Five Twenty-Nine written by John Dorney and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it About: River has made a terrible discovery. Billions of lives hang in the balance. But if she can save just a few, then it might just help her solve the conundrum of Earth’s destruction. But how can she win when survival becomes a race against time itself? A race against Five Twenty-Nine?

Hello Sweetie: It cannot have escaped peoples notice that I am not the biggest fan of River Song. She reminds me of the worst excesses of humanity; too smug, too knowing, too violent and too amoral. Often, she is written as a male fantasy lead rather than a strong female character in her own right and often she is portrayed as somebody who cannot exist without the Doctor. I’m certain she would bomb in the Bechdel Test. Alex Kingston’s performance veers between quietly masterful and insanely self-knowing and superior. Which is why when stories like Five Twenty-Nine come along I am absolutely delighted because I am proven completely wrong (by my own standards) and River is made to sing. I love those few occasions were some restraint is apparent in her writing, she’s an active female protagonist and that the mystery that surrounds her character is made to work. The Silence in the Library, The Pandorica Opens and The Husband of River Song are all good examples too. Here River is a warm, kind, intelligent, funny and poignant presence. And nary a mention of any other character to make her relevant.

When asked if she is married she admits that that is rather complicated and its best to go with Professor. It’s not that Rachel is so distant from a child that unnerves River, it is that she is so close to a child that she cannot think of her as a robot. She keeps expecting to find something wrong with this world but everything has turned out to be perfectly normal. I love the fact that River feels that her word is important enough for this family to up sticks to safety and she’s told in no uncertain terms that the world of somebody they don’t know isn’t worth anything. River is attached to a sense of being right about this and this terribly normal bunch question that. If she doesn’t save everybody then what was the point of her coming here? She has to accept that sometimes you lose and sometimes you just have to lose the best way you can. Dorney really does go to town questioning all those certainties about River and then tearing them down. It’s not that I don’t want River to succeed in life, just that there is far more drama when she is improvising and desperate rather than complacently confident about everything. The crushing inevitability of the world dying and River not being able to save anybody really up the stakes of what these stories can do with the character. She simply cannot understand people who surrender to the inevitability of their deaths. To her, refusing to fight isn’t an option. She has to say sorry for not being more help as she leaves these people to die.

Standout Performance: I’ve heard both criticism and praise of Salome Heartel’s performance of Rachel and my opinion is very much in favour of the latter. It’s not like she would be choosing to play the part as an awkward synthetic if she wasn’t playing an awkward synthetic but surely the point of the character is that the performance as a human being isn’t quite right.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You have to make sacrifices for what you want.’
‘I don’t want to give up!’ ‘You’re not, you’re just changing the fight.’
‘It was always going to happen eventually.’
‘Who’d have thought it? My family. The last humans.’

Great Ideas: After the bombshell cliff-hanger of the previous story, I was very surprised at the low key, intimate nature of the first 20 minutes of this story. There’s an aching sadness to admitting that you cannot have a child and it’s still there when the only option is to resort to a synthetic child, something that mimics the real thing but can never quite match up. The faintest contact with Five Twenty-Nine and you’re dead. What’s intriguing is that this is essentially an hour of set up, the end of the box set. River is heading off to see if she can stop it because she has already seen its effects.

Standout Scene: The moment when Rachel’s parents can see a way for her to survive the apocalypse, even if it means they have to die. That’s when you realise that it doesn’t matter that they she is synthetic; this is the love of parents. It’s massively touching.

Result: ‘Whatever it is, it’s starting…’ Astonishingly good, and the standard that these River Song stories should hold themselves to. Too many audios go for sound and fury, an action story told without pictures and not enough aim for this kind of intimate character drama, the sort that can affect you far more than a million Dalek soldiers invading ever could. I’ve always said when you strip back all the bluster and tell a truly economic story that the results are often unexpectedly powerful and Five Twenty-Nine is no exception. I love how subtly it begins with an apparently idyllic situation presented before slowly, quietly stripping away the smiles on the characters faces and revealing the horror of what is really going on. How the air of disquiet blew through the halls of this family home was very effectively achieved by the cast. Even when Doctor Who dared to show the end of the world through the eyes of a normal family (Spare Parts) it took place on its sister planet and there was a Cyberman presence to keep things escapist. This story plants River in the home of a nice, normal family and we never leave their side as the world falls to pieces around them all. Seeing the apocalypse from a domestic point of view is absolutely stifling. The entire cast is excellent but Kingston is particularly strong, delivering the sort of performance I would have loved to have seen on television had they dialled back all that self-assuredness. Every now and again Big Finish releases a story that transcends its range and standouts out as being especially affecting. John Dorney did it with Absent Friends before and he’s done it again here with Five Twenty-Nine. If proof was ever needed that a River Song series would be worthwhile, this story has single-handedly proven that it is. I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong: 9/10