THE PLOT
The Doctor and Mel are in the middle of an unseen adventure, in which they are facing rampaging Quarks on a space liner. Quarks have a weakness: a type of crystal, found only on the planet Puxatornee. The plan is simple. Materialize on Puxatornee in the year 3090, grab some crystals, and head straight back to the space liner ot "quash the Quarks," as Mel puts it.
Things prove to be anything but simple. From the moment they arrive, the Doctor and Mel experience a bizarre feeling of deja vu. Local officials seem to already know them as enemies, and are determined to capture them for interrogation. At first, they assume they are suffering the consequences of what their actions will be on a later visit. But when they start encountering two versions of the same people, they come to realize that something far more confusing has happened, and that for Puxatornee history has jumped the tracks in more ways than one.
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Still in Season 24 mode, but more in command of himself than has been the case in any (chronologically) earlier 7th Doctor story. In this story, the Doctor does very little clowning, particularly when he realizes things are wrong with time. He clearly takes time very seriously, and refuses to simply allow changes in the timeline even when he sees how bleak the future is for Puxatornee.
It's ironic that both the Doctor and McCoy's performance are so "in-control," when the Doctor himself is as ineffectual as we've ever seen him. By the story's very nature, the Doctor can't actually do much of anything. From the moment he arrives on Puxatornee to the moment he leaves, he is simply reacting to events. His token attempts to stop Puxatornee natives Stewart and Reed from altering history don't come across as much more than a token, and he seems uncharacteristically disinterested in helping the populace to do anything to change their horrible situation in the present. Put it down to his mind being on the Quarks, I suppose.
Mel: In previous reviews, I've raved about how well Bonnie Langford's Mel works in her Big Finish stories. Langford is still very good here, and the 7th Doctor/Mel pairing works much better on audio than it did on television. One benefit of this story is that the Doctor and Mel are together for almost all of it, with no "splitting up" subplots to help pad the running time. Unfortunately, that leaves Mel in pure "tag-a-long" mode. She's there for the Doctor to bounce dialogue off of, and gets a few good lines of her own... but as little as the Doctor does in this story, Mel does less. Our intrepid time travellers are basically observers for the length of this story, rather than full participants.
Villains of the Week: Daniel Hogarth voices the Slithergee, a race of alien refugees who, 30 years prior to the main action of this story, came to Puxatornee humbly requesting permission to set up a colony on the planet's moon... or else. The Slithergee are the story's best creation. They mewl and whine and wheedle pathetically, intoning "I am a poor, blind Slithergee" as a catch phrase to play up their apparent helplessness, even as they take over more and more and more of Puxatornee. When the human population has been reduced to squalor, occupying only about 10% of the planet's surface and having no real future of their own save as "sight guides," the Slithergee continue to cling to being a minority. "Being a minority has nothing to do with how many of you there are," they insist. And yet they can also be quite sinister, as in the Slithergee leader's final (chronological) scene. "For I am a poor, blind Slithergee," is a bizarre line to hear when it's said sadistically, but the context of the scene, the delivery, and the way in which it ends make for one of the story's most memorable moments.
THOUGHTS
OK, so "The Planet of the Slithergees" is basically an extreme, hysterical right-wing vision of what will happen if you let the asylum seekers in/grant minorities rights/fill-in-the-blank as appropriate to your country. "They'll take over, and then we'll be the minority!" That element of the story probably is best taken as a satire of those views, rather than being meant to support them. Certainly, the Slithergee future comes across as an absurdist vision of hell, rather than a genuine pertinent warning.
Absurd enough that it's actually quite funny. The two Slithergee episodes are definitely the strongest material of the story. In the order in which I tend to choose for the play (White/Black), these two episodes form the centerpiece of the play, which I think works quite well, with the two episodes set in the "Apocalyptic" future acting as bookends.
Though quite funny, this may be the bleakest Doctor Who story I've ever encountered. What we are given in this story is a planet whose human population has no future. In the Slithergee future, humans are practically a slave race, subject to increasingly strict regulation and summary execution for "Hate Crimes" (read: saying anything bad about a Slithergee). In the Apocalyptic future, the planet is a radioactive wasteland whose dwindling populace is slowly dying. Every human we meet is equally doomed in either future. And thanks to the time loop the story presents, the planet itself never progresses beyond 3090, going back and repeating first one variant of the 30 years of hell, then the other, with no escape possible.
One thing that really struck me, listening to the story this time around, is that neither future can really be the "true" one for Puxatornee. Both futures are the result of time travel. President Bailey never gets the chance to give her answer to the Slithergee request. The Apocalyptic future results from the unprovoked attack launched on the Slithergee by Bailey's unstable deputy... which happens after Bailey is assassinated by people from the Slithergee future. With no interference from the future, it is entirely possible that Bailey could have refused the request, or proposed an alternative to the request, without a war.
Meanwhile, the Slithergee future results from Bailey having the Fear of God put into her by the Stewart and Reed from the Apocalyptic future. "Give the Slithergee what they want... or we have no future!" With no interference from the future, it is entirely possible that she might have acceded to the Slithergee's initial requests without lurching into terror-led appeasement, doing whatever she sees as necessary to avoid war, no matter what.
The two futures we see are two extremes - an extreme war begun by a madman's unprovoked attack vs. a slide toward slavery caused by extreme appeasement with no limit. In an interference-free reality, a center path may have been found that would have led to an acceptable future for Puxatornee. Which may bring home the Doctor's warnings to Stewart and Reed about the consequences of interfering with the past. Puxatornee's not only a planet with no future beyond 3090... They don't even have a true future beyond 3060, because those final 30 years of either path simply are not the future they should have had.
So there's no question that this story provides a lot of interesting meat for the viewer (well, listener) to digest. Clearly a lot of thought went into this script, and it's extremely well-constructed. Particularly when we see background bits of Parts One and Two brought to the foreground in Parts Three and Four. It's a very interesting story, and certainly worthy of good marks.
So why isn't it a great story?
Part of it is something I've already mentioned. The Doctor and Mel don't do much of anything. They are pure passengers, and they don't even attempt to do anything. The Doctor is the Doctor. In any of his incarnations, he should be trying to help the oppressed humans regain their equality, and he should be trying to help the dying humans survive the dwindling supplies and radiation. But he doesn't seem to be interested in doing anything, even to the point of dismissing Mel's suggestion of leaving some kind of warning for the alternative Doctor and Mel. Are the Quarks really as distracting as all that?
Also, by nature of the story, the story you're listening to climaxes at the end of Part Three. By either path, Part Four is simply a "reset" to the future you started with, existing to set up "the beginning" of your story. This leads to a limp final part. The listener is returned to their original future variant, with the remainder of the running time simply setting up what has already been heard. A certain degree of tedium is inevitable, particularly in the much-less-interesting "Apocalyptic" future.
Still, it's a thoughtful script, carefully constructed and with plenty of interesting elements worthy of discussion. The "loop" structure may blunt the serial's own dramatic potential, but it's a brave attempt and a mostly successful one. Well worth a listen or two, in any case.
Rating: 7/10.
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