The Violet Hour may have made mainstream news due to one scene, but the fifth episode of Big Finish’s Thirteenth Doctor Adventures is not one to shout about.
The scene in question, a ‘Thasmin’ kiss, is not only brief and inconsequential within the story but in the extended extras it is also downplayed.
It was written in not for emotional value, nor as a marker of the companionship between the Doctor and Yasmin Khan (played respectively by Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill), but to resolve a “life or death” moment for the unconscious Doctor. It’s not quite first aid in the traditional sense, but is delivered as such by Yaz.
The extended extras may actually be the best part of The Violet Hour, since they lift it from being a not particularly engaging story to one full of well thought-out creative and production decisions. The first of those is the setting: 1920s London. It is brought to life as a deliberate contrast to the jazz age aesthetic usually associated with the decade, with focus on the way technology, immigration, and grief were shaping the culture of the time. Combining the three led to a revival of ‘scientific’ spiritualism at the time, which is the entry point for the episode as a man tries to contact the dead.
Women were used as the mediums for attempted contact, and this is the first exploration of the patriarchal culture present at the time. While it’s a story about how men use women to handle their own grief, and the Doctor’s experience of another setting where she has less privilege than she is used to, the execution isn’t impactful and Jodie Whittaker’s performance varies.
When she does get to switch from being friendly to serious, including an instance of a threatening remark after melting someone’s shoes, it makes the Doctor’s presence feel more hitting and reminds the listener that this is supposed to be an episode set in her era. The plot, until the final, more science fiction-heavy act, could realistically go without any involvement from the two main characters. For fans wanting plenty of Thirteenth Doctor action, it’s not a great selling point.
By the time the story starts to explain the truth behind the mediums and the powers they possess, it’s easy to have already disengaged as a listener. But a change of location, of a kind, then adds a more engaging landscape and character to proceedings.
However, this means the majority of The Violet Hour, which broke past the usual audience for Big Finish releases thanks to its kiss scene, involves the Doctor and Yaz spending time engaging with the story’s one-off characters rather than each other. If not for that separation, though, sometimes it’s even difficult to decipher which side character is which.
When the scene in question does arrive, it’s easy to miss the kiss itself and then it’s followed by a comedic musical cue. There’s actually a lesbian subplot in The Violet Hour, but that too can be easy to miss until it’s spelled out to the listener before the final showdown between the Doctor and the story’s ‘monster of the week’.
This is when the story returns to its secondary location. The Doctor delivers exposition, and her opponent essentially does the same, but with some beautiful barbs against the Doctor and references to the ‘Tourist’ series arc.
It’s an upwards trajectory hereon, with Yaz keeping busy, the story’s main male character being explored properly, and the Doctor getting to be confrontational and menacing. But then she lets a bad man get his way through a woman suffering voluntarily. It’s a story that enables patriarchy probably a lot more than it intended to.
The final scene ties directly into the next episode, Aegis, being released in May, which will have an even greater focus on who the ‘Tourist’ is. At this point, more focus is really needed on the Thirteenth Doctor’s strengths as a character, particularly when the brief for writer Rafaella Marcus was literally just a ‘story featuring the Thirteenth Doctor’.
The Thirteenth Doctor Adventures: The Violet Hour is out now from Big Finish.
