Season 18, Episodes 5-7

Episode 5: The Substitute

Victoria (Australia), 1907. What is happening at the esteemed Bainbridge College for Young Ladies? What dark secrets does Miss Jones, the enigmatic governess, hide behind her severe façade?  And speaking of secrets, the new history and science teacher, Miss Ashworth, does seem to have quite a few of her own in store… A mystery, two strange rocks and no picnic!

Episode 6: The Chemistry of Ghosts

Paris, 1907. One year after the tragic death of her husband Pierre, Nobel prize scientist Marie Curie is about to reveal her latest, extraordinary discovery to a chosen assembly of thinkers and seekers – a discovery involving radium and invisible, psychic presences. Luckily for history as we know it, Lady Penelope (with her three new protégés!) is among the audience…

Episode 7: The Beauty and the Beast

Paris, 1768. As King Louis XV is looking for a new favorite and aristocrats busy themselves with their games of intrigue, a monstrous shadow wolf is stalking the Parisian nights, spreading death and terror in its wake. Could the dreaded Beast of Gévaudan have returned to wreak its vengeance on the kingdom of France? The Time Lady decides to investigate!  

So, our intended mini-series having morphed into a full-fledged season, things have taken a new turn, as demonstrated by our three last episodes!

As can be gathered from its blurb, episode 5 was directly inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock, with two typically Whovian twists. The first was that the secretive governess Miss Jones was in fact… the Master!  Yes, a new incarnation of everybody’s favorite Time Lord arch-villain (my own variation on Missy, if you will, but with a very different personality and demeanor)… and NOT the Master of Penelope’s own continuum (who, for all intents and purposes, is supposed to be Forever Dead) but the Master from the alternate continuum visited by the Time Lady a few episodes ago (in The Napoleon Stratagem).

At the end of said episode, this alternate Master had been mortally wounded (by Time Agent Jill Harkness – yes, Jack’s own female alternate double) and was starting to undergo the regeneration process – but something (tied to the meta-temporal energies of Abraxas, which he had started to “distillate” in his TARDIS) unexpected obviously happened off-stage, resulting in this new female incarnation AND (more importantly) in her relocation in Penelope’s own continuum… Could the two Time Ladies (who both owe their latest regeneration to the same meta-temporal energies) be tied in some mysterious, Beyond-Space-and-Time way? Only Time (of course) will tell.

The second ‘twist’ tied to episode 5 is that it ended in Penelope taking three young ladies from the Bainbridge College on board of her TARDIS as her new travelling companions (yeah, three’s a crowd – but see the notes on episode 7 below)… removing them from recorded history and actually creating the (imaginary) mysterious disappearances behind the (equally fictional) Picnic at Hanging Rock story!

Episode 6 was based on two ideas I’ve had in store for quite some time: re-use the gaseous (and somewhat underused) Gelth as a story’s main villains and concoct a scenario based on Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie’s little-known (but well-documented) interest in mediumship and psychic phenomena – as well as Marie’s very moving expressions of grief (from her private journal) after Pierre’s tragic accidental death. The result was a very enjoyable period piece, complete with the usual DW mix of historical facts, scientific acrobatics (I invented a new, Gelth-related property for radon...) and wild imaginings – and a top-notch performance by Penelope’s player. It was, of course, quite reminiscent of The Unquiet Dead, with a dash of The Girl In The Fireplace for that extra touch of emotion.

Stephen King once defined a story as the encounter of “two previously unrelated ideas coming together and making something new” – and that was the recipe I decided to use for episode 7. The only thing I knew was that Penelope wished to travel to France in the late (but pre-Revolutionary) 18^th century (i.e., somewhen in the 1760s or 1770s). So I asked myself: what are the two (preferably unrelated) things I’d readily associate with this setting?  

Answers: Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Beast of Gévaudan.

So I proceeded to mix these two ingredients, adding a few echoes from Penelope’s previous trip to this historical era (Lost In Versailles, waaaay back in season one!) and her recent discoveries about the ‘self-aware nightmares’ also known as the Vishklar and the result was a very atmospheric, quite dark tale of sordid intrigues, monster hunting and psychic possession (in powdered wigs). It ended with the departure of one of Penelope’s three new companions, who chose to stay in 18^th century Paris with her newfound paramour, adding an extra touch of melancholy to the story’s conclusion. 

Another great time, with some excellent salon banter by Penelope’s player.

Next stop: London, 1967!