Big Finish, Companion Chronicles
Ian, Barbara, Susan, and the Doctor end up on the Endeavour with Captain James Cook and crew. They believe that the Doctor and his companions are from Venus but the TARDIS, Barbara, and Susan are lost overboard for the majority of the trip. So Ian slowly gets more and more paranoid, thinking that the scientist Joseph Banks, on board for the expedition, is out to get him.
Though the story has some interesting twists, making Ian think he’s going mad is a bit of a cruel joke, though it was inadvertant. The trip is therefore lived through his perspective, making it difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t at times, though we do know that Ian’s perspective is suspect from when Barbara, Susan, and the TARDIS are thrown off of the ship. It does explore the connection Ian feels to Barbara a bit more, though not nearly so clearly as in The Rocket Men story. It’s very good but I just didn’t love the interactions of the crew and Ian and the Doctor. The Doctor really seems helpless willfully ignorant of Ian’s mindset until it’s always too late. Perhaps it’s just how he cannot relate to humans as well in his first “incarnation.”
William Russell (Ian Chesterton) and Ian Hallard (Joseph Banks)
Writer: Jacqueline Rayner
Director: Nigel Fairs
Release: January 2009