Tales from the Vault by: Jonathan Morris directed by: Lisa Bowerman: A Jacket, A Painting, A Crytal, A Capsule

Tales from the Vault stars Daphne Ashbrook as Captain Ruth Matheson and Yee Jee Tso as Warrant Officer Charlie Sato, with Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot, Peter Purves as Steven Taylor, and Mary Tamm as Romana.  It was written by Jonathan Morris, directed by Lisa Bowerman, and was released in July 2011 by Big Finish Productions.

 

Bringing back the characters from the TV Movie is a near impossibility as of now with Big Finish mainly due to the fact that the rights are still in the hands of Fox.  They’re really the only thing they kept from the production as the BBC always owned the Doctor, the Master, and the TARDIS, as well as the DVD rights to the TV Movie.  Big Finish goes around this by establishing a spin off event for the two actors to return, but as two UNIT officers assigned to the Vault, or the Black Archive, where all the alien artifacts recovered are stored for study or use when the situation arises.  To set this up Jonathan Morris writes four separate mini-stories with a framing story being Ruth Matheson giving Charlie Sato a tour of the Vault on his first day on the job.  She tells him the stories of four artifacts, all with a connection to a man known as the Doctor.

 

The first artifact is an army uniform that was recovered while the Third Doctor and Jo Grant were working for UNIT.  The jacket has the living consciousness of a dead soldier in the form of a psychic imprint.  Jo’s friend tried it on and went on a mad spree before threatening suicide and it’s up for the Doctor and Jo to stop him.  Jo recounts this story on old cassette tapes as she hates writing down her reports.  Katy Manning is excellent at narrating the story in the Short Trip formant giving us insight into the long past of an unseen adventure, but this is the weakest of the four mini stories.  You just don’t care for Jo’s friend and Katy Manning’s excellent performance can’t force those emotions to manifest in any way.

 

The second artifact is a painting, painted by an alien.  This alien painting wouldn’t be in the Vault if it didn’t show what it shows.  It has the ability to retrieve the scene of the observer’s death which drives them mad and sends them too it.  Ruth Matheson interviewed a Romanadvoratrelundar who along with the Doctor recovered this painting and gave it back to UNIT.  Mary Tamm is excellent as Romana in this segment and the story is probably the highlight of the four stories because of how well it fits into the Graham Williams era of the show.  This is a plot that just has laughs yet a really good underlying threat in the form of a painting.

 

The third artifact is a crystal which can delete the memories of people, by absorbing their consciousness.  This is a story unseen that involves the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe working with UNIT sometime after The Invasion, but to protect his companions the Doctor had their memories wiped and a copy of Zoe placed into the crystal.  This story as told by Wendy Padbury, who is probably the weakest performer as her voice has deepened the most out of time which doesn’t really work considering this is supposed to be a young Zoe.  The plot is of gangsters who have been using the crystal to make the witnesses forget of their robberies.  It’s Jonathan Morris doing comedy which is actually really good for what it is overall.

 

The final artifact are some wax cylinders sealed in a time capsule, opened because the time has come.  It sees Steven Taylor, wonderfully played by Peter Purves, recount the Doctor’s involvement with aliens in the Boer War.  It’s a simple story, but it gets Charlie thinking of how these four artifacts fit together, and then the alien reveals itself.  Saying anymore would be spoiling the ending, but I will say that it is an amazing ending.  Daphne Ashbrooke and Yee Jee Tso give excellent performances in the story and work as narrators.  Tso gets to be all naïve and innocent and works much better than his turn as Chang Lee in the TV Movie.  Ashbrooke also gives us the convincing tough soldier act as she’s prepared to kill her comrades if it will protect security.

 

To summarize, Jonathan Morris gives us an excellent outing in Tales from the Vault.  It’s a great way to start a potential spin off from the show, even if there are only a few outings in total for the two UNIT officers.  Some things don’t work but on the whole the story works and keeps everything moving and interesting to listen to. 85/100