#44 Doctor Who: 1001 Nights

My Randomoid Selectortron flits across possibilities and arrives at the certainty of...

Doctor Who: 1001 Nights

Starring: Peter Davison as the Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa
Format: Two full-cast CDs (or download) of four half-CD episodes
Silly? Varyingly, as 1001 Nights is partially an anthology of shorter stories varying in tone. 
Standalone? Yes.
Recommended? Yes. The third short story is weak, but it still manages to contribute to the overall whole.

My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it.

Before listening

I've heard this once before. I remember it being partially an anthology story, with what I think were the first three episodes spent mostly on stories being told and the last episode spent entirely on resolving the frame tale that was running through the first three episodes. I think I remember the stories being pretty arbitrary and not meshing with the themes of the frame tale in any useful way, other than establishing to the villain what kinds of meddling the Doctor was capable of. There are multiple writers credited, leading me to presume that the frame tale was hung around independently-written stories rather than the stories written to serve the frame.
I don't remember actively disliking 1001 Nights, but I don't remember thinking of it as exceptionally good one either. There might have been a sense of wasted opportunity.
Coming right after Auld Mortality, a Doctor Who audio about storytelling that takes that concept to great heights, I expect 1001 Nights to be a letdown. On the other hand, with different writers involved there might at least be one episode I do especially like.

After listening to parts 1 and 2 of 4

There is quite a bit of frame tale here. A villainous sultan, aware of the Scheherazade story, is having Nyssa tell stories about her adventures with the Doctor. Unbeknownst to Nyssa, the Doctor is well into the process of escaping from the palace dungeon and freeing another prisoner from alien technology. Episode cliffhangers are set in the frame tale. We do not hear the entirety of every story Nyssa tells, but in each of the first two episodes we hear one. They are not as disconnected from the themes of the frame tale as my vague memories led me to expect: both involve imprisonment, deception, and secret identities. I already remember a twist about the sultan's behavior, and the stories seem to be leading into that twist to some degree, although I'd have sequenced them differently if that were their main purpose.
The first story feels like it could have started as an attempt to make an abridged minimal-cast version of The Holy Terror. It does a decent job of it, and it makes sense as a story Nyssa would be choosing to tell in the particular situation.
The second story dips into the common Big Finish Doctor Who device of having the Doctor insist that a supernatural thing is actually scientific, then proceeding by the rules of the traditional supernatural entity, in this case using an exorcism against a virus that has taken over Nyssa's body. The Doctor claims to not even be sure of why it worked, having gotten the ritual from an alien race. Its role in the anthology seems odd, since Nyssa was unconscious for key events she is telling, but it is amusing.
The Doctor's side of the frame tale is interesting enough that it could exist independently of Nyssa's storytelling. It's in the vein of The King's Demons, with an alien element twisting the reign of a historical monarch, and the personality of the fifth Doctor is used well in it.
I am enjoying this release, and for personal reasons I plan on listening to more audio than usual over the next few days, so I am going to finish the whole thing today and maybe even go on to another one. I've had a daily listening cap in order to ensure that I'd be approaching each story separately with a clear head, but my priorities have shifted since that decision. For at least the next few days, I am going to allow myself to binge-listen when I feel that I am in a reasonable state to do so.

After listening to part 3 of 4

The third story takes place on a planet in which the trading of stories for merchandise is a routine economic transaction and plagiarism is a profitable enough crime that there is human trafficking in storytellers. There is certainly more connection to the anthology themes than I was expecting. I found this one weak, mostly because it sets up expectations of something more fleshed-out than it ends up being. It is relatively authoritarian in contrast with the rest of the anthology; the Doctor talks a law enforcement agent out of just shooting the villain, but the story is otherwise on the agent's side, and there is no investigation of how this planet got so weird or whether it's good or bad that it is that way.
Meanwhile in the frame tale, the Doctor has discovered what the story's villain is and why they are interested in Nyssa's stories.
In the frame tale and in the individual stories, 1001 Nights relies heavily on the idea that the Doctor already knows about many aliens and their histories; as soon he figures out the villain is a particular kind of alien, he already knows what needs to be done to defeat it. I'm not sure if the final episode will carry this through to the main villain unquestioned or whether this recurring concept is leading into a twist; I hope it does get subverted in some way, and I am proceeding to the final episode in the hope that something will happen in it other than the seemingly inevitable playing-out of the pattern that has been established.

After listening to part 4 of 4

This episode concludes the frame tale with no fourth short story. There is some subversion of the pattern the stories had set up: while it's inferrable that the stories Nyssa told included the destruction of Traken, the stories actually heard in this anthology are stories in which the Doctor managed to save everyone once he arrived, with the only deaths happening before he got there. In this episode, not everyone is saved, and there is a very affecting death speech. The Doctor is perhaps too mild in his response, but it is within the range of established behaviors for the fifth Doctor in particular.
The final resolution plays a card that Doctor Who works in various media occasionally play: some psychic things just don't work on Time Lords the same way they don't work on other people, and the Doctor's memories and experiences are unusual even for a Time Lord. It's a passive way for the Doctor to win, but it plays out in a way that gives Nyssa and the villain good scenes together and feels generally like a satisfying conclusion to the overall story.
As it turns out, I liked 1001 Nights. Two out of three short stories were worthwhile and the ways that all three stories linked to the frame tale made for an overall cohesive experience.