Rose Tyler: Trapped
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Big Finish Rose Tyler: Trapped |
| Released | 2022 |
| Starring Billie Piper, Camille Coduri |
| Synopsis: Rose is trapped on a single Earth, with no working electronics. |
Rose Trek by Matthew Kresal 4/1/25
Like Robert Holmes during Classic Who's run, Russell T Davies showed a knack for sparse but effective world building in his scripts during his first tenure as show runner of Modern Doctor Who. From the little nuggets about the Last Great Time War to building up the Earths below Satellite Five or the mid-21st century Earth left behind by those on Bowie Base One, it was something that created visions in the minds of viewers. Tantalizing hints of what lay just beyond the Doctor's adventures. Another example came with the return of Billie Piper's Rose Tyler in Series Four, with a mention of her using a dimension cannon to cross the multiverse in search of the Doctor and the universe she'd left behind in Doomsday.
Eleven years on, Big Finish picked up on those hints for their audio spin-off Rose Tyler: The Dimension Cannon, taking listeners on her journeys to strange new Earths. Following the first set in 2019, a second and third set were announced for releases in the autumns of 2022 and 2023. With the second set, Other Worlds, having ended on a cliffhanger with Rose trying to escape an Earth affected by a rogue planet, Trapped would not only have to pick up on a cliffhanger but bring Rose ever closer to the Doctor. But would it succeed?
From its outset, Trapped would prove to be a different creature than its predecessors. Where previous sets had taken a "one episode, one story" approach with each episode offering a different alternative Earth, this third box set would be set on a single Earth in a trilogy of episodes. Not one on the edge of a potential apocalypse like so many of the others Rose had visited. Instead, the world of Trapped would be one where that apocalypse had not only happened but was far enough to be just on the edges of living memory. A world where the mysterious, electric-like Anti-Life has wiped out much of civilization and rendered many electronics inoperable. It's into that world that Rose lands, out of the frying pan of one world's end and into the fire that is this one's aftermath.
And with Lizzie Hopley's Sink or Swim, the set wastes no time doing so. Set aboard a former cruise ship turned floating colony of survivors, it serves as introduction for both Rose and the listener to what this world has to offer. Without her travel disk, Rose strives to make the most of the situation, particularly when she realizes that a version of her mum Jackie (once more played by Camille Coduri) and an alternate sibling in the form of Danni (Em Thane). This isn't a happy family reunion, however, and amid the assaults on the ship by pirates and mutated creatures and the unpleasant aspects of life onboard ship, Rose also deals with what's happened to this alternate version of her family. It's something that offers some new material for both Piper but especially Coduri to play with. Coduri's appearances, sparse as they are effective, strip Jackie of the no-nonsense attitude that's been a trademark since the character's debut in 2005. Being trapped on the ship becomes almost a metaphor for Rose's own predicament, seeking her lost disk while also trying to make the best of an increasingly bad situation. As an introduction to the world of Trapped and to Thane's Danni, Sink or Swim succeeds.
Tim Foley picks up the baton for the middle episode of the trilogy. The Lower Road takes Rose back to a housing estate, but not one like she left behind. The people of The High Road have put down roots amid a ruined world, living next door to another tower full of Anti-Life. Astute listeners will see Foley's twist coming from a way's off (as this reviewer did), but that doesn't make the journey that Rose and Danni go on any less effective. Thane's Danni comes into their own here with the chemistry between them and Piper becoming increasingly central to the narrative as the episode unfolds. The moral dilemma at the heart of the episode is a classic one that Doctor Who has explored a number of times in both its Classic and Modern incarnations, with Foley using the absence of the Doctor and Rose taking his place to explore it from a new angle. While the segue into the final episode of the set feels incredibly abrupt (something that might be down more to Matt Fitton as script editor than Foley as the episode's writer), The Lower Road is an entertaining episode with a new angle on a classic moral dilemma.
Which brings us to the climax of Trapped with Helen Goldwyn's The Good Samaritan. Goldwyn (who also directed The Dimension Cannon series as a whole) brings the themes of the set's preceding episodes of communities that aren't what they seem and moral questions at their heart to a head with her episode. One that brings Rose and Danni into a domed city in southern Britain, one ruled over by a scientific elite. Sounds familiar, perhaps? One that is seemingly built on the principle of being nice to one another. Except, as prior episodes of Trapped have taught the pair and listeners, there's something ugly underneath this surface. Goldwyn's script packs a lot into its 50 minute runtime, from Rose making one last effort to get her disk functional to the community inside the dome, what Anti-Life actually is and Danni's ultimate fate. Within all of that, The Good Samaritan also explores what makes us act decent to one another and what happens when that comes not out of decency but a need to be rewarded. In true RTD fashion, the closing minutes of the episode are an emotional roller coaster that offers Piper some of her best material of the entire Dimension Cannon series. Something that helps to make this a worthy send-off to the set and, from the hints in the final scene, potentially the series as a whole.
Something that the series, and Trapped as a set especially, has done is showcase Billie Piper as an actress. The version of the character viewers saw in Turn Left and much of The Stolen Earth in 2008 was a more confident figure than the weeping, lovelorn young woman left on that beach at Doomsday's emotional climax. Trapped, in leaving Rose without the likes of Jackie or Clive to count upon as she had in earlier sets, shows her essentially taking on the role of the Doctor. Tossed into impossible situations, learning what she can and making the best of them with a companion by her side. Piper proves more than up to the task here, with the chemistry between her and Thane's Danni echoing some of the early and non-romantic moments between the Doctor and Rose, with the questioning companion and the seasoned traveler. If there's a reason to listen to this set or the Dimension Cannon series as a whole, it's for Piper as an actress and how Big Finish have filled in some of the gaps in Rose's life from Doomsday to Turn Left. A journey wonderfully brought to life by the sound design of Joe and Aiden Van Lier Kraemer, with Joe Kraemer offering music scoring for each episode while also hinting at Murray Gold's Modern Who TV stylings, all brought together under the thoughtful and watchful direction of Goldwyn.
As a potential climax to the Dimension Cannon series, Trapped offers a satisfying trilogy of episodes. Though the thematic links between them do wear thin in places, the strengths of Piper's performance and the production carries it through. For fans of Rose and Piper's time in Doctor Who, Trapped joins the previous sets as new additions to the character's own canon and exploring how she became the woman who crossed the multiverse to help Donna Noble make that vital left turn.