Continuing the Sixth Doctor Adventures Expulsion boxset, the TARDIS trio’s adventures take them on a historical romp. Landing in the aftermath of the battle of Agincourt, the team find themselves thrust apart, caught between the whims of the Dauphin, his advisor and his mother, the Queen.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Agincourt, the Doctor and Turlough find themselves aligned with opposing factions. Turlough befriends Charles, the Dauphin of France, while the Doctor is tasked with healing his father, King Charles VII. But two powerful women are also in play: the Dauphin’s adviser Yolande, Duchess of Anjou, and his estranged mother, Isabeau of Bavaria.

Can the TARDIS crew keep both queens happy – and keep their own heads?

Big Finish Synopsis

For the second story in the Expulsion boxset, A Crucible of Queens presents a passable pure historical set in medieval France. Split apart at the outset, the adventure sees The Doctor, Peri and Turlough attempt the impossible by trying to fix a fractured French royal family. Balancing several allegiances on a knife’s edge, the story retains a good sense of pace. Switching between different locations and characters has its issues, but interrupting the drama isn’t one. Moreover, Myles has an overall strong grasp on the historical material at play and has used that understanding to dictate this audio’s direction. That being said, this historical quandary is filled with problems (and I’m not just talking about the Dauphin and the Queen’s irreconcilable differences).

As with many other two-part Classic Who audios, its short length has caused several glaring issues to rear their heads. The distinct lack of time has meant that character development and relationships have had to fall by the wayside, exacerbated in no uncertain terms by the switching between Paris and Chinon. Important characters to the story, such as Yolande of Aragon and the Duke of Burgandy, get little more than surface reading despite being instrumental in the Dauphin’s final, murderous act. More egregious, however, are the fleetingly short periods this story spends developing the relationship between Turlough and the Dauphin. Throughout the adventure, Turlough is meant to be this confidant for the young prince, tied to Turlough’s actions saving the prince at the start of the story. It’s the story’s centrepiece and emotional arc that should supposedly bring the runaround family drama together and teach Turlough a valuable lesson in the process. This centrepiece, however, never gets to have the necessary emotional gravitas to pull all the elements together. Switching between each of the other main characters means that the relationship between the two never quite feels like the focus, and we end up missing some of their important moments together. As a result, this lack of focus inevitably squanders the climax where Turlough’s adventure’s worth of advice still leads to a horrific outcome.

Other than its issues with how the story uses its time on characters, there are arguments to be made on the adventure’s focus more broadly. One of the episode’s main draws comes from the synopsis advertising a power struggle between two queens. While an interesting concept for a story, within this one it remains just that, a concept. Within its sixty minutes, these two characters never meet, and they never directly conspire against one another, so it is strange that this is the chosen focus. The story’s time would’ve been better spent in a more concentrated battle of dynamics between The Dauphin and Yolande and Burgundy. Through this story, it is made clear that Burgandy is the Dauphin’s enemy, and it is Burgandy who works behind the scenes creating different schemes and backstabbings. A story of wits between the three, then, would be a more appropriate choice for an adventure series like Doctor Who.