The biggest problem with the
finale to the first season of The Early Adventures, An Ordinary Life, Big Finish’s replacement for the Companion
Chronicles, had was that it didn’t have too much with the twist halfway through
changing it from a pure historical story to a pseudo historical story. The
Library of Alexandria however by the nature of only having half the running
time is able to execute this twist much better than An Ordinary Life for this reason.
The Library of Alexandria also
does it a bit better as it surrounds around the idea of a library that was
destroyed. The titular library is a
historic library in Alexandria, Egypt which mysteriously was burned to the
ground with yes many different accounts are told of how it was possibly
destroyed. Some say it was Julius
Caesar, some say it was Muslim invaders destroying it in an act of jihad, one
saying it was done by decree of Coptic Pope Theophilius of Alexandria, and one
saying a sea monster destroyed it. This
being Doctor Who, the sea monster attack is the one that Simon Guerrier goes
for when it comes to how the Library was destroyed.
The first half of the
story is a straight historical story that serves to flesh out the characters of
Ian Chesterton and Hypatia. The story is
that the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan arrive at the Library and Ian, being
the science teacher of the group, works in the Library to pay for their ability
to take a vacation in Alexandria. The
Doctor does the things he did in The
Aztecs about not being able to rewrite history and not to give away anything
from the future in this portion of the story, but really this is the story for
Ian and Hypatia. The problem with a lot
of the first half of the story is that there really isn’t much plot, and it’s
all a lot of scientific explanation which is really engaging if you’re somebody
like me who really likes science, but if you’re in the story for the adventure
this half really isn’t for you. The
cliffhanger of the first however I do have a problem with the execution as to
be honest it just sort of comes out of nowhere and it is revealed that the Mim
are invading Earth. The second half of
the story is just a traditional alien invasion story where many people die in
the pillaging of the Library of Alexandria.
The Mim are doing their same plot from Shadow from the Past but Guerrier really doesn’t do as much in this
story to make them interesting. Here the
Mim are really just the stock villains for the story.
The final few scenes of
the story which include Ian and Hypatia teaching children and the reveal that
the Rosetta stone survived the pillaging.
It makes the story end on the hopeful note that some of the knowledge
kept in the Library has survived the burnings from the Mim. William Russell while not recording any sort
of interviews for this release and the extras are a nine minute music suite
which emulates a very Arabic style of music in a minor key. Russell is excellent as Ian Chesterton as he
always is and it is Susan Franklyn as Hypatia who is a more interesting
character. Hypatia is someone who knows
quite a bit on how the world works but because of the knowledge of her time she
still believes in things like the geocentric model for the Solar System and
that the Earth is flat. Her interactions
with Ian are extremely interesting to listen to as Hypatia isn’t portrayed as
ignorant, it’s just there is a lack in a breakthrough in knowledge that
enlightened most of the world. There is
also much made in the way of how language has changed over time including the
word scientist originally meaning teacher or someone who studies math, not
someone who studies what we know as science today.
To summarize, The Library of Alexandria is a story
that will polarize some with the extremely different stylings of the two halves
of the story. The two performances of
the story from William Russell and Susan Franklyn are excellent, but there
really isn’t much in the way of changing an established plot structure. Simon Guerrier writes a pretty engaging plot
but the Mim really don’t make any difference than their initial
impression. 80/100.
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