have her feeling like a full character even in this short piece.
THOUGHTS
The best of the one-episode stories featured in The Company of Friends, and the only of these four stories that Big Finish has to date seen fit to follow up. Mary's Story is far from the first work to explore the summer that spawned The Vampyre and Frankenstein. Like Ken Russell's muddled film Gothic, this episode plays with the idea of genuinely fantastical events inspiring the supernatural tales.
Bits of Frankenstein can be spotted throughout the piece. Percy Shelley's mania as he cries, "He's aliiive!" is an obvious echo of the Boris Karloff movie, as are references to fire and torch-wielding villagers. There's even a line that winks at the confusion caused by the later film series, wherein "Frankenstein" became the monster instead of the scientist.
All of this is amusing, though the "monster" scenes tend to be the most jumbled of the episode. Still, the real interest here is in the glimpses of the different variants of the Doctor. This is effectively a multi-Doctor story, showing the Eighth Doctor at two distinct points in his life. The early Eighth Doctor, still innocent and hungry for adventure, contrasts with the bitter, late-in-his-life Eighth Doctor, a man who has traveled with so many companions and ended up alone at the end of it.
Despite a few rushed moments that were probably inevitable in a single-episode story, Mary's Story is a good one. An introduction to a character worth following, and a glimpse of the Eighth Doctor's full journey at both its start and its end. It's clever and fun, and I look forward to seeing where the Doctor/Mary partnership goes from here.
Rating: 8/10.
Next Story: The Silver Turk
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