17. Sword of Orion.

4 episodes. Approx. 123 minutes. Written by: Nicholas Briggs. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery.

THE PLOT

The Doctor brings Charley to the Garazone System, home to a bazaar where one can find almost anything - hopefully including a cure for Ramsay, the vortisaur who rescued them from the crash of the R101. Ramsay has fallen ill due to separation from the Time Vortex, and now is too weak to be returned to his "natural habitat." But while he and Charley browse the bazaar, the TARDIS is loaded onto the scrap ship Vanguard, leaving the time travelers with no choice but to stow away before the ship takes off.

The Vanguard is under the command of a new captain, Deeva Jansen (Michelle Livingstone) - A woman who does not appear to belong among these mercenary salvagers. Deeva is possessed of a military efficiency, and delivers orders with the certainty of someone used to being obeyed without question. She plots a very specific course, one that brings the Vanguard directly to a derelict star destroyer, a find that other scrap ships have left alone because it's too big to salvage.

She orders her crew to spacewalk over to the derelict. The ship initially appears empty, its systems heavily damaged by an ion storm. But they all too soon discover its inhabitants: Cybermen. They rode out the storm in a state of hibernation. Now that the storm has passed, they are starting to awaken, with only one purpose in their cybernetic minds:

Conversion!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: As the synopsis above shows, the Doctor doesn't really have a very proactive role in this story. Once he and Charley are aboard the Vanguard, their main goal for the rest of the story is simply to reach the TARDIS and escape. Once it becomes clear that the derelict star destroyer is a Cyber-ship, the Doctor does use his ingenuity to try to keep the salvage crew alive... but the person truly driving the action in the Cyber plot is Deeva, with the main complications provided by the ruthless Grash (Bruce Montague), leaving the Doctor largely reacting to events as they unfold. Paul McGann remains as game here as he was in Storm Warning, however, which helps to make the Doctor's role feel more central than it truly is.

Charley: India Fisher remains an engaging co-star, showing a strong interplay with Paul McGann and giving a lot of emotion and expression in her line deliveries. Charley herself gets less to do in this story, however, largely filling generic companion functions. She's held hostage by the salvage crew while the Doctor and Deeva explore the Cyber-ship. Once reunited with the Doctor, she tags along with him, following his lead. The script also gives her a few too many smug quips, particularly in the first half, undercutting the character's inherent likability a bit.

Cybermen: This story presents the Cybermen in a weakened state. Their ship and systems have been crippled by an ion storm, and they are only able to awaken from hibernation one Cyberman at a time. This allows for a slow burn in the story's first half. A "rogue Cyberman," deranged due to storm damage, kills a crew member at the end of Part One, before being killed in turn. A Cybermat smuggles itself aboard the Vanguard, sabotaging the scrap ship and making it impossible for the humans to simply escape. But this also makes it impossible for the Cybermen to escape. With their ship's shields already destroyed, the next ion storm will eradicate them. Even so, they carry on with their directive, working to capture and convert the Vanguard crew, even when all that will accomplish is giving them a handful of additional Cybermen to be destroyed when the storm hits.

THOUGHTS

Sword of Orion is an example of what I tend to call "Saward Who." Like (too) many stories from Eric Saward's tenure as script editor, the story's guest cast is stuffed with unpleasant mercenary characters who spend at least as much time menacing the Doctor as working with him. There is a sense of nihilism throughout, and as the body count rises in the final episodes, it ultimately leaves events feeling less tragic than pointless.

The story's characters are a grim lot. Grash is a borderline psychopath; the crew members are alternately selfish, cowardly, and stupid; Deeva, whom we are encouraged to find sympathetic, is cold and hides an agenda that would have far-reaching and devastating consequences. But the story is well-made and well-paced, and somehow the characters manage to work within the framework they're given.

Part of this rests in Nicholas Briggs finding moments to give to each of them. Grash may be a murderous criminal, but it's clear that he's genuinely appalled and angry at the death of one of his men. The final episode of the story gives him a moment that's pitiable even as it's a moment of triumph, as he reponds to Cyber-conversion by spitting out increasingly insane threats. His mind is apparently broken, but he wins his battle of will, as the Cybermen dub him "unsuitable for conversion." And though we have no reason to particularly care about Ike, Chev, or Vol, the scenes in which they're in jeopardy are individually gripping. That's in addition to Deeva's final (somewhat cliched) act of personal heroism. The characters are dingy and sleazy people in a dingy and sleazy world, but there's just enough human dignity in them to make this work on a level other than that of a well-produced slasher flick.

It is particularly well-produced, even by Big Finish's generally reliable standards. The doors of the scrap ship squeal, speaking to the lax maintenance. On the Cyber-ship, footsteps echo with a wonderfully ominous quality, and spooky, shadow-filled visuals are conjured in the mind. Gone is the labored visual exposition that marred the otherwise very good Storm Warning - A mix of subtle dialogue cues and sound effects are trusted to create the pictures. Writer/director Nicholas Briggs also composes the incidental score, a very mechanical one well-suited to the Cybermen, and highly effective in evoking the dark, ominous atmosphere.

But that bitter "Saward Who" aftertaste lingers, keeping me from fully embracing this story despite having been engrossed in it while listening. A little too much like stories from the Saward era, the Doctor's role feels a bit too perfunctory. He and Charley are present for events, but they aren't very proactive. The Doctor is largely just present. Briggs' script allows him a few moments of cleverness, most notably the bit in Episode Three in which he sabotages the airlock to thwart the Cybermen's attempted invasion of the Vanguard. But he doesn't really drive the action, he just reacts to it. The main guest character, Deeva, ends up doing a lot more to drive the plot than the Doctor does.

The story is well-made and it provides an engrossing two-hour diversion. But the unpleasant characters, the Doctor's weak role, and the overall sense of futility keep this from being anything more than average in my view.

Overall Rating: 6/10.

Previous Story: Storm Warning
Next Story: The Stones of Venice


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