Doctor Who Audio Review: Jo Goes Back To The Vortex

The Return of Jo Jones is a Doctor Who collection of audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. Nicholas Briggs returns to the director’s seat for this trilogy of episodes starring Tim Treloar and Katy Manning. Treloar has been standing in for the late Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor for the past few years and continues to improve in his impression or performance. Katy Manning returns as a much older Jo Grant, who is now known as Jo Jones. Jo has been married and now widowed, but she does have a sizeable collection of descendants. She is reunited with the incarnation of the Doctor who is the most familiar to her. Guest stars in this series include Tom Alexander, Samuel Clemens, Poppy Miller, David O’Mahoney, and Corrine Wicks.

Matt Fitton gets the privilege of reuniting this TARDIS team with Supernature. On the Isle of Wight, the birds have mysteriously gotten more aggressive, and Jo Jones joins an old friend to help out with the investigation when a familiar stranger with a velvet jacket and frilly shirt appears to conduct his own assessment of the situation. This introductory story is pretty good. The best parts are the emotional moments between the Doctor and Jo. From the Doctor’s perspective, he has only parted ways with Jo pretty recently, where for her, it has been many decades. It’s a pretty good start. Birds and wildlife behaving strangely just seems like something that has been overused, but the performances of the leads are strong enough to forgive Fitton’s rather humdrum plot. He does capture the dynamic between the Doctor and Jo quite well, even though Jo has quite a bit more seasoning in this set.

The Conservitors is written by Felicia Barker and is rather more interesting. The Doctor and Jo arrive in the far future on a planet that has laws enforced by robots known as Conservitors. A rebellion against a tyrant is brewing, and the TARDIS team are in familiar territory, but no less dangerous territory. There is an interesting family dynamic among some of the supporting characters. Jo rediscovers the thrill of traveling to another planet, and her enthusiasm even at a much older age seems rather infectious and wonderfully performed by Manning. There is nothing terrible earth-shattering about the plot, but Barker presents a pretty entertaining story and exhibits a fair amount of competent world building in a pretty short story. The Doctor being inhibited by nanobots or something that is designed to keep him out of danger is rather amusing. I like that Barker made sure that the Doctor provided the solution to his own problem by the end.

Finally, it is Lizzie Hopley who closes out this collection with The Iron Shore. Manning gets to revive her narration skills as this story starts with the Doctor’s apparent death. The Doctor and Jo arrive on the planet known as Mercator where they encounter a man who is seen as cursed and an ancient creature in the depths of the ocean. It took me a bit to follow the plot as well, however I found myself getting drawn into the suspense.

Writing for a franchise as vast as Doctor Who makes it hard to capture that sense of having a classic moment, but the stories are all well written here. Even though the first story isn’t quite my favorite, Fitton is still a talented writer and has contributed a great deal to the Big Finish catalog over the years. Treloar has been getting better as he tries to capture the essence of Jon Pertwee’s performance. Katy Manning is still showing remarkable talent as she ages. I understand that she has to pitch her voice higher than usual when portraying younger Jo. At first, I was not exactly enamored with the idea of an older Jo gallivanting around time and space with the Doctor, but I found this to be more enjoyable than expected, and it appears this era may go on for a bit in the Third Doctor series.