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'Voyage to the New World' CD adventure released December 2012, 4 episodes Writer: Matthew Sweet |
Roots: The story of the Roanoake colony. Jago refers to Pepper's Ghost and paraphrases Anthony's speech from Julius Caesar "Friends, children, colonists lend me your ears!" and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("Good-day to you. Much obliged for all the fish!") Elanor sings the Elizabethan poem Come, O Come My Life's Delight. The Doctor name checks the song Jungle VIP from Disney's movie of The Jungle Book. Our Mutual Friend. Herodotus' Histories (the anthropophagi) Exodus - Chapman refers to Noah and his sons, while Litefoot describes the Children as "succubae, incubi, the brats of Lilith
Intertextuality: The closing scene of this story brings Jago and Litefoot to the Red Tavern from their own spin-off series, albeit in the 1960s, the historical setting of the fourth series of Jago and Litefoot, beginning with the story The Age of Revolution.
Double Entendres: "We claim our citizens from bondage"
The Doctor: "Sorry about this, Mister White here loves his guns. His ruff is ridiculously big, too - I think we all know what that's about."
Dialogue Triumphs: "I work in the theatre. I know when a fellow is dying."
"My child? But I'm a single gentleman, a confirmed bachelor!"
"Consumption? I am no pie, sir, no box of lime creams!"
"I think some days 'tis best to assume you ate too much cheese before bed, and that with any luck you may wake up!"
White's description of Jago as "the red-faced player king."
Dr describes Jago as "quite the most inedible man I've ever met"
Continuity: The Simestran Interlude are "a mirror unto nature" - a harmless species with a collective intelligence originating in a cloud system in the fourth Galaxy. Chameleonic by nature, their reactions to other individuals are based on the behaviour of the individual itself (their initial encounter with the colonial and avaricious Raleigh therefore sets the fate of Roanoake's colonists in motion.) Parasitic by nature, they are largely insubstantial, turning their host insubstantial in turn. Anecdotally it appears that in the form of 'children' the interlude also took Norsemen and members of the Algonquin, before the native people used them against their invading enemies.
Raleigh spends 498 years (minus his age) on Croatoan Island, however, in the restored timeline the TARDIS alone arrives on the beach 498 years previously. The settlers of Roanoake are rescued by the natives of Croatoan and found more prosperous livelihoods there.
The TARDIS Information System has an illustration of the Ship in flight on its cover. Temporal Grace keeps the anomalous Raleigh in existence, but once the TARDIS doors open he fades away after the children.
The Doctor, Henry and George spend over a week as Wanchese's captives. Litefoot's Aunt Agatha once had a goat which devoured an entire antique tablecloth.
The Doctor inadvertently drops Jago and Litefoot off at the Red Tavern on the 21st of February 1968, seventy years after their departure.
The Doctor claims that 'goodbye' in the language of Catamegalonia is "Oofthamoodlepops"
Links: This story immediately follows Voyage to Venus (the events of which Jago refers to) Jago and Litefoot recall the Fourth Doctor ("that other chap with the teeth"). Galaxy Four.
Qv: 'Temporal Grace' 'The Continuing Chronicles of Jago and Litefoot'
Location: The colony of Roanoake, Virginia from 11th to 18th of August 1590.
The Bottom Line: "No, gentlemen, I am indebted to you, for your inestimable company."
An intriguing close to an entertaining reunion. Matthew Sweet's special is, like his other BF plays, something of a chewy number with a love (and a lot) of detail and something of a slow reveal. There's a lot of description going on in the dialogue, unfortunately, but in amongst this some great dialogue - and not all of it hogged by Christopher Benjamin's Jago, for once. Missing accomplished then, chaps - as you were!
Before the new series diversions of the Paternoster Gang, the Doctor's entanglement with the affairs of Professor George Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago are themselves the subject of certain synchronic significance. The pair first encounter the Fourth Doctor and Leela in The Talons of Weng-Chiang circa 1889 and apparently maintain their acquaintance, becoming good friends and confidantes in Andy Lane's Companion Chronicle The Mahogany Murderers, set not long after the Greel incident. Murderers is in effect a prologue to an on-going spin-off series, Jago and Litefoot in which the two Victorian investigators conduct their own adventures in and around their own London location. In the final scene of The Ruthven Inheritance, the last story of Jago and Litefoot's second series Leela appears, sent by her Gallifreyan superiors (perhaps Romana herself?) and works alongside henry and George for the next two series, at first leading her own search for anachronistic technology at large on Earth. At the end of Jago and Litefoot series four, the aptly-named Chronoclasm a 'Professor Claudius Dark' appears, also recruiting the heroes in his own investigations. Dark is in fact the Sixth Doctor, evading the attentions of time-travelling Temperons; at the series' conclusion (The Hourglass Killers) Leela returns to Gallifrey and the Doctor, out of gratitude to Henry and George, offers them a trip aboard the TARDIS (Voyage to Venus, Voyage to the New World) at the conclusion of which the Doctor takes his leave of the Victorian investigators.
The fourth Doctor is finally reunited with Jago and Litefoot in The Justice of Jalxar, which takes place a few years after the main body of the series, this time with the second incarnation of Romana and perhaps it is not long after this time - circa January 1894, that Professor Litefoot meets the Doctor again, this time in his eighth incarnation and while Jago is outside London. This story, novelised in Mark Morris' BBC Book The Bodysnatchers is recalled (or rather, alluded to) in The Zygon Who Fell to Earth. Perhaps it is this encounter with the pair that encourages the future Romana on Gallifrey to send Leela to a couple of acquaintances well-versed in Victoria investigation?