#32 Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: The Invasion of E-Space

My Randomoid Selectortron departs Windcliff Asylum and transports me to...

Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: The Invasion of E-Space

Starring: Lalla Ward as Romana
Format: One CD (or download) of two half-CD narrated two-actor episodes.
Silly? No.
Standalone? Yes, although its continuity placement within the timeline of the TV series is relevant.
Recommended? No.

My reactions to this audio contain spoilers for it.

Before listening

I think I got this one when it was on sale, picking it out from among other possible options because it was directed by Lisa Bowerman. I have not listened to it. From the description on Big Finish's website, it's set in a narrow continuity window in the fourth Doctor's final season after Adric joins but before Romana leaves. It looks like it's probably a standard-format Companion Chronicle, with Lalla Ward narrating in the past tense as Romana and Suanne Braun providing one other voice.
On TV, E-Space was not explored in detail. It was hard to escape, had relatively few planets, and had a green background in space shots, but there wasn't really anything that made it meaningfully different from normal space. I understand that Big Finish has tried to flesh it out more, but I don't know whether this audio is part of that fleshing-out.
Lisa Bowerman directing Lalla Ward sounds like a pretty good combination, and after Clothes of Sand I feel good about listening to another narrator-driven audio. Writer Andrew Smith's other audio credits include The First Sontarans, which I quite liked, and a lot of ones that I haven't heard. I am looking forward to hearing The Invasion of E-Space.

After listening to episode 1 of 2

There's a slight deviation from the default Companion Chronicle format: Romana and the voiced guest character are both narrators. Romana is narrating in somewhat distant retrospect (but is still in E-Space); the guest character, a police officer from a planet in E-Space, is giving testimony about events. The two narrations are kept in chronological sync, and when Romana and the officer meet, the narration stops entirely to have straightforward dialogue between them instead. Within the first episode, I don't see much structural point to this device; the officer's experiences aren't telling us anything we couldn't have found out another way.
The story so far is very straightforward: E-Space is getting invaded by some aliens from Romana and the Doctor's home universe. The space military of the planet they're attacking captures the TARDIS to interrogate Romana and Adric (while the Doctor sleeps in the Zero Room), and the interrogation is interrupted by the attack. The attack is happening through a rare gateway between universes, which Romana and the Doctor want to use to return home.
The episode lacks a solid cliffhanger; everyone's in a reasonable amount of danger for a cliffhanger, but there's no twist. There's a general lack of twists in this episode, and if that continues then it's going to be a very bland Companion Chronicle.
I am hoping that the genericness of this episode is setup for something more unusual that uses the dual narrators in a significant way in the second episode, and I will listen on in that hope.

After listening to episode 2 of 2

The performances and direction are fine, but Andrew Smith's script just has no particular reason to exist. It tells us nothing new about the characters or setting, and the reflective moments that look more deeply at character traits we already know are few and not up to Big Finish's standards of depth.
The Doctor briefly makes it to his home universe and then goes back into E-Space to pick up Romana and Adric and drop off the guest star, but there's no indication the Doctor is at all tempted to do anything else and thus no bite to this decision.
There is possibly a bit of continuity-weaving; this story gives Romana a reason to have a rough idea about Block Transfer Computation while still in E-Space, which I could imagine is a slight patch to some perceived error in another story. However, this detail does not make The Invasion of E-Space any more interesting for itself, nor does it add a meaningful layer to any other Doctor Who content that I know of.
I do not recommend this Companion Chronicle; it goes through the trouble of returning to a very specific point in the TV show's history just to insert filler episodes.