153. The Silver Turk.

4 episodes. Approx. 126 minutes. Written by: Marc Platt. Directed by: Barnaby Edwards. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

Having convinced Mary Shelley (Julie Cox) to accompany him in the TARDIS, the Doctor decided to take her for a quick hop to Vienna. He hopes to reunite with friends, but the TARDIS slips forward in time, bringing him and Mary to 1873. This is the year of the Vienna World Exposition, and the Doctor is all too happy to show it off to Mary. 

It becomes quickly apparent, though, that all is not well in this city. There has been a series of mysterious deaths, men whose bodies were found eyeless after savage attacks. All the victims had invested in Alfred Stahlbaum (Christian Brassington)'s creation, The Silver Turk. When the Doctor investigates, he discovers that the Turk is no man-made automaton. It is a Cyberman - crippled, but still dangerous. And it is not alone!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The instant he realizes that the Turk is a damaged Cyberman, he becomes intently focused on one goal: destroying it. He knows that even a crippled Cyberman is a killer-in-waiting, and recognizes the threat that the Cyber technology poses in this time and place where it simply doesn't belong.  The Doctor's most formidable trait remains his intelligence.  It's armed with nothing more than his wits that he defeats the surviving Cyberman at the end, confusing it with a peculiar blend of flippancy and philosophy.

Mary: It's worth remembering that The Company of Friends: Mary's Story had been released years before this title. This means that The Silver Turk doubles both as a first trip in the TARDIS for her and as a re-introduction to her for the audience. In this, the story is highly successful. It evokes Mary's Story at many points, with Mary's protectiveness of the deteriorated Cybermen recalling her empathy for the "monster" Doctor in that story - only this time, of course, she ultimately finds that the monsters actually are monsters.

Mary doesn't fully trust the Doctor yet, and her realization that she has just run off with a man she barely knows recalls a similar scene for 9th Doctor companion Rose Tyler in The End of the World. She also reacts to the walking monstrosities of the villainous Drossel (Gareth Armstrong) with genuine terror, actually abandoning the Doctor at one point and fleeing for her life. Moments like this make her believably human, and Julie Cox's acting ability is up to the task of keeping her sympathetic even when showing weakness.

Cybermen: Though a Tenth Planet Cyberman is prominently pictured on the CD cover, this really isn't a Cyber story. The Cybermen are as much victims as villains, one reduced to slavery by Drossel and the other shown off as a curio by Stahlbaum. Even when the surviving Cyberman reveals his agenda at the end, he doesn't come across a strong threat due to his poor condition. They are effective at evoking the Frankenstein story, however, and supplement the tale here very effectively.


THOUGHTS

The Silver Turk is one of those releases where everything comes together to create a splendid entertainment. Marc Platt's script manages to be literate while at the same time remaining accessible and fast-paced. Barnaby Edwards' direction is atmsopheric, but not so heavy-handed as to smother the sense of spontaneity, of events happening as we listen to them. 

Almost all of Platt's audios are very visual. His use of dialogue, theme, and setting tends to make it easy to summon pictures in your mind. The Silver Turk features some wonderfully creepy images. The badly-damaged Cybermen are memorable enough, one with one arm and dressed up as a Turk, the other with no legs but three arms it uses to propel itself (referred to by Drossel as "Dog"). Even more chilling is Drossel's army of walking, talking, murdering marionettes. The addition of human eyes, some of them plucked from the sockets of living victims, is a ghoulishly inspired detail.

The tone is set right from the start. A young mother (Claire Wyatt) sings a lullaby to her baby, the soundscape making sure to linger on the disturbing nature of the lyrics even as we dissolve to a man running for his life. The man believes himself safe when finds a taxi, but then has an eerie and odd interaction with the driver - eventually revealed to be Drossel. As Drossel's "dog" claims the hapless victim, we return to the lullaby, allowing the moment to sink in before the Doctor arrives and begins the story proper.

The production lends plenty of atmosphere, from use of echoes to the way one scene sometimes will dissolve over the start of the next, to the sounds of a storm. There's a chase between two horse-drawn taxis, a tricky thing to pull off on audio, which is edited with precision into a genuinely exciting sequence. 

The performances of the leads are splendid, the actors making the most of Platt's dialogue. Paul McGann is at his most energetic, moving easily from whimsical to grimly focused and back again. He and Julie Cox get a lot more time to play off each other here than in Mary's Story, and their partnership is off to an engaging start. Finally, Gareth Armstrong's Drossel manages to be imposing even as he indulges in just the right amount of ham to show that this villain is also a performer, one who loves an audience. Supporting performances are more variable, but there are no obvious "weak links" to disrupt the flow.

Well-acted, and scripted and produced with an eye toward unsettling atmosphere, The Silver Turk is a delight. Highly recommended. 


Rating: 9/10.

Previous Story: The Company of Friends: Mary's Story
Next Story: The Witch from the Well


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123-d. The Company of Friends: Mary's Story.

1 episode. Approx. 31 minutes. Written by: Jonathan Morris. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Nicholas Briggs.


THE PLOT

Switzerland, 1816. At a villa rented by Lord Byron, the famous poet is spending time with Mary Shelley (Julie Cox), her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, and Byron's doctor John Polidori. After reading from a collection of horror stories, Byron suggests that each member of the company prepare a ghost story for the following day, as a sort of contest. 

This friendly competition is interrupted, however, by the arrival of a badly wounded stranger: A man so burned that Polidori pronounces that he has never seen such injuries on anyone living. The man gasps out that he is a doctor, followed by another word as he recognizes his current company:

"Frankenstein!"


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Paul McGann gets to play multiple variants of his Doctor. We see the self-assured Doctor of the last part of The TV Movie, a man with seemingly no care in the world. We also see an embittered Doctor, a man who has lost much and perhaps everything. Then there is the burned and badly-injured Doctor who slips in and out of coherence. Finally, there is the monster - a Doctor so wounded and mutated that he becomes violent, out-of-control, more animal than man. Given the chance to show so much variety within the story's scant thirty minutes, McGann throws himself into it with relish.

Mary: The title of the story is Mary's Story, and the narrative is seen entirely through her eyes. Julie Cox is very good as Mary, depicted as having run off with the much older Percy at the promise of adventures that never came. The young woman is already jaded by the reality of a man who "does not believe in fidelity" and who is prone to mania under the influence of laudanum. Writer Jonathan Morris is very conscious of this as a companion introduction story, even if this companion also happens to be a historical figure. His script makes sure to highlight the traits needed in an engaging companion, showcasing Mary as strong-willed, compassionate, and observant. Further depth will likely be added by the full-length stories to come, but Cox's performance and Morris' script already have her feeling like a full character even in this short piece.


THOUGHTS

The best of the one-episode stories featured in The Company of Friends, and the only of these four stories that Big Finish has to date seen fit to follow up. Mary's Story is far from the first work to explore the summer that spawned The Vampyre and Frankenstein. Like Ken Russell's muddled film Gothic, this episode plays with the idea of genuinely fantastical events inspiring the supernatural tales.

Bits of Frankenstein can be spotted throughout the piece. Percy Shelley's mania as he cries, "He's aliiive!" is an obvious echo of the Boris Karloff movie, as are references to fire and torch-wielding villagers. There's even a line that winks at the confusion caused by the later film series, wherein "Frankenstein" became the monster instead of the scientist.

All of this is amusing, though the "monster" scenes tend to be the most jumbled of the episode. Still, the real interest here is in the glimpses of the different variants of the Doctor. This is effectively a multi-Doctor story, showing the Eighth Doctor at two distinct points in his life. The early Eighth Doctor, still innocent and hungry for adventure, contrasts with the bitter, late-in-his-life Eighth Doctor, a man who has traveled with so many companions and ended up alone at the end of it. 

Despite a few rushed moments that were probably inevitable in a single-episode story, Mary's Story is a good one. An introduction to a character worth following, and a glimpse of the Eighth Doctor's full journey at both its start and its end. It's clever and fun, and I look forward to seeing where the Doctor/Mary partnership goes from here.


Rating: 8/10.

Next Story: The Silver Turk

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123-b. The Company of Friends: Fitz's Story

1 episode. Approx. 30 minutes. Written by: Stephen Cole. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs.


THE PLOT

The Doctor is on television (well, its sci fi equivalent), giving his personal endorsement to Alien Defence Incorporated, a private security outfit designed to battle an Earth-like planet's frequent extraterrestrial invasions. This endorsement comes as something of a surprise to the Doctor, who has certainly never recorded TV adverts for private security companies.

So the Doctor and his companion, Fitz (Matt Di Angelo) decide to pay a visit to ADI's offices. The Doctor breaks into the offices at night, determined to find out if the company is what it appears to be, or if it's hiding some other agenda. Meanwhile, Fitz prepares to enact the Doctor's backup plan, to insure against anything going wrong.

Naturally, everything ends up going wrong.


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: He is quite happy to make an appointment to talk to Commander Femor... but only after first breaking into her offices in order to determine whether or not her answers will be the truth. He continues to think quickly, and his rapid realization that the situation has changed when he and Femor end up facing a deadly alien helps to save both their lives (and Fitz's). By his 8th incarnation, he has learned to come up with a "Plan B" before blithely charging in, which is an improvement - even he hasn't quite learned how to make "Plan B" run entirely smoothly when it's needed. McGann gives a spirited performance, seeming to enjoy his co-stars and the light-hearted nature of the material.

Fitz Kreiner: Matt Di Angelo makes his debut as Fitz. The 8th Doctor's longest-running companion, Fitz ran through more than half of the BBC EDA range, gaining a fervent following among readers. To date, this is his only audio adventure, though hopefully the positive reaction to this release will inspire Big Finish to bring the character back. Di Angelo is quite good in the role, playing Fitz's sarcastic side and his cheeky (and slightly cheesy) bravado to good, humorous effect. Di Angelo has good comic timing, which is a great asset to a primarily comic story. This paper-thin story doesn't give much chance to go beyond Fitz's surface, but there is at least the sense that there is more to the character than just what is on the surface.


THOUGHTS

Fitz's Story works pretty well as far as it goes, because it does maintain an appealing light touch. Unlike the same release's Benny's Story, there's no sense of anyone trying to overreach. Writer Stephen Cole has crafted a small-scale story that's perfect for a single episode's running time. The results are consistently entertaining and energetic. The whole thing is over almost before you know it, and I found it a fine way to make one day's commute from work go by quickly.

Mind you, like pretty much all the other single-episode stories I have reviewed to date, it's as insubstantial as a spider's silk web. There's nothing here to linger in the memory. There's no sense of jeopardy, but the fast pace and strong energy keep that from mattering.

Mainly, the story works because Paul McGann and Matt Di Angelo play extremely well opposite each other, as do McGann and guest star Fenella Woolgar. The 8th Doc/Fitz partnership is an engaging one, and it's not hard to see why Fitz came to dominate the BBC Books range to such an extent. I would actually quite like to see a full-length story featuring Fitz.

In the meantime, while this teaser doesn't compel me to go out and order a bunch of BBC books, it's a fun piece, produced to Big Finish's usual polished standards.


Rating: 6/10.

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123-a. The Company of Friends: Benny's Story.

1 episode. Approx. 35 minutes. Written by: Lance Parkin. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs.  Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

Many years after the end of her association with the Doctor, archaeologist Bernice Summerfield is participating in a dig inside the coal mines of a dead planet. It's a freelance job for which she is being very well-paid, in exchange for "not asking any questions." She is shocked when she quickly finds the object of her employer’s efforts: a TARDIS key. She is even more startled when her employer uses that key to summon the TARDIS in question – the TARDIS belonging to the Doctor!

Soon, Benny finds herself running with the Doctor from deadly security robots, through frozen coal mines and across time zones into a jungle filled with treacherous cliffs and ravenous green lions. With "her" Doctor - the 7th Doctor - she could have at least been secure in the knowledge that the Doctor had some masterplan. But this new Doctor has no more idea than she does what is going on, and no kind of plan at all!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Paul McGann seems to be having a terrific time, infusing his performance with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. As in The TV Movie, he can shift from wild enthusiasm to deadly serious very quickly.  He handles the Doctor's genuine anger at the climax quite well (far better, I'd say, than his immediate predecessor could have done). This story sees him travelling alone, and he reacts with delight at running into an old friend, eager at the thought of travelling with her again.

Bernice Summerfield: Lisa Bowerman has played Bernice for a long time now, both in a handful of Who audios and in her own long-running audio range.  She is likely at the point at which she could play Benny in her sleep. It's to her credit that she does not in any way phone in her performance. The story is very much told from her point-of-view, and as such it is up to her to carry the story. She does so with energy and good humor, and she plays so well opposite McGann that I find myself wanting to hear a full-length release with these two.


THOUGHTS

In the past few years, it has become standard for Big Finish to produce one "anthology" release per year, varying these among their Doctors. 2009 was the 8th Doctor's turn for such a release: The Company of Friends, in which the gimmick was to pair 8th Doctor Paul McGann with companions from the various 8th Doctor ranges: Virgin NA's, BBC EDA's, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. Benny's Story, the first of the four stories, sees the 8th Doctor reunited with the New Adventures' Professor Bernice "Benny" Summerfield.

When I first listened to it, I found this the weakest of the four stories, and I suspect that opinion will hold. That's not to say Benny's Story is bad. It's an amusing trifle, with a great deal of pace and energy and spirited performances by the two leads. But it is very much a trifle, a quick runaround.

The villain is weak, and the scenes in which she tries to take over the TARDIS simply occupy too much of the story's brief running time. I wanted to hear more of the Doctor and Benny, and a lot less of the supremely uninteresting Countess Venhella (Su Douglas), whose only good scene comes when the Doctor confronts her at the end. The plot being just a thin clothesline for interaction between McGann and Bowerman is fine - but if that's the case, then surely we should get as much 8th Doc/Benny as possible?

It's amusing, and worth a listen. But it's too lightweight to be fully satisfying as a story, and too overplotted to be fully satisfying as a character comedy. An OK bit of filler, but nothing more than that.


Rating: 5/10.

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44. Creatures of Beauty.

4 episodes. Approx. 109 minutes. Written by: Nicholas Briggs. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery. 


THE PLOT

The planet Veln has been devastated by an accident that wasn't even their doing. The explosion of a Koteem ship, which was illegally transporting dyestrial waste across the Veln system, has left their world devastated.  The radiation has horribly disfigured the population, and the Veln race is now mere generations away from extinction.

When the TARDIS materializes on Veln for self-repairs, the Doctor and Nyssa find themselves thrust into the aftermath. Nyssa is picked up by security forces, who suspect her of being a Koteem infiltrator. Meanwhile, private security man Quain (Nigel Hastings) brings the Doctor to his employer, Lady Forleon (Jemma Churchill). Forleon has a plan to save at least some of the Veln people - but her methods have put her squarely in the sights of Veln Security Chief Gilbrook (Dvaid Daker), a brutal man who despises privileged "beauties" like Forleon and has dedicated his life to purging Koteem influences by the most violent means possible!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Spends this story in a particularly philosophical mood. The first episode opens with a scene in which he and Nyssa, while escaping from the security forces, talk about all they have experienced on this planet. The Doctor muses about how both groups - Gilbrook's security forces and Lady Forleon's underground group - have points of view that are entirely valid to them. Witnessing the mess that Veln has become, he determines to just get himself and Nyssa out in one piece, and otherwise not interfere. Peter Davison is on splendid form. The Doctor is largely powerless in this story, but he never acts it. He works out the basic purpose of Lady Forleon's surgical equipment at a glance, insists that he will rescue Nyssa alone if she and Quain won't help him, and faces down the Koteem with poise.

Nyssa: Refuses to be intimidated during her interrogation. When Brodlik (David Mallinson) repeats the official line that she was violent when arrested, Nyssa firmly points out that the only violence came from the arresting officers. Her defiance gradually catches Brodlik's attention, shaking his certainty of her being a Koteem. She's arrested in the first place because of her compassion - She isn't able to stand by and watch Veline (Emma Manton)'s distress without trying to help.

Gilbrook: There are several strong guest characters and performances in this story, but the strongest presence by far is Security Chief Gilbrook (David Daker). He's a monstrous figure, defined by his brutal resentment of the Koteem. But Daker is such a strong presence that he isn't merely monstrous. There's nothing sympathetic or likable about the man, who spits out "beauty" as an insult (every time he does, I can literally picture the saliva flying). Still, there's a purity to his rage which makes him impossible to dismiss. He also gets one of the story's most memorable reflective moments, remembering his great-grandfather witnessing the original disaster and calling it "beautiful" - bringing full circle a refrain of the word "beautiful" that has bridged many moments in the piece.


THOUGHTS

"Sometimes, if you stare at a painting for too long and get too close to it, all you can see are the brushstrokes. The harder you stare, the more formless and meaningless it seems to become." 

This quote of the Doctor's could apply as well to the storytelling structure of Creatures of Beauty as it does to the situation with the Veln and the Koteem within the story. Creatures of Beauty is told non-consecutively, starting around the middle of the story and moving both backward and forward from that point until we finally step back far enough to see the complete picture.

Each episode focuses on a certain piece of the overall situation, getting in close to focus on specific brushstrokes. At the same time, each episode shows a little more of the overall picture. Each part begins with events preceding anything from the previous episodes, and each part ends with events following everything from the previous episodes. In between, we move in close again to focus on another brushstroke.

Part One focuses on Gilbrook, Brodlick, and the security forces. This focus not only gives us the "official" view of the Veln reacting to damage done by the Koteem - It also doubles as a way to ease us into the narrative style. A prologue gives us bits and pieces from throughout the story, then we get one scene from after the Doctor and Nyssa escape, presenting the idea of viewpoints and tipping us off that we're not going to be seeing events unfold in consecutive order. The bulk of the episode, however, is framed by Brodlick's report to Gilbrook on his interactions with Nyssa. All the remaining events are put into context by the Brodlick/Gilbrook scenes, which build to a climax of their own by the episode's end.

Part Two focuses on the Doctor, viewing the activities of Lady Forleon and Quain from an outsider's perspective. The level of discontinuity is increased: We pick up with the Doctor's arrival at the Forleon estate, with Nyssa's arrest occurring off-camera; then we cut forward to events that take place after their escape. Part Three then shifts focus to the viewpoints of Lady Forleon and Quain, showing their actions in the context of people desperate to do something to save their people and culture. This time, we pick up just before the Doctor's arrival and end with the Doctor and Nyssa leaving the planet, commenting on how little they actually accomplished here.

Any listener could be forgiven for thinking the story was over at this point. But the final episode snaps everything into focus. We begin just before the accident that contaminated Veln, and we end after the Doctor and Nyssa have departed. We step back to take in the full painting, and all the brushstrokes we've been examining become parts of the larger work at this point. And we see that the Doctor and Nyssa are much more a part of this than they ever would have suspected.

This is a polarizing story. Most listeners fall into two camps, between those who find it excellent and those who find it dreadful. From writer/director Nicholas Briggs, whose scripts tend toward the traditional, this experimental piece is a huge departure.

As should be very apparent from this review, I fall into the "excellent" camp. Briggs has taken care with his non-consecutive structure, making sure that the work is easy to follow at all points. He's also penned some of the best dialogue in any of his scripts, from the Doctor's philosophical musings to Gilbrook's angry rants about how, to him, Lady Forleon and his people who flout the law are "ugly." 

It lacks the significance to the larger Who franchise that Spare Parts had. But in its way, it's every bit as good a story. It's the second 5th Doctor/Nyssa story in a row to earn full marks, and really shows what a strong period in Big Finish's history this was.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

Previous Story: Spare Parts
Next Story: The Game

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34. Spare Parts.

4 episodes. Approx. 120 minutes. Written by: Marc Platt. Directed by: Gary Russell. Produced by: Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery. 


THE PLOT

The TARDIS materializes on the planet Mondas - the homeworld of the Cybermen. Though the Cybermen have not yet replaced the human race, Mondasian humanity is in its dying days. The surface of the rogue planet has frozen over, driving the survivors underground. Only one human city still stands, its population afflicted with illness. Crews are selected from the sickest of the residents. They are processed, "augmented" with cybernetic technology in order to work on the otherwise uninhabitable surface, building a planetary propulsion system to return them to their home sun.

Once the Doctor realizes where they are, he insists that they cannot interfere and should leave immediately. But Nyssa has already befriended the Hartley family, recognizing them as good people undeserving of the fate that awaits them. She pushes the Doctor to at least intervene a little... and that little is enough to mark them as outsiders, with the Cyber-augmented "planning committee" ordering them arrested and brought in for interrogation!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Recognizes very quickly that this is Mondas before the Cybermen, something he tries to conceal from Nyssa. When she confronts him at the end of Part One, he insists that neither of them can change this world's fate. Even so, he can't stop himself from making multiple attempts to wake the people of Mondas up to what is happening around them. The future may be inevitable, but when the horror is right in front of his face, he will make an attempt to shift its course. Peter Davison has rarely been better, compassion, sarcasm, and an angry ferocity he was too often denied by his television scripts all perfectly balanced.

Nyssa: While the Doctor makes an inevitably doomed attempt to alter the future on a large scale, Nyssa helps on a smaller one: Helping to fix Mr. Hartley (Paul Copley)'s mechanical heart, for instance, or bringing food to the Hartley family to repay what she has eaten. She continues to feel pain at Adric's death, and seeing the birth of the Cybermen makes that all the stronger. When the Doctor urges that they should leave at the end of Part One, she wields Adric's fate like a weapon against his arguments. 

Cybermen: Several of this serial's Cybermen are first seen as human characters. One is plucky and likable, another officious and humorless, yet another rather shady and potentially dangerous. All are fully human creations, which makes it that much more effective to see them reduced to machines by the story's end. Nicholas Briggs voices most of the Cybermen, and offers a different sound for each stage. The recognizably human police are presented as semi-Cybermen, with a light electronic treatment given to a voice recognizably Briggs' own. The full Cybermen, little heard in the story's first half, have the full Tenth Planet voices. The lead Cyberman, Commander Zheng, also has that voice but with a deeper tone. This makes it easy for the listener to differentiate one "class" of Cyberman from another, aiding visualization while showing each successive generation moving further away from human and toward machine.


THOUGHTS

Spare Parts is Doctor Who's best Cyberman story. I make this statement without any equivocation. It is not merely the best Cyberman story on audio. It is the best Cyber-story across all media and all incarnations of the Doctor Who franchise.

I did enjoy the new series' Rise of the Cybermen, which recycled a handful of the ideas from this audio into an effective television action story. But this is a much more meaningful piece, with far greater emotional impact. Writer Marc Platt hasn't turned out an action story, though there's certainly action in it. As he explains in his author's notes, he rejected the idea of having a "Cyber-Davros" (something this story's television counterpart did indulge in), and instead crafted a human tragedy.

The most memorable scene comes in Episode Three. A power outage has interrupted a Cyber processing line, and one of the half-processed Cybermen has enough of its human memory to find its way home, to a reunion with its family. The reunion scene is genuinely devastating, one of the most vivid single moments in all of Doctor Who.

Russell Stone contributes another terrific score, starting with a jaunty patriotic tune accompanying a newsreel, then distorting that same tune into something discordant and mournful. The score gradually moves toward the mechanized as the Cybermen move from the periphery of the narrative to the center of it, until we get a full Cyber-score backing the action of the final episode. 

Guest performances are mostly excellent, in well-realized roles. Special mentions go to Sally Knyvette's Doctorman Allen, taking refuge in heavy drink and cynicism as she sees her good intentions transforming into something monstrous; Paul Copley's warm but defiant Mr. Hartley; Darren Nesbitt's grasping, deceitful Dodd; and of course, Nicholas Briggs' Cybermen. The only weak link in the cast is Jim Hartley as young Frank Hartley, who starts out sullen and resentful before emerging as an ally. Hartley's wooden line readings contrast sharply with the outstanding performances surrounding him. Fortunately, it's a decidedly supporting role and his relative weakness does little damage to the piece.

Released in 2002, Spare Parts remains not only a highlight of the Big Finish audio range but one of the entire Who franchise. It is fortunate that when the new series produced Rise of the Cybermen, the decision was made to set it in a parallel reality so as not to conflict with this story. If the two Cyber-origin stories had conflicted, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would have chosen this one over its television counterpart.


Overall Rating: 10/10.

Previous Story: Primeval
Next Story: Creatures of Beauty

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19. Minuet in Hell.

4 episodes. Approx. 145 minutes. Written by: Alan W. Lear, Gary Russell. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery.

THE PLOT

The 51st state has been added to the Union: Malebolgia, a chunk of territory in the Bible Belt that has seceded in order to form its own state (don't think too hard about the unlikely politics...). Former Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) is on-hand to observe the birth of this new state. But he's here for another reason, as well: To investigate the Dashwood Laboratory of Alternative Mentalities - an advanced mental hospital whose new treatment, involving a machine that can digitally store patients' memories as they undergo brain surgery, has raised concerns about mind control.

The hospital is owned by television evangelist Brigham Elisha Dashwood (Robert Jezek), who is manipulating all those around him to make sure that he will become governor of the new state. He has created a "Hellfire Club," a recreation of the famous/infamous gathering place of 18th Century Britain, run by his own ancestor, Sir Francis Dashwood. Here, he allows all the highest-ranking corrupt politicos to run rampant with their worst desires... all the while capturing their debauchery on videotape for future use.

This Hellfire Club doesn't so much employ young women of easy virtue as kidnap them off the streets. The newest arrival is a young English girl with strong ideas about what she'll do to anyone who touches her improperly. Dashwood's asylum has a couple of new arrivals, both also English: Gideon Crane (Nicholas Briggs), a journalist investigating Dashwood's institute; and "Zebediah Doe," a particularly confused man who insists both that he is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, and that he is in Hell - the one place from which he can never escape!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Spends most of the story in a fractured state, his mind and memories having been jumbled just prior to the story's opening. This gives McGann a chance to do some pretty good insane acting. He mumbles a mile a minute, and you can almost see the Doctor's thoughts jumping from track to track as he tries to orientate himself. We get a flash of his usual persona as he remembers something, as some piece slots into place - Then see him falter into confusion and despair as the connection slips away. The Doctor only properly recovers in the final episode when, finally in command of his faculties, he takes complete charge, sorting a very messy situation with efficiency and elan.

Charley: Gets stuck with the traditional companion dilemma of being captured and escaping, only to end up recaptured. Fortunately, India Fisher's enthusiasm keeps the character strong even when some of the material she's given is weak. She is familiar with the legend of the British Hellfire Club (the Doctor reveals the less glamorous reality of it at the end), and can't help but be fascinated to see a revival. Though she only meets the Brigadier fairly briefly, he makes a strong impression on her... which doesn't stop her from ribbing the Doctor for calling him his best friend when he called her the same just a single story ago.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: It was a natural decision to end the first Eighth Doctor audio season with an appearance by the Brigadier, in order to allow Nicholas Courtney to - as Paul McGann put it - "complete the set" of classic Doctors. Courtney is in marvelous form, as is the character. Lethbridge-Stewart retains a natural authority, enough to cut short Sen. Waldo Pickering (Morgan Deare)'s temper tantrum at the institute in Episode One and enough to catch Dashwood's eye straight off. He is also at his shrewdest here, recognizing that something is not right about Dashwood's entire operation. He only has a small amount of "screen time" opposite McGann, but the two play well off each other and it's a shame that Zagreus was the only other story to feature both of them.

THOUGHTS

"That's it - Now I understand! Everyone in the universe is the Doctor! Everyone except me!"

-The Doctor faces a most bizarre identity crisis.

Minuet in Hell is generally the worst-regarded story of McGann's first Big Finish season, and I can't argue with the criticims of it. It's not just overlong - at almost two-and-a-half hours, it's positively bloated, which has earned it the nickname "150 Minuets in Hell." The Inside Story, Big Finish's warts-and-all overview of its first 50 releases, reveals that it had a very troubled history. Writer Alan W. Lear was hired to adapt his old Audio-Visuals story for the Eighth Doctor, but was only able to (more or less) pen the first half. Producer Gary Russell was left to throw together the second half on a very tight timetable... Which may explain why the second half is both a lot less crazy and (sadly) a lot less fun.

The story is unconvincing on any number of levels. Neither Dashwood nor Pickering convince as formidable political figures, and the backstory - involving a new Southern state coming into being via secession - is laughable to anyone with a passing knowledge of American politics. Morgan Deare's Waldo Pickering is downright painful to listen to, with speech patterns and dialogue culled from Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Pickering's every statement seems to be punctuated with either a "varmint" or a "tarnation," if not both. People not only don't talk that way in the modern American South... I don't think they ever actually did!

For all its problems (and there are many that I won't even bother mentioning), I have no hate for Minuet in Hell. For three of its four episodes, it is so over-the-top and downright nutty that it's actually rather fun. You've got: overblown Southern-fried accents; demonic possessions; technobabble surrounding the "Psi859 Psionic Matrix Facsimile Regenerator" that would make Star Trek: Voyager blush; and a story whose two main settings are a modern-day Hellfire Club and an insane asylum. If Salvador Dali tried his hand at Southern Gothic, then had the results reinterpreted by Tex Avery and filtered through the sensibilities of Ralph Bakshi, it's not hard to picture something like this as the result.

But Episode Four is tasked with taking all of this insanity and wrapping it up in a way that can at least pretend to make sense. Other than a brief bit with Charley being rejected by demons for being "already dead" (a nice reminder of her arc, which would take off in a big way the following year), the final episode feels joyless. We spend too long setting up Dashwood's television broadcast, so that we're well-prepared when the Doctor, the Brigadier, and Charley replicate the ending of A Face in the Crowd to defeat him. Then, since there's still a subplot involving a demon to wrap up (yes, the demon is a subplot), we get an additional climax in the institute, one that requires Dashwood to transform into a complete imbecile in order for events to progress as they do.

I can't exactly recommend this story, which is as ridiculous as it is ridiculously overlong. But there is a lot to enjoy here, with terrific performances by the regulars and by guest stars Nicholas Courtney and Robert Jezek. Worth a listen for completists... but probably OK to skip by everyone else.

Overall Rating: 5/10.

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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.

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