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selenakSome Doctor Who audios I listened to in recent months, but somehow never found the time to review:
The Church and the Crown is the second outing for audio companion Erimem and the point where she officially joins team TARDIS, currently consisting of the Fifth Doctor and Peri. As I haven't reviewed any Peri/Erimem/Five adventures before, I should say they require a massive suspension of disbelief because they supposedly all take place between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani, and frankly, I can't really buy that because Five at the start of Caves is pretty much Traumatized-by-killing-the-Master!Five and he and Peri are obviously still very new to each other. (That convenient sci fi ploy, amnesia, can't be on the cards because in a Sixth Doctor audio adventure he fondly talks about Peri and Erimem and how they brought out the best in each other.) On the other hand, Five/Peri/Erimem are so much fun together that I wouldn't want to miss out their adventures, either. If anyone has come up with a good theory that would make it possible to explain how Five 'n Peri are at the start of Caves if they have done all this travelling with Erimem, pray tell, I'd be glad to adopt it.
Anyway. Erimem is an Egpytian pharaoh (who didn't get to reign) and the audios really use the fact she's not a 20th (or 21st) century human, and has a quite different perspective from a 20th century woman like Peri. This particular story lands our heroes in early 17th century Paris and manages to be both a very entertaining homage to Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers and another part of Big Finish's ongoing effort to educate about historical characters who traditionally got a bad press, in this case Cardinal Richelieu, who comes across as a responsible statesman to Louis XIII. petulant brat king. (Erimem at one point has a great rant to Louis and Queen Anne both about what being a monarch means and what a pair of egotistical brats they are.) They also play with audience expectations (based on the assumption that the audience is familiar with at least one version of Dumas' novel), with everyone suspecting Richelieu of villainous doings at the start and the two musketeers in this story talking about how that guy from Gascogne got all the credit for the business with the Queen's jewels. And of course there is lots of swashbuckling. ("How does a swash actually buckle, Doctor?" asks Peri.) Nicola Bryant audibly enjoys herself in a double role, as she doesn't just play Peri but Queen Anne, whom Peri happens to resemble (cue mistaken identies and kidnapppings), the later without fake American accent, naturally. Our villain is the Duke of Buckingham, which makes for a great line when he accuses the Doctor of planning to invade England ("No," quoth Five, "usually I prevent that sort of thing"). All great fun, and my inner nitpicker just groaned once, when Richelieu mentioned Louis' mother and refered to her as Catherine de' Medici. No, dear Cavon Scott and Mark Wright (aka the scriptwriters), that was the other Medici queen. The mother of Louis XIII was Marie de' Medici, a far more stupid woman, prone to be ruled by her favourites (whereas say what you want about Catherine, but she did the backstage ruling herself). Don't ask me why I found this irritating when I swallowed the way more ahistorical premise of Buckingham smuggling an army right in front of the gates of Paris; I can't tell you, either. Not a nitpick, just an observation: Five has very little to do in this audio, with Erimem and Peri doing most of the heavy lifting plot-wise, and the Doctor mostly passive except for the finale. Now passivity is sort of a Five thing, so it's not ooc, but it's also why while I like Five, he'll never be one of my favourite Doctors.
And finally: said scriptwriters apt to confuse Medici queens weren't too keen on some other people, either. In the foreword on the leaflet coming with the CD, they write (in September 2002): "You know, time travel is supposed to be fun. From watching the Fifth Doctor's era on TV, you may have missed that bit. The TARDIS crew at the time were a whining bunch of kids who spent most of the time arguing whilst the Universe tapped its foot, looked at its watch and waited to be saved. Nobody seemed to want to be there. And let's not get started on Turlough." Why don't you tell us how you really feel about everyone in the Five era save Peter Davison as Five, boys...
This was actually the first Fifth Doctor era audio I heard - or rather, started to hear - years ago. I bought it because it has the Doctor and friends (Peri and Erimem) meeting Richard III., expecting a straight forward historical a la The Aztecs, started it and then was massively disappointed because on the contrary, it appeared to be a Blackadder type spoof ("I'll be your serving wench for this evening; do you want a carousing or non-carousing table?"). Not that there's anything wrong with Blackadder, but it wasn't what I had wanted, and so I stopped listening and let the CD gather dust. Then I found out The Kingmaker actually ends up in most people's greatest Big Finish productions list, and decided to give it another try. This time, I found it hysterically funny, unexpectedly moving in parts, and a very clever (and very mad) twist on all the different theories about Richard III and the princes in the Tower. (Not to mention the Shakespeare authorship theories...)
The Doctor is far more involved here than in The Church and the Crown, from the start, and Peter Davison gets the chance for a really great scene, as the Doctor goes from being a Ricardian in theory (i.e. someone who believes Richard didn't do it, for non-experts in the field) to being appalled to see Richard apparantly do some very sinister things indeed in practice to figuring out the truth of what is actually going on. The Peri & Erimem combination shines again, with, as mentioned, Erimem's different background used to good effect (in this case, her attitude towards suicide and murder, neither of which is anything like Peri's). There is also a priceless DW continuity joke there, as Peri, when discovering that the villain behind the scenes appears to be a time-travelling bearded man dressed in black, naturally concludes it must be the Master, somehow resurrected, and when wearily told by the Doctor it isn't wonders how many bearded villains in black stalking him he knows.
By now, The Kingmaker is thoroughly jossed (err, Russell'd) by New Who on several fronts (most nobably through The Shakespeare Code), but then, it never was intended as serious history. (Though the foreword in the CD leaflet could give you that impression. It's both jossed, a bit uninformed and a tad hyprocritical, as it complaints the Doctor has never been put in a situation where he "has to get his hands dirty" by not just letting some awful historical fact happen but by having to do it himself. As I recall, One point-blank refused to save anyone from the St. Bartholomew's Eve massacre because their deaths were all fixed, including a woman his then companion Steven had fallen in love with. And of course more recently, long after The Kingmaker was made, Ten had to kill the 20.000 something inhabitants of Pompeii by directly causing the volcano to explode to begin with. Whereas in The Kingmaker Five actually gets around having to do something awful to preserve history by figuring out the truth in time.) Though if you're familiar with the Princes in the Tower debate, it should give you another kick, but it's amusing as hell either way.
A good play sadly let down by its ending, written by Joseph Lidster, which is why I picked it. On the good side of things, this presents Six and Peri interaction which gets the balance between bantering and bullying right; here they come across as genuinenly fond of each other, and their bickering as good natured gives-and-takes. It also deals with something left open by tv canon: whatever became of Peri's family after Planet of Fire, and what did they make of her absence? Peri's mother is played by Claudia Christian, which if you're a Babylon 5 fan like myself is good news. (Claudia Christian played Susan Ivanova on B5, who is one of the most memorable human characters on the station.) In the grand tradition of mothers on DW (and since this story was produced in 2006, it's definitely after the relaunch), she disapproves of the Doctor on sight and argues with her daughter non-stop, but is more than capable of going up against the monsters when it counts. Said monsters are the Cybermen, and I have to say somewhat heretically that I don't share the opinion the original Mondas-grown bunch were better than the Cybus products; neither will ever be anywhere near my favourite villains, though they're used effectively here, in a neat combination with zombie horror movie motives (the story takes place in Baltimore, after all, partly in the graveyard, no less - though Poe's grave never gets referenced). Until the end, that is, and I found it really disappointing because the rest of the story is quite good.
So, my issues with the last ten minutes or so: for starters, the solution of the Cybermen plot. After establishing the Cyberleader was devious enough to lay out a complicated trap for the Doctor, we're required to believe he'd a) use a very stupid blackmail ("either watch your companions die or change history which means they'll never have existed" is like the Doctor points out not much of an alternative or threat), b) simply believe the Doctor's word on having committed a completely unlikely action (a massive change of human history in favour of the Cybermen) without making any attempts to check whether the Doctor did indeed do so, and c) not figure out what the audience has figured out long ago, that the Doctor when returning him to the present won't set him loose on Earth. Mind you, the Doctor dumping him on doomed Mondas is a very Six-ish (or Seven-ish) kind of thing to do, no complaints there, it's the sudden dropping of intelligence in the main villain I can't buy.
Even more seriously, though: the "solution" to the Peri-and-her-mother-and-friends plot. This one starts going wrong by requiring the Doctor and Peri to do something absolutely bewildering, and no, I don't mean Peri deciding she needs to stay with her mother and friends after all that happened in this story. She asks for the remaining Cyber conversation unit as a souvenir and the Doctor gives it to her, and at this point my brain breaks in disbelief. (Both because why on earth should Peri want that as a souvener from her TARDIS days, and why would the Doctor be so criminally irresponsible to give it to her? Makes Nine's behaviour in The Long Game look almost decent by comparison, and I hate his behaviour in that episode.) Then the Doctor, deciding to check on Peri in the galactic news archive where they started their adventure (which btw is a neat invention - it's on the moon and called the gogglebox) finds out something went horribly wrong in 1984 (no kidding), and the audience finds out what: no, the conversion unit didn't convert, but Peri's mother accidentally triggers the self destroy mechanism and it blows up, killing her and another character in the story in the process. This is both gratitious cruelty (which, okay, you could say fits that particular TV era, but the audios usually don't do this) and a cheap way to reunite Peri and the Doctor (who comes to collect her at her mother's funeral) so canon can go on as established.
Really a shame, because I did enjoy the audio until then. One great exchange mid-story, when the Doctor has to explain where Peri is: "My young friend is dealing with some family issues." "And you?" "I don't have issues." (This is as funny in an Old Who context as it is in a New Who one.)
Terror Firma was also written by Joseph Lidster, takes place directly after the Doctor, Charley and C'rizz return from the dimension the Doctor had to go to post-Zagreus, and this one is truly great. No nitpicks here, though it makes me eat my words again regarding Davros being better left dead post Genesis of the Daleks, just as the earlier Sixth Doctor audio Davros did, proving there were actually still some ways to use the character that weren't repetitive. Because wouldn't you know it, no sooner is the Doctor back in the "normal" universe that he runs straight into his oldest foes, the Daleks. Complete with Davros, a Davros post-Remembrance of the Daleks, and hence extra vengeful after Seven destroyed Skaro. (Or technically as the Doctor points out tricked Davros & the Daleks into destroying it.) Davros being Davros, he's firmly of the "death isn't too good for my enemies unless they are the Doctor" persuasion and has thought long and hard about payback, which results in what is fannishly referred to as a massive mindfuck. The audience is put in the same situation as the Doctor, having to puzzle out the connection between three different plot threads and being given clues.
The two most interesting scenes, as far as the Doctor-and-Davros storyline is concerned, are the lead-up to Davros revealing the full extent of what he did, because before that we get two great character insights (and the fact the hostile and brutally frank conversation between the Doctor and Davros is written in a way that both feel natural instead of inserted says something about Lidster's writing skill). Davros being afraid of ending up completely absorbed into the Daleks, his original identity gone, makes sense. He had already Dalek-fied himself as early as Genesis to some degree, but between his massive ego and his rather strong emotions, actually becoming a Dalek, indistinguishable from the rest of his creation, would be regard as a fate worse than death by him. Having admitted this, Davros gets the Doctor to admit to some seriously mixed feelings about his own people, which isn't a suprise if you know Old Who, but also to what he sees and fears as his eventual future, which is. Quoting from memory and hence definitely incorrectly, but this is the gist of it:
Davros: You're ashamed of them?
Doctor: Well, they tend to be either evil megalomaniacs or dull as dirt. And I know that some day, I will become one or the other.
(After a statement about his companions preventing this so far): But sooner or later, they'll leave. They all do. And then one day I will return to Gallifrey and start to gather dust with the rest of them.
Mind you, I imagine Romana fans being indignant about this classification of Time Lords as either evil and power-mad or dull. And what about Flavia? Still, listening to this was one of those "I hadn't thought about it this way before, but it makes sense to me" moments. I hadn't wondered how the Doctor envisioned his future pre-Time War, but I could see him eyeing the prospect of either basically becoming the Valeyard or becoming just another Time Lord on Gallifrey with almost equal dread, though in the interest of the rest of the galaxy seeing the "gathering dust on Gallifrey" prospect as the preferable option; that he even considers it instead of imagining running till the end of his days could also speak of some (distrusted) sparks of longing, which only kick into full gear once the planet is irrevocably gone, of course.
The other big character scene is the showdown. Now Five's refusal to kill Davros is one of the irritating elements in that serial to me because in the same story, Five has no problems with the demise of quite a lot of Daleks, and so to stop short of Davros - who does more harm than your avarage Dalek at any point in his existence - makes him look speciesist. It basically screams "we want to keep Davros as a recurring villain and need an excuse for the Doctor not to kill him". It won't exactly come as a flabbergasting surprise that Eight doesn't kill Davros in Terror Firma, either. However, his reason for not doing so isn't "because I don't kill" - he's not Five any longer, and at this point is past being Six and Seven, which means he already committed on screen genocide and is responsible for other deaths as well. No, it's far darker and right in line with that part of the Doctor that in Human Nature/Family of Blood, when he is Ten, deals out a terrible fate to the Family, all the more so for not being lethal. After a story in which Davros managed to change eight billion humans into Daleks and make future!Earth into the new Skaro, Dalek-fy two past companions of the Doctor's, and mess with his mind and his TARDIS he managed to trigger vengefulness in even the optimistic Eight, and the Doctor when vengeful gets really vicious. You might have guessed it by now: he hands over Davros to the Daleks for complete conversion.
As far as the dynamics between Eight-Charley-C'rizz are concerned, it's very different from the Eight/Charley audios pre and including Zagreus. Eight and Charley had an increasingly less subtextual romance culminating in an "I love you" (when he thought he wouldn't survive, go figure) and then the TARDIS going mad and the near wreckage of the universe. This, the stint in the alt!dimension and the addition of C'rizz seem to have put an end to romantic longings from either side. I found it striking that the Doctor addressed both Charley and C'rizz as "children" in their first scene in this story, and their team dynamic definitely was more in line with earlier "crowded" TARDISes; as I'm non-shipper as far as the Doctor and current companions are concerned, I'm all for it. (Once they stopped travelling with him, it's a different matter. I have a soft spot for Ten/Sarah Jane and can see Eight/Romana as well.) C'rizz is a rare non-human and genuinenly alien companion, and the teasings about his dark past and his possible intention to "save" Charley and the Doctor ("save" has a very sinister meaning in this context) work for better for me than the Draco-Malfoy-in-Half-Blood-Prince plot did for Turlough in Maegwryn Undead. At the same time, one never doubts he does genuinenly care for them.
Guest characters: other than Davros, most memorably a tough old bird named Harriet (this audio was produced in 2005, so this might or might not have been a coincidence), who turns out to be the leader of the human resistance.
Trivia: very inventive use of the tunnel connecting France and England (with whom Charley as a girl from 1930 isn't familiar), and, well, an amnesia stint for Eight. (Though via backstory, not in the present day action.) Poor old Eight. If Ten's thing is people kissing him, Eight's is getting amnesia. Seriously. In the books, in the audios, and of course in the tv movie of doom - it keeps happening!
Lastly, a Third Doctor drabble I loved: Adrift.
The Church and the Crown is the second outing for audio companion Erimem and the point where she officially joins team TARDIS, currently consisting of the Fifth Doctor and Peri. As I haven't reviewed any Peri/Erimem/Five adventures before, I should say they require a massive suspension of disbelief because they supposedly all take place between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani, and frankly, I can't really buy that because Five at the start of Caves is pretty much Traumatized-by-killing-the-Master!Five and he and Peri are obviously still very new to each other. (That convenient sci fi ploy, amnesia, can't be on the cards because in a Sixth Doctor audio adventure he fondly talks about Peri and Erimem and how they brought out the best in each other.) On the other hand, Five/Peri/Erimem are so much fun together that I wouldn't want to miss out their adventures, either. If anyone has come up with a good theory that would make it possible to explain how Five 'n Peri are at the start of Caves if they have done all this travelling with Erimem, pray tell, I'd be glad to adopt it.
Anyway. Erimem is an Egpytian pharaoh (who didn't get to reign) and the audios really use the fact she's not a 20th (or 21st) century human, and has a quite different perspective from a 20th century woman like Peri. This particular story lands our heroes in early 17th century Paris and manages to be both a very entertaining homage to Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers and another part of Big Finish's ongoing effort to educate about historical characters who traditionally got a bad press, in this case Cardinal Richelieu, who comes across as a responsible statesman to Louis XIII. petulant brat king. (Erimem at one point has a great rant to Louis and Queen Anne both about what being a monarch means and what a pair of egotistical brats they are.) They also play with audience expectations (based on the assumption that the audience is familiar with at least one version of Dumas' novel), with everyone suspecting Richelieu of villainous doings at the start and the two musketeers in this story talking about how that guy from Gascogne got all the credit for the business with the Queen's jewels. And of course there is lots of swashbuckling. ("How does a swash actually buckle, Doctor?" asks Peri.) Nicola Bryant audibly enjoys herself in a double role, as she doesn't just play Peri but Queen Anne, whom Peri happens to resemble (cue mistaken identies and kidnapppings), the later without fake American accent, naturally. Our villain is the Duke of Buckingham, which makes for a great line when he accuses the Doctor of planning to invade England ("No," quoth Five, "usually I prevent that sort of thing"). All great fun, and my inner nitpicker just groaned once, when Richelieu mentioned Louis' mother and refered to her as Catherine de' Medici. No, dear Cavon Scott and Mark Wright (aka the scriptwriters), that was the other Medici queen. The mother of Louis XIII was Marie de' Medici, a far more stupid woman, prone to be ruled by her favourites (whereas say what you want about Catherine, but she did the backstage ruling herself). Don't ask me why I found this irritating when I swallowed the way more ahistorical premise of Buckingham smuggling an army right in front of the gates of Paris; I can't tell you, either. Not a nitpick, just an observation: Five has very little to do in this audio, with Erimem and Peri doing most of the heavy lifting plot-wise, and the Doctor mostly passive except for the finale. Now passivity is sort of a Five thing, so it's not ooc, but it's also why while I like Five, he'll never be one of my favourite Doctors.
And finally: said scriptwriters apt to confuse Medici queens weren't too keen on some other people, either. In the foreword on the leaflet coming with the CD, they write (in September 2002): "You know, time travel is supposed to be fun. From watching the Fifth Doctor's era on TV, you may have missed that bit. The TARDIS crew at the time were a whining bunch of kids who spent most of the time arguing whilst the Universe tapped its foot, looked at its watch and waited to be saved. Nobody seemed to want to be there. And let's not get started on Turlough." Why don't you tell us how you really feel about everyone in the Five era save Peter Davison as Five, boys...
This was actually the first Fifth Doctor era audio I heard - or rather, started to hear - years ago. I bought it because it has the Doctor and friends (Peri and Erimem) meeting Richard III., expecting a straight forward historical a la The Aztecs, started it and then was massively disappointed because on the contrary, it appeared to be a Blackadder type spoof ("I'll be your serving wench for this evening; do you want a carousing or non-carousing table?"). Not that there's anything wrong with Blackadder, but it wasn't what I had wanted, and so I stopped listening and let the CD gather dust. Then I found out The Kingmaker actually ends up in most people's greatest Big Finish productions list, and decided to give it another try. This time, I found it hysterically funny, unexpectedly moving in parts, and a very clever (and very mad) twist on all the different theories about Richard III and the princes in the Tower. (Not to mention the Shakespeare authorship theories...)
The Doctor is far more involved here than in The Church and the Crown, from the start, and Peter Davison gets the chance for a really great scene, as the Doctor goes from being a Ricardian in theory (i.e. someone who believes Richard didn't do it, for non-experts in the field) to being appalled to see Richard apparantly do some very sinister things indeed in practice to figuring out the truth of what is actually going on. The Peri & Erimem combination shines again, with, as mentioned, Erimem's different background used to good effect (in this case, her attitude towards suicide and murder, neither of which is anything like Peri's). There is also a priceless DW continuity joke there, as Peri, when discovering that the villain behind the scenes appears to be a time-travelling bearded man dressed in black, naturally concludes it must be the Master, somehow resurrected, and when wearily told by the Doctor it isn't wonders how many bearded villains in black stalking him he knows.
By now, The Kingmaker is thoroughly jossed (err, Russell'd) by New Who on several fronts (most nobably through The Shakespeare Code), but then, it never was intended as serious history. (Though the foreword in the CD leaflet could give you that impression. It's both jossed, a bit uninformed and a tad hyprocritical, as it complaints the Doctor has never been put in a situation where he "has to get his hands dirty" by not just letting some awful historical fact happen but by having to do it himself. As I recall, One point-blank refused to save anyone from the St. Bartholomew's Eve massacre because their deaths were all fixed, including a woman his then companion Steven had fallen in love with. And of course more recently, long after The Kingmaker was made, Ten had to kill the 20.000 something inhabitants of Pompeii by directly causing the volcano to explode to begin with. Whereas in The Kingmaker Five actually gets around having to do something awful to preserve history by figuring out the truth in time.) Though if you're familiar with the Princes in the Tower debate, it should give you another kick, but it's amusing as hell either way.
A good play sadly let down by its ending, written by Joseph Lidster, which is why I picked it. On the good side of things, this presents Six and Peri interaction which gets the balance between bantering and bullying right; here they come across as genuinenly fond of each other, and their bickering as good natured gives-and-takes. It also deals with something left open by tv canon: whatever became of Peri's family after Planet of Fire, and what did they make of her absence? Peri's mother is played by Claudia Christian, which if you're a Babylon 5 fan like myself is good news. (Claudia Christian played Susan Ivanova on B5, who is one of the most memorable human characters on the station.) In the grand tradition of mothers on DW (and since this story was produced in 2006, it's definitely after the relaunch), she disapproves of the Doctor on sight and argues with her daughter non-stop, but is more than capable of going up against the monsters when it counts. Said monsters are the Cybermen, and I have to say somewhat heretically that I don't share the opinion the original Mondas-grown bunch were better than the Cybus products; neither will ever be anywhere near my favourite villains, though they're used effectively here, in a neat combination with zombie horror movie motives (the story takes place in Baltimore, after all, partly in the graveyard, no less - though Poe's grave never gets referenced). Until the end, that is, and I found it really disappointing because the rest of the story is quite good.
So, my issues with the last ten minutes or so: for starters, the solution of the Cybermen plot. After establishing the Cyberleader was devious enough to lay out a complicated trap for the Doctor, we're required to believe he'd a) use a very stupid blackmail ("either watch your companions die or change history which means they'll never have existed" is like the Doctor points out not much of an alternative or threat), b) simply believe the Doctor's word on having committed a completely unlikely action (a massive change of human history in favour of the Cybermen) without making any attempts to check whether the Doctor did indeed do so, and c) not figure out what the audience has figured out long ago, that the Doctor when returning him to the present won't set him loose on Earth. Mind you, the Doctor dumping him on doomed Mondas is a very Six-ish (or Seven-ish) kind of thing to do, no complaints there, it's the sudden dropping of intelligence in the main villain I can't buy.
Even more seriously, though: the "solution" to the Peri-and-her-mother-and-friends plot. This one starts going wrong by requiring the Doctor and Peri to do something absolutely bewildering, and no, I don't mean Peri deciding she needs to stay with her mother and friends after all that happened in this story. She asks for the remaining Cyber conversation unit as a souvenir and the Doctor gives it to her, and at this point my brain breaks in disbelief. (Both because why on earth should Peri want that as a souvener from her TARDIS days, and why would the Doctor be so criminally irresponsible to give it to her? Makes Nine's behaviour in The Long Game look almost decent by comparison, and I hate his behaviour in that episode.) Then the Doctor, deciding to check on Peri in the galactic news archive where they started their adventure (which btw is a neat invention - it's on the moon and called the gogglebox) finds out something went horribly wrong in 1984 (no kidding), and the audience finds out what: no, the conversion unit didn't convert, but Peri's mother accidentally triggers the self destroy mechanism and it blows up, killing her and another character in the story in the process. This is both gratitious cruelty (which, okay, you could say fits that particular TV era, but the audios usually don't do this) and a cheap way to reunite Peri and the Doctor (who comes to collect her at her mother's funeral) so canon can go on as established.
Really a shame, because I did enjoy the audio until then. One great exchange mid-story, when the Doctor has to explain where Peri is: "My young friend is dealing with some family issues." "And you?" "I don't have issues." (This is as funny in an Old Who context as it is in a New Who one.)
Terror Firma was also written by Joseph Lidster, takes place directly after the Doctor, Charley and C'rizz return from the dimension the Doctor had to go to post-Zagreus, and this one is truly great. No nitpicks here, though it makes me eat my words again regarding Davros being better left dead post Genesis of the Daleks, just as the earlier Sixth Doctor audio Davros did, proving there were actually still some ways to use the character that weren't repetitive. Because wouldn't you know it, no sooner is the Doctor back in the "normal" universe that he runs straight into his oldest foes, the Daleks. Complete with Davros, a Davros post-Remembrance of the Daleks, and hence extra vengeful after Seven destroyed Skaro. (Or technically as the Doctor points out tricked Davros & the Daleks into destroying it.) Davros being Davros, he's firmly of the "death isn't too good for my enemies unless they are the Doctor" persuasion and has thought long and hard about payback, which results in what is fannishly referred to as a massive mindfuck. The audience is put in the same situation as the Doctor, having to puzzle out the connection between three different plot threads and being given clues.
The two most interesting scenes, as far as the Doctor-and-Davros storyline is concerned, are the lead-up to Davros revealing the full extent of what he did, because before that we get two great character insights (and the fact the hostile and brutally frank conversation between the Doctor and Davros is written in a way that both feel natural instead of inserted says something about Lidster's writing skill). Davros being afraid of ending up completely absorbed into the Daleks, his original identity gone, makes sense. He had already Dalek-fied himself as early as Genesis to some degree, but between his massive ego and his rather strong emotions, actually becoming a Dalek, indistinguishable from the rest of his creation, would be regard as a fate worse than death by him. Having admitted this, Davros gets the Doctor to admit to some seriously mixed feelings about his own people, which isn't a suprise if you know Old Who, but also to what he sees and fears as his eventual future, which is. Quoting from memory and hence definitely incorrectly, but this is the gist of it:
Davros: You're ashamed of them?
Doctor: Well, they tend to be either evil megalomaniacs or dull as dirt. And I know that some day, I will become one or the other.
(After a statement about his companions preventing this so far): But sooner or later, they'll leave. They all do. And then one day I will return to Gallifrey and start to gather dust with the rest of them.
Mind you, I imagine Romana fans being indignant about this classification of Time Lords as either evil and power-mad or dull. And what about Flavia? Still, listening to this was one of those "I hadn't thought about it this way before, but it makes sense to me" moments. I hadn't wondered how the Doctor envisioned his future pre-Time War, but I could see him eyeing the prospect of either basically becoming the Valeyard or becoming just another Time Lord on Gallifrey with almost equal dread, though in the interest of the rest of the galaxy seeing the "gathering dust on Gallifrey" prospect as the preferable option; that he even considers it instead of imagining running till the end of his days could also speak of some (distrusted) sparks of longing, which only kick into full gear once the planet is irrevocably gone, of course.
The other big character scene is the showdown. Now Five's refusal to kill Davros is one of the irritating elements in that serial to me because in the same story, Five has no problems with the demise of quite a lot of Daleks, and so to stop short of Davros - who does more harm than your avarage Dalek at any point in his existence - makes him look speciesist. It basically screams "we want to keep Davros as a recurring villain and need an excuse for the Doctor not to kill him". It won't exactly come as a flabbergasting surprise that Eight doesn't kill Davros in Terror Firma, either. However, his reason for not doing so isn't "because I don't kill" - he's not Five any longer, and at this point is past being Six and Seven, which means he already committed on screen genocide and is responsible for other deaths as well. No, it's far darker and right in line with that part of the Doctor that in Human Nature/Family of Blood, when he is Ten, deals out a terrible fate to the Family, all the more so for not being lethal. After a story in which Davros managed to change eight billion humans into Daleks and make future!Earth into the new Skaro, Dalek-fy two past companions of the Doctor's, and mess with his mind and his TARDIS he managed to trigger vengefulness in even the optimistic Eight, and the Doctor when vengeful gets really vicious. You might have guessed it by now: he hands over Davros to the Daleks for complete conversion.
As far as the dynamics between Eight-Charley-C'rizz are concerned, it's very different from the Eight/Charley audios pre and including Zagreus. Eight and Charley had an increasingly less subtextual romance culminating in an "I love you" (when he thought he wouldn't survive, go figure) and then the TARDIS going mad and the near wreckage of the universe. This, the stint in the alt!dimension and the addition of C'rizz seem to have put an end to romantic longings from either side. I found it striking that the Doctor addressed both Charley and C'rizz as "children" in their first scene in this story, and their team dynamic definitely was more in line with earlier "crowded" TARDISes; as I'm non-shipper as far as the Doctor and current companions are concerned, I'm all for it. (Once they stopped travelling with him, it's a different matter. I have a soft spot for Ten/Sarah Jane and can see Eight/Romana as well.) C'rizz is a rare non-human and genuinenly alien companion, and the teasings about his dark past and his possible intention to "save" Charley and the Doctor ("save" has a very sinister meaning in this context) work for better for me than the Draco-Malfoy-in-Half-Blood-Prince plot did for Turlough in Maegwryn Undead. At the same time, one never doubts he does genuinenly care for them.
Guest characters: other than Davros, most memorably a tough old bird named Harriet (this audio was produced in 2005, so this might or might not have been a coincidence), who turns out to be the leader of the human resistance.
Trivia: very inventive use of the tunnel connecting France and England (with whom Charley as a girl from 1930 isn't familiar), and, well, an amnesia stint for Eight. (Though via backstory, not in the present day action.) Poor old Eight. If Ten's thing is people kissing him, Eight's is getting amnesia. Seriously. In the books, in the audios, and of course in the tv movie of doom - it keeps happening!
Lastly, a Third Doctor drabble I loved: Adrift.
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Date: 2009-01-02 06:27 pm (UTC)Now, here are two vids representing Doctor Who, 70s style. First one about Jo Grant and the Third Doctor, which captures both the relationship and the early 70s flair of the Pertwee years:
And then another 70s Who vid, a great tongue-in-cheek homage to the Master in his Roger Delgado incarnation (that's the one which goes with the Third Doctor), to Johnny Cash's "Man in Black":
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Date: 2009-01-02 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 09:26 am (UTC)