Big Finish Productions The Contingency Club

Written by	Phil Mulryne
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2017

Starring Peter Davison, Louise Jameson, Janet Fielding

Synopsis: London, 1864, where any gentleman befitting the title ‘gentleman’ belongs to a gentlemen’s club: The Reform, The Athenaeum, The Carlton, The Garrick... and, of course, The Contingency. Newly established in St James, The Contingency has quickly become the most exclusive enclave in town. A refuge for men of politics, men of science, men of letters. A place to escape. A place to think. A place to be free. The first rule of the Contingency is to behave like a gentleman. The second is to pay no heed to its oddly identical servants. Or to the horror in its cellars. Or to the existence of the secret gallery on its upper floor... Rules that the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan are all about to break.

• The Red Queen's Race by Thomas Tiley

The Red Queen's Race by Thomas Tiley 19/7/25

Opening with Tegan and Adric bickering over her state-of-the-art Walkman, the TARDIS mysterious shuts down and lands in a Victorian gentleman's club called the Contingency where the members seem to be in a daze and can't even recognizes a woman when one is talking to them. The club is staffed with dozens of identical servants all called Edward. Meanwhile, Marjorie Stonegood is trying to find her father and asks George Augustus to get into the club to try and find him; Mr. Peabody is hypnotizing new club members; and hidden in the club is a mysterious, game-obsessed woman called the Red Queen.

First of all, it's lovely to hear Janet Fielding and Matthew Waterhouse again. Waterhouse sounds different (not surprisingly as he was so young when he was first in the series) but Ms Fielding sounds practically the same. This is the first Big Finish I have listened to with them both in it, and it's nice to have the original fifth Doctor team back. Sarah Sutton and Peter Davison are on form as well, they all do a great job in this story.

As for the story, it's the typical pseudo-historical aliens messing about and plotting an invasion in the Victorian era --- a story we have seen many times, before but it is pulled off with precision. Some of the exposition is silly: after disarming the blasting caps, they go off and the characters explain how they would have triggered the explosives just a few moments earlier (obviously!). There are a few good lines, and Tegan gets most of them; the bit where the Doctor confiscates her Walkman because it started an argument and Tegan remarks that it was better than his TARDIS is good as well. The various characters get enough to do. Marjorie, the stereotypical 'looking for her engineer father that is brainwashed to work for the baddy', explores the club with Adric and Nyssa, discovering the vats of clones in the basement, and the Doctor and Tegan team up with Augustus outside the club, with the Doctor seemingly pointlessly measuring out the building (which clues him to the hidden chamber of the Red Queen). Mr. Peabody abducts Tegan, only for Augustus to be revealed as the agent of his mistress's brother. The cliffhangers are rather good as well, with the heroes threatened with being expelled from the club via the window (it even has the classic anticlimax cliffhanger resolution of 'no not out the window, out the front door'; it reminded me of Snakedance's 'Kill them... on seconds thoughts, I have changed my mind' cliffhanger and resolution). Nyssa gets grabbed by a clone emerging from a vat as Tegan is threatened by a hypnotized George Augustus, and the final cliffhanger reveals the Red Queen's motives: she is taking over England as part of a bet with her brother (all her talk of games in previous scenes sort of tipped me off to this, but it is a fun motive that I don't think we have seen in Doctor Who before). The solution to the story is sort of telegraphed form the beginning when Tegan makes such a fuss about her Walkman and how the Red Queen is blocked from using hi-tech equipment via her wager, but it is a funny way to end the story with the villain punished despite following the rules.

Lorelei King as the villain is brilliant, obsessed with games and betting, bossing about Mr. Peabody. Her secret lair in the club is a spaceship with wonderful inventions like steam-powered clocks and clockwork computers. When her servant is threatened later in the story, she takes the rather brilliant solution of killing him herself instead, firing blindly at the team through a steam-filled room, the Doctor making a wager with her with his TARDIS as collateral. Her American accent makes a change from previous baddies. I really liked the way she said "Adric" and hope she comes back for a rematch with the Doctor.

Olly McCauley plays the Edwards (and also the Red Queen's brother who is trying to rig the game with his sister and make her lose the bet) and is rather funny as the literal-minded clone/minion of the club. The cast in general do a good job of embodying their characters.

All in all I found it to be a good story, not the most original but had this been a Season 19 story it would have probably been one of my favorites. Points for the steampunk-style equipment of the baddies, so for me this is a ten out of ten but for everyone else maybe a seven or an eight.