Shadow of the Past by: Simon Guerrier directed by: Lisa Bowerman: His Last Name Was Marshall

Shadow of the Past is performed by Caroline John as Liz Shaw with Lex Shrapnel as Marshall.  It was written by Simon Guerrier, directed by Lisa Bowerman, and released in April 2010 by Big Finish Productions.

 

The highest points of The Scales of Injustice were how well it fleshed out Liz Shaw as a character and doing The Companion Chronicles, a series of talking books narrated in character by a companion, to feature Liz Shaw would allow this development to continue.  Simon Guerrier’s Shadow of the Past has Liz in the starring role front and center, but does more to explore a different side to her own character, her love life.  Shadow of the Past gets its title from UNIT calling Liz Shaw into the UNIT Vault from one of the adventures she would rather forget.  Sometime after Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Earth was invaded by body snatchers displaced from their own planet.  The Mim, space octopi, have the ability to infect humans to gain an impression and then take their form, blending in until it’s time to strike.  The story in the past takes the form of a mix of Spearhead from Space and Terror of the Zygons, oddly enough the first and last stories to feature the UNIT Family, making this aspect another shadow from the past.  The Doctor has been taken over by the Mim and is prepared to blow up the Earth and it’s up to Liz Shaw to save the day from the impending danger.  The plot, mainly because of how much of a mix of other stories it is, comes across as rather average and at points is easy to tune out to without missing anything of importance.

 

The Mim work extremely well as villains as they have this nice mixture of sympathetic background, intrigue, and intimidation to be effective as threats.  The imagery Guerrier evokes with the Mim make them feel like Lovecraftian horrors from the stars.  Doctor Who during the Hinchcliffe era never really evoked The Blob as a horror film, but that is at least a little of what Shadow of the Past does.  The most interesting fact however is that at the end of the day, they aren’t killed, because barely anything would be able to kill them.  The Mim are effectively immortal and that scares the Doctor and Liz that they won’t be able to defeat the monsters this time around.  The end of part one has that sense of foreboding as the Doctor is out of action.  Caroline John gives a brilliant performance in this one as she communicates a mix of intelligent collected thinking and primal fear.  She has to be the one to defeat the Mim and it scares her.  What is more interesting however is the way John narrates the story, almost coming across as distant and attempting to conceal knowledge.  This of course is intentional by Bowerman, who is excellent in direction, and John who are telling this story to Marshall, the guard to the vault where the remains of the Mim are found.  I   will say no more.

 

To summarize, Shadow of the Past is an excellent example of a lackluster plot improved exponentially by good characters.  Guerrier does a great job at creating the characters and a villain that makes the peril come alive in a story which has an ending scene that is responsible for the quality as you see a character development nearly thirty years in the making.  The direction is excellent and returning to UNIT is always a good time to be had.  Marshall will be remembered.  75/100.