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You know what? This is the one. The first Big Finish where I didn’t feel like I was sitting through a politely narrated museum tour while someone quietly died in the background. “The Marian Conspiracy” is where the Sixth Doctor finally steps out of his technicolour midlife crisis and into a story that lets him be sharp, vulnerable, and—shock horror—not completely insufferable. And the reason? Evelyn Bloody Smythe. I would commit several mild crimes for this woman.
Evelyn is what happens when Big Finish says, “What if we gave the Doctor a companion who has absolutely no time for his theatrical nonsense and will happily talk over him while holding a biscuit?” She’s a sarcastic, cardigan-wielding history professor who gets dragged into a time crisis by the Doctor, tells him off mid-abduction, and still agrees to help because she’s powered by pure academic spite. My people. My queen.
The first twenty minutes are basically the two of them having a verbal cage match in a university hallway, and I adored every passive-aggressive syllable. It’s not “bickering” in the Peri sense (aka verbal domestic violence on a sugar crash); it’s like two brilliant, emotionally stunted people trying to out-snark each other over tea. The Doctor lives for it. He’s practically purring by the ten-minute mark.
The plot’s main gimmick is that Evelyn’s ancestors are being erased from the timeline because someone decided Tudor England needed a spot of revisionist editing. So Evelyn is a sort of paradox character—a living anomaly held together by caffeine and academic resolve. It’s a pre-Charley Pollard take on the concept: someone who shouldn’t exist but does, with all the emotional weirdness that entails. It’s handled with surprising elegance, and while the show wouldn’t fully dig into this kind of paradoxical companion until years later, you can see the blueprint forming here.
Thematically, this one’s a big ‘un: it’s about truth vs. dogma. The ways in which people twist history—erase parts, burn others—to justify their ideologies. Everyone in this play is convinced they’re doing the right thing, which makes them so much more terrifying. Queen Mary thinks she’s saving England’s soul; her enemies think they’re fighting tyranny. And Evelyn? She’s stuck watching the mess her textbooks never fully admitted to.
The real meat of the story is a moral one: Queen Mary’s reign, the religious purges, the impossibility of being “nice” during historical atrocities. The Doctor gets a few decent scenes where he tries to talk Mary out of burning people like they’re old receipts, but it never quite hits the moral depth of later McCoy stories. Still, you see the Doctor trying to reach someone doomed by history, and there’s something noble in that. Like yelling at a train not to be late.
The rest of the cast are… present. No one’s terrible, but they’re mostly there to say “Your Grace!” and then get quietly executed. The real joy is in the Evelyn/Doctor dynamic. She’s not dazzled by time travel or cowed by history; she’s got her own opinions, a stubborn streak a mile wide, and a secret softness for the Doctor’s battered soul. It works. It really, really works.
Final Verdict:
This is the moment Big Finish hit the “on” switch. Evelyn’s intro is an absolute delight, the Sixth Doctor is given space to breathe for once, and the plot doesn’t need aliens to create tension—it just points at history and goes, “Yikes.” It’s not flawless, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it.
4 out of 5 historically significant hot chocolates.