A Minuet in Hell [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

Hello there. I'm back. It has been a while.

So 'Minuet in Hell', starring Paul McGann as the Doctor and India Fisher as Charley Pollard. Set in the fictional, soon-to-be US state of Malebolgia it features The Doctor's lost memory; devious politicians with diabolical machines; dirty old men; the reincarnation of the Hellfire Club; demons that turn out not to be demons (or Daemons) but Psionovores & Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewert (Retired...sort of).

The first thing that needs to be said is that it is far, far too long and takes a reasonably straightforward plot & stretches it until (almost) breaking point. It's as if the producers fell in love with the idea of the Doctor in an asylum but couldn't or wouldn't use it as a story on its own so tacked it on to a bog standard Doctor Who adventure.

And the stuff in the asylum is fun. It's atmospheric, if you like your atmosphere a wee bit creepy. The idea that the Doctor can't remember who he is & that his identity might be taken by someone else - in this case Nicholas Brigg's Gideon Crane - is nicely played. We, of course, know who is the true Doctor as we know it is Paul McGann. But inside the fiction the Doctor's uncertainty is disturbing. Especially as Gideon Crane - convinced that he is the Doctor - undertakes an taunting run through the Doctor's long term memory. Who is the most deluded? Why does Gideon Crane think he is the Doctor in the first place?

That story runs parallel to the 'bad guy trying to take over the world' storyline. In this case our main bad guy is Dashwood (Robert Jezek) , a preacher-politician trying to win the Governorship of Malebolgia. He's aided by Dr Dale Pargeter (Maureen Oakley), another in Doctor Who's long line of scientists who believe the ends justify the means. In this case experiments with a machine that transfer minds from person to machine allowing Dashwood to replace human minds with those of his demon allies. Dashwood thinks they're Lucifer's minions but...well appearances can be deceptive.

Dashwood is opposed by Senator Waldo Pickering (Morgan Deare) for political reasons. I'm afraid that there's so many Southern US accents being thrown around at this point that there's a danger of this sounding like an am-dram version of Gone With the Wind. Waldo is probably the most annoying character in this story & every time he appears (well almost) the pace of the story seems to slow down to sludge. Waldo has a grand-daughter - Becky Lee (Helen Goldwyn) - who is a kind of Big Finish version of Buffy. Sort of. Becky Lee and Charley have a lot of scenes together, which err on the side of the comedic.

That brings me on to why this story doesn't quite work. It is effectively two stories with two different tones welded together & as a result it is too long and too slow. There's one excellent horror story here & one rather bog standard Doctor Who run around. Join them together and neither of them works well.

Oh I should say that none of this has any impact on how brilliant Nicholas Courtney is as the Brigadier. He's older, wiser but still one of the best characters to emerge from Doctor Who. In the hands of a lesser actor the Brigadier could so easily have been a cardboard stereotype but there's a fine dusting of sardonic wit & sharp intelligence that makes the Brigadier so much more. This is as much a Brigadier story as it is the Doctor's.

So this has its positives but in the end it doesn't quite work for me & it felt at points like a real struggle to get through the thing. I suppose trying to do too much isn't such a bad crime. Better that than doing too little.

There's too much happening for this to be anything that a qualified success. The performances are all reasonably OK. McGann's great actually, especially during the scenes when he's not sure who he is or what's happening.

16/09/2014 note. This blog ends rather suddenly. I wonder why. Anyway it was written in April 2012 so make of that what you will.

The Stones of Venice [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

Well, that was bizarre but entertaining stuff. I'm not sure whether Gothic or Baroque is the right word to use to describe 'The Stones of Venice' but it is certainly a little odd.

Venice is dying and a Duke Orsino (Michael Sheard) who has not aged for one hundred years is expecting it to sink beneath the sea as the result of a rather nasty curse inflicting upon him by his lost beloved, Estella. Estella it seems reacted to being lost in a game of cards rather sharply. She cursed the Duke and Venice. Then died. There's a Cult in her memory, of course, led by Vincezo (Mark Gatiss). This Cult expects Estella to rise from her tomb and bring an end to the curse. Alas, things turn out to be much more complicated than that.

Add Venice's aquatic and rebellious underclass, the Gondoliers represented for the most part by Pietro (Barnaby Edwards) and some sound effects; an art collection with one or two odd paintings in it looked after by Churchwell (Nick Scovell), the Duke's curator and the sudden arrival of the Doctor and Charley and things get complicated.

The odd atmosphere is reflected in the guest performances. Michael Sheard does a great job as Duke Orsino, a man who has lived too long and lost too much. He might even be a little mad. This was Michael Sheard's last performance in Doctor Who before his death and it is an excellent final bow. Then there's the oddly intonated Elaine Ives-Cameron as Ms Lavish, an elderly woman who turns out to have something of an interesting tale to tell. [SPOILER, I suppose] Ms Lavish it turns out is Estella and she's become a rather bitter and judgemental old thing. She's also an alien. I might hazard a guess and say that Miss Haversham from 'Great Expectations' might be an influence (based partly on the names, partly on her bitterness) but then again I could be making two and two equal five.

Mark Gatiss's Vincenzo is portentous and rather arch. It veers dangerously towards the hammy but then if this were one of those odder horror films with Vincent Price in - like the Masque of the Red Death - you'd expect a little of that. He may also be channelling Hieronymous from 'The Masque of Mandragora'. His disappointment at the end is palpable and his dashing off, probably to form another catacomb head officed cult, is nicely done.

In fact the final episode, although incredibly wordy is quite wonderful. There's a lot of ideas bantered about, a lot of issues resolved and interesting points made about love, faith, class and what can be done to make a difference. The Doctor's line '...there's always something we can do' is made an item of faith for the 8th Doctor, which is ironic considering he's a bit sniffy about humanity's desire to mythologise everything.

India Fisher as Charley is good. She's got a bit more to do in this story as she gets separated from the Doctor and caught up in a rather bizarre plan of Pietro's, who might be the 23rd century Venetian cousin of Baldrick. Charley doesn't put up with being bullied - verbally or physically - and she gets to a nice scene towards the end when she tells Orsino off when he tells her off. She's fun to and nicely mocking of some of the Doctor's pretensions.

Paul McGann is excellent in this again. Doing a wonderful job of getting other people into trouble, especially Churchwell and Charley, before putting all the pieces back together at the end and enabling the Duke and Estella to save the day. In this the Doctor is more a catalyst than the main driver of the plot. Stuff happens. Occasionally the Doctor turns up to reduce the damage that results from that stuff.

History, someone once said, is just one damned thing after another, which is a nice way of summing up this story in my opinion. One damned thing after another. But in a good way.

Sword of Orion [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

There is no point beating around the bush. This is brilliant stuff. It's a old school base under siege story done to perfection. In fact, just as 'The Caves of Androzani' is 'The Power of the Kroll' but done much, much better this is 'The Wheel in Space' but a new, improved version.

In fact I'd go as far as to say this is almost the best Cyberman story in Doctor Who's history (as I have covered it in the blog up until now) with perhaps only 'The Invasion' and 'Earthshock' to match it. It has the right atmosphere, which is hard to articulate but you know it when it is there. These are Cybermen who feel like a genuine threat.

Whoever decided to go back to a more electronic voice for the Cybermen and to step away from the David Banks school of fist thumping 'Excellent' type should take several bows. These Cybermen are old school and they have Cybermats to, which is always a pleasure. More importantly they seem genuinely terrifying and here audio really helps. There is no way the television series could have a rogue Cyberman tear somewhere to pieces but on audio you can and then you can have the actors react to that. This story makes it clear that Cybermen are a genuine threat and that Cyber Conversion is a horrible process.

Paul McGann is wonderful to. He's given a chance to show what he can do and grabs it with both hands. He's pretty subdued but partial to the occasional moment of smart arse sarcasm. The Doctor's gradual drawing out of Deeva Jansen's (Michelle Livingstone) plan is nicely done and his discussion with her as the story comes towards an end is nicely played by both actors.

India Fisher's does a fine job as companion Charley Pollard too. She's smart, sharp and pugnacious. I like the way they make her struggle to fit sf concepts into the vocabulary of the 1930s: all that talk of 'deathrays'. [If they somehow squeeze the 8th Doctor into the 50th Anniversary it would be nice if he was accompanied by Charley, even if it would probably throw some kind of continuity spanner into the works. But then The Moff does not really believe in continuity as such. It's all canon so why the hell not.]

The guest cast - limited in number - do a good job. Michelle Livingstone's Deeva Jansen is posh and obviously up to something from the off and the way the layers of her character are gradually unpeeled is nicely done. Secrets beneath secrets.

There is a nice pre-credit sequence featuring Mark Gatiss (Whatever happened to him?) as Thinnes and Barnaby Edwards (Whatever etc?) as Digly which sets up the atmosphere of the story pretty darn well. Someone seems to have made a decision to make the non-officers in the crew northern, which I quite like. My favour is Ian Marr's Ike who almost...well I will not spell it out.

Actually I'm a bit confused about what to do about spoilers with the Big Finish audios. I know a lot of these have been out for ages but they are less well known than the Classic TV ones. Should I avoid them? Or just carry on regardless. Answers on a postcard to the usual etc.

Bruce Montague's Grash is pretty good to. The dodgiest and least untrustworthy member of the crew his suspicisions about the Doctor and Charley last almost too long but then you realise that Grash is the type of man who is forced to be suspicious. He'd be in trouble if he was not.

So I'd recommend to those of you who haven't listened to a Big Finish that you give this a spin. It doesn't really require you to have listened to 'Storm Warning' - which introduces Charley - to enjoy it (although there's a couple of references, particularly to Ramsay, that might nip over your head a tad but nothing too drastic) but it is really very very good.

Storm Warning [Eight Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

So we begin the Eighth Doctor's Big Finish run with 'Storm Warning', released in 2001.

A tale of aliens and an airship. Specifically the ill-fated R-101. In the real world the R-101 crashed into a French hillside on the 5 October 1930 killing 48 of the 54 people on board. It effectively bought an end to British airship development. In the Big Finish universe the crash still happens but everyone dies. Well, not quite everyone. One, Lord Tamworth (played with a fine stentorian air by Gareth Thomas) who is off to travel the stars. The other, Charley Pollard (India Fisher) leaves to travel with the Doctor. Except she's a paradox. She should have died on the R-101.

It's a nice gentle adventure. Not brilliant, not bad. In fact it does have the feel of a first story for a new Doctor. The story itself is less relevant that the introduction of a new incarnation. So even though the television movie introduced us to Paul McGann's Doctor this seems like his first proper adventure, even if it is audio only and lots of Doctor Who fans will never have heard it.

McGann is good again. There are similarities to David Tennant's portrayal in that he seems - at least here - to be a more human version of the Time Lord. He's certainly open about himself, spilling his secrets to Charley within minutes. It's early days yet so let's see how this pans out.

India Fisher does an excellent job with Charley Pollard as well. She's a couple of steps away from being jolly hockey sticks posh but combines brains and enthusiasm with a fine sense of adventure. She and the Eighth Doctor seem to work well together here.

The supporting cast does a good job to. I like Gareth Thomas's Lord Tamworth who is less of a pompous fool than his initial appearance leads you to suggest, although the idea of the Tamworth fighting with the Triskele's Uncreator Prime is as spectacularly odd as the fight between Patrick Moore and one of the aliens that takes place in the Independence Day UK and I'm not sure it would work in a television story but this is audio so things can be got away with.

Barnaby Edwards with South African accent makes Rathbone, the British Intelligence agent and key human bastard of the piece, pleasantly nasty but I think the script overdoes the 'in my country...' lion stories a bit. There's a hint towards the end that Rathbone is under the influence of the Uncreator Prime to explain his ruthless execution of the Triskele Lawgiver and he's given enough shades of grey to make him realistic enough. He's another in Doctor Who's long line of people who thinks the end justifies the means.

Nicholas Pegg as Frayling, the mild-mannered slightly put upon engineer and military officer doesn't have to stretch himself too much in a part that is as thin as the membrane of the airship itself.

I like the idea of the Trikele themselves. A species split into instinct and logic taking instruction from one single Lawgiver. A species that has passed beyond the 'let's invade and kill everyone stage' and is trying to be something else. A race whose nastier side is still pretty rubbish because they're a new generation who've not had much practice with this killing stuff and whose leader, the Uncreator Prime, gets beaten up by an old-ish member of the British aristocracy.

So this does a reasonable job. We meet our new Doctor and his new companion and sow seeds for future problems by the very fact that Charley is a paradox.

The Mutant Phase [Fifth Doctor + Nyssa]

The Mutant Phase begins with Thals. Thals examining the wreckage of planet after planet. Then, out of the nothingness comes a swarm of somethings, travelling at tremendous speed and with not a moments interest in the Thal ship. However in its wake the Thals are dragged through space and they end up drifting above a planet. A planet they should know well : Skaro.

And so it begins.

The Mutant Phase is a story about time, about biology and about The Doctor's relationship with the Daleks.

The Doctor and Nyssa's story begins with a bump in the time vortex, a Time Corridor and their arrival in a Kansas field. It's not long before things start to get complicated. They discover a body, Nyssa gets stung by a wasp and it dawns on the Doctor that he might have turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their attempts to flee just drag them back into the time corridor. The Doctor, having escaped it once, tries again.

But all roads lead to Skaro where the Daleks have a tale to tell and an offer to make to the Doctor. An offer the Doctor might not be able to refuse, although being the Daleks there are plans within plans within plans. The Daleks are never more devious than in Big Finish stories, if you exclude Power of the Daleks for the sake of argument.

I enjoyed The Mutant Phase, which I thought had an interesting premise at its heart, some fine performances, particularly Christopher Blake as Professor Ptolem and Jared Morgan as Commander Ganatus, the two Thals who find themselves working with the Doctor to deal with a problem that might end everything, everywhere.

There's also a rather wierd bunker where a handful of human survivors lurk on a Earth wrecked by 'the things'. Earth is important in this story. Very important. But we meet Albert (Andrew Ryan), Delores (Sara Wakefield) and Professor Karl Hendryk (Mark Gatiss) who all seem rather nice. Odd. But nice. This being Doctor Who, of course, nothing is as simple as that. Things are complicated.

The best thing about this story is that the Doctor is teamed up with just Nyssa again, which gives them both a chance to shine. Nyssa is - alongside Turlough - the companion that best works with the Fifth Doctor - despite all the material shipped out there involving Tegan and the Fifth Doctor. In some respects her smartness reflects that of Elizabeth Shaw and you wonder if that is a reason she gets shoved to the back of stories so often. Or just because The Fifth Doctor had so many companions.

Whatever the reason Sarah Sutton does a great job with Nyssa in this story. Refusing to be fobbed off by the Doctor's attempts to explain the issue of paradoxes and how to avoid them, getting involved with Professor Ptolem in getting to the bottom of the biological issues they're dealing with and just doing the basic companion job of asking questions in a way that doesn't sound too dull. Lovely stuff.

Peter Davison's good in this too. There's something about the Fifth Doctor. He's so calm most of the time. So respectable that when he eventually realises what might be about to happen and tries to get other people to understand he almost appears to be raving like a madman. You see it brilliantly in Snakedance and there are moments here to when he's struggling to get people to understand when it seems to be a similar situation. People don't want to believe him.

I should also pause to acknowledge the wonderful Dalek work by Nicholas Briggs and Alistair Lock. There's a lovely scene involving a Dalek and a Roboman attempting to explain what they had just seen - without spoiling it - that is fantastically well-played and almost makes you feel sorry for one particular Dalek.

So I enjoyed it. Like I almost always do. But I'm not sure it'll go down as a favourite.

The Holy Terror [The Sixth Doctor + Frobisher]

The Holy Terror is an odd story. Just as The Shadow of the Scourge took non-BBC television continuity from the Virgin New Adventures so The Holy Terror takes itself from the Doctor Who Magazine's comic strip, which is why it features The Sixth Doctor accompanied by Frobisher. 

Now if you're not aware of Frobisher - and really you should be - he's a shapeshifting private detective. Now, for reasons I can't quite remember, he's now generally 'stuck' in the shape of a penguin: a talking penguin. Obviously in the comic strip you had no idea what his accent was. And after all who knows how talking penguin mesomorph private detectives would actually speak. In The Holy Terror he's got an American accent. He's a gumshoe. It's not quite the cynical Humphrey Bogart type of gumshoe but a film noir gumshoe nonetheless. Which actually now my memory has clicked in properly is kind of how his comic strip introduction would make you think he would speak.*

Having the Doctor paired up with a large talking bird is always going to be a strange experience. Putting them into a story as strange as this makes for an interesting experience. The TARDIS, which is effectively on strike, lands inside a strange castle where a new God-King is about to take the throne. The society is bizarrely ritualistic. People have roles and they are expected to play them without question. Whether that role is God-King, High Priest, Nasty and conspiratorial hump backed brother to the God-King or Chief Guard. Things are expected of you. These are part character traits, part rituals. And the God-King's every move is written about by the Scribe. These are all titles. There are people with these titles but they're expected to follow that ritual without question. Even unto death.

It's all very strange. 

It's made even stranger by the fact that new God-King, Pepin VII doesn't want to be a God-King. He wants to abdicate. And that his brother Childeric might have gone entirely mad. 

The first two episodes in particular are quite a challenge. This isn't 'normal' Big Finish Doctor Who and it seems to be balancing precariously on the line between strange and silly but by the end this is something really dark and surprisingly moving. It's a compliment to Robert Shearman's writing that he can take it so far out there and then bring it back to being about something so human. So individual. It's hard to talk about the ending without spoiling it but I did actually find myself genuinely moved by it even as it comes at the end of horror after horror. 

I can see why you might get frustrated by it at points. The whole idea of Frobisher, the weirdness of everyone's behaviour to the point at which they're almost all like cliches and just the oddity of it makes it one of those stories I imagine illicits a marmite style reaction. I liked it a lot in the end, although I wasn't sure about it until I got to the end when the reasons for people's behaviours becomes much more clear. 

The performances are great. First and foremost Colin Baker is wonderful, especially in the final episode and the final scenes. They actually sound surprisingly Fifth Doctor-ish at points. Then Robert Jezack's Frobisher is fine. Frobisher's placed in an impossible position at points in this story and my only criticism is that he's a bit flat at points. The supporting cast is great, as usual, in Big Finish too. 

Dan Hogarth as Captain Sejanus, Helen Punt as Livilla, Stefan Atkinson as Pepin, Peter Sowerbutts as Clovis, Bruce Mann as Arnulf and various authors in small roles : Gary Russell (Guard), Jacqueline Rayner (Woman) and Mr. Shearman himself as Sculptor.

But the three standout for me. 

Peter Guinness as the mad, bad and dangerous to know Childeric. He's got the perfect voice to pitch a perfect performance for that kind of role. Then there's Roberta Taylor's Berengaria who manages to be brilliant throughout but particularly in her final scenes with her son Pepin. 

However the biggest applause go to Sam Kelly. He's got a lot to do throughout but in the final episode he manages to bring depth to a final confrontation where he's genuinely creepy and moving. If he hadn't been as good then the final scenes would not have been as emotional. 

So, for all its strangeness, I did really enjoy this. If you're listening and having doubts then stick with it until the end I think you'll find it worthwhile.

SEE BELOW FOR ADDITIONAL MASSIVELY SPOILERY BIT IF YOU'VE NOT HEARD THIS. PLEASE DON'T READ IT BEFORE LISTENING TO THE STORY AS I WOULDN'T WANT TO GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY. YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD.

The themes of free will and fiction reminded me a lot of Castrovalva. In fact, as I kind of mentioned above, this does in many respects feel like a Fifth Doctor story but that's my personal feeling. Probably. 

THERE. DONE.

Enjoy.







*I recommend getting hold of the collected Voyager Comic Strips if you want to know more about where Frobisher comes from. You should really read them anyway as they're some of the best Doctor Who Comic strips to come from DWM. 

The Shadow of the Scourge [The Seventh Doctor, Ace + Bernice Summerfield]

Well, that was rather good. The Shadow of the Scourge is a bit different to other stories I've listened to so far in that it sits in the Virgin New Adventures continuity and not the Television series continuity. If you believe the two are separate in the first place obviously, which I don't. Me, I'm a fan of everything being canon. 

Even if that makes for hard work justifying how, say, The Doctor is in Pompeii on Volcano Day twice and the Tenth Doctor doesn't comment on that fact. Not that he needs to. After all he's got things on his mind. I like to think that maybe the TARDIS bought him back because 'she' felt there was unfinished business from The Fires of Vulcan. But I digress. Drastically. Basically this story has Ace in her 'warrior' phase and Bernice Summerfield. 

If you are unfamiliar with Bernice Summerfield then I suggest you become familiar with her as soon as possible. She was created by Paul Cornell, who wrote The Shadow of the Scourge, as a new companion for the Virgin New Adventures. Based personality-wise, if memory serves, on Emma Thompson's character from The Tall Guy* she was a Professor of Archaeology with a fine line in dry sarcasm and intelligence. She appears in a Big Finish series of her own, which had begun in 1999. This is - I think - her first appearance in the Doctor Who Main Range. She's played - with fine style and panache - by Lisa Bowerman. 

The Ace - Bernice pairing makes an interesting combination. The New Adventures had put a lot of history behind that relationship - see the book/Big Finish Audio of Love and War for their first meeting. None of that is really felt in this story but Ace is a much more martial figure than she was the last time we saw her on the television (or in The Fearmonger). I always liked Ace - television version - but found the more angsty and angry New Adventures Ace a bit much. Here we don't get much of the latter even though that's who she is. She's more like the television version, just with her fighting abilities improved and wearing a much more fetching outfit. If the terrible cover is any guide. 

Yes, I'm sorry Big Finish but that cover is awful. There. Said it. Sorry. 

This story is thematically not dissimilar to Remembrance of the Daleks/Silver Nemesis. The Doctor has put a cunning plan together in order to trick a set of villains into destroying themselves. In this case the villains are The Scourge. They are pan-dimensional insects with a penchant for torture. They thrive on human fear and despair. They've been hunting humans down since there have been humans. They're basically not very nice. 

The first two episodes are basically setting up the Doctor's cunning plan and then the second two are how everyone manages to survive the Doctor's plan not quite going to...er...plan. The cliffhanger for episode two is rather wonderful.

This being a Paul Cornell story there's a lot of action inside the Doctor's head. No, really. If you've read Timewyrm: Revelation you'll know what I mean. If you haven't go and read it. Probably after you've read the first three in the Timewyrm series though, which might be a while. It's alright though. I'll wait....

Excellent. That Timewyrm: Revelation stuff was good wasn't it. Bernice even mentions it in passing whilst everything is kicking off. There's also a mention of owls, which I think is the law when it comes to Paul Cornell Doctor Who Seventh Doctor stuff. 

Anyway I digress. Again.

The Scourge can make humans do whatever they're told, which leads to some rather unpleasant moments and to enter our dimension they have to take over humans. This is also an unpleasant procedure. Painful.

It definitely has the New Adventures feel to it. The Doctor's devious as hell and punished for being so silly. It takes his friends to save him from himself, basically. Sylvester's brilliant throughout. From his smart-arse chess playing Doctor through to his full of doubt, almost broken, Doctor and back again. 


The final scenes when the tables are turned on the Scourge are a victory for friendship, love, hope and faith. For humanity. 

It's all rather good. Once more too the main cast get great support from other cast members : Michael Piccarilli, Holly King, Caroline Burns-Cook, Lennox Greaves, Nigel Fairs and Peter Trapani. Special kudos to Holly King though for a fantastic performance as Annie Carpenter who I think was my favourite 'guest' character in the story.

Anyway...well worth a listen. Especially - but not only - if you've read the New Adventures stories. 


 




*An under-rated film if you ask me with. Go watch it and see if you agree with me.