Softer Six: ‘Have a heart, Doctor. Have two…’ It’s
the rarest of things – a story that fails to give Colin Baker the moments of
charm I have come expect from a Big Finish story. The Doctor is little more
than a function of the plot, dishing out explanations and getting everybody
from A to B but there is no substance to his character, no personality.
And with Colin Baker in the driving seat that is quite a feat. Peri is not
convinced that they are going to live as the TARDIS buffets about madly and the
Doctor wishes she would have a little faith in her piloting ability! As ever
Peri’s Americanism drive him crazy (‘do you have to say cops?’). He’s
not with a travelling circus and his coat is all part of his look, not an
affectation. Peri describes him as a polymath. The Doctor assumes that his past
companions would recognise him even if he has changed his face, just a faint
glimmer or recognition. In a rather touching moment the Doctor asks Victoria to
look into his eyes to find the man she once knew even if it might get him
killed.
Busty Babe: If there was ever an argument for the notion that
the 80s companions could match and exceed their 60s counterparts than this
story is just about all the proof you need. Peri is spunky and funny and intelligent
and violent. Victoria just wails a lot. Peri is not entirely opposed to nuclear
power but she thinks the whole idea is risky when the consequences of it going
wrong are so disastrous. She wonders how she could have ever thought that the
‘other side’ could possibly want her opinion when its always about the
Doctor – she’s just the bait. Listening to Peri the brainbox having to throw up
great lumps of technobabble was worth a chuckle if only to think of poor Nicola
Bryant having to say all the lines! Victoria thinks that Peri would have made a
very good teacher. When he finds out that Peri has been quite handy with a stun
gun he hopes he never gets on her bad side and she suggests that he is always
on her bad side.
Scream Queen: ‘Who was that terrible woman?’ was
generally what I kept thinking throughout Power Play. Victoria has never really
made an impact on me and I’m not entirely sure why. Deborah Watling was fine in
the role and did everything that was asked of her and the chemistry between the
three leads during season five is one of its most pleasing features. The
stories are all pretty much top notch too. I just don’t find much there beyond
the wailing and the need to be protected – there is very little substance to
her character. It would appear that time has not been as kind to Watling as it
has to many other Doctor Who stalwarts from the sixties and she no longer
sounds anything like the plummy voiced, upper class girl that she used to be
(unlike, say, Peter Purves who barely sounds like he has aged a day). There is
something very odd going on with her voice in Power Play and she sounds
steaming drunk during every scene that she appears in, it might be a nervous
wobble but I seem to recall Watling sounding just as tipsy during her contributions
to the Wiped documentary on the Lost in Time DVD box set. She’s probably the
last companion that I would choose to catch up with (Downtime did very little
for me and I was much more excited at catching up with Sarah Jane) and the
thought of teaming her up with the sixth Doctor is quite jarring in a way that
teaming him up with Jamie in the recently trilogy never did. Which is odd
considering they are from the same era. To aficionados of Victoria this might
be a more appealing prospect (or an even greater letdown) but I have to admit I
went into this story with a degree of trepidation.
‘Don’t forget Waterfield, my door is always open…’ It
would appear that Victoria, like Sarah Jane after her, has decided to continue
the Doctor’s good work and protect the Earth. She’s angry that we might end up
destroying this planet through greed and if that makes her a bit mad then she
is proud of it. When she spies the TARDIS Victoria almost has an apoplectic
fit! David thinks she has gone stark staring crazy as she starts banging on the
door of an obsolete police box and screaming out for the Doctor and Jamie.
Victoria thought that if she told David the truth about herself he would be
prepared for the madness that was about to ensue but how do you package a story
that relays that you were born 150 years ago and used to travel in time and
space without sounding like you belong in a retirement home for the clinically
insane? She states that it wouldn’t have made any difference if the Doctor had
admitted to her that he was a Time Lord and perhaps it was important that she
didn’t know. There is something in that actually because had his companions
known about his origins and had mentioned it in passing on their adventures to
other races that the Time Lords might have had contact with…well they might
have caught up with him a lot sooner. When Victoria mentioned that the Earth
was in danger time and again during their travels it occurred to me that she
only ever left the planet twice (Skaro and Telos) – aside from Liz Shaw was Victoria
the companion who left the Earth the least? When she’s under pressure like the
old days and trapped in a time corridor with the Doctor she starts screaming
and wailing and shouting ‘I can’t take much more of this!’ I would have
accidentally let her be swallowed into oblivion and made up some excuse once
I’d escaped. It would have been kinder to her. And the story.
Standout Performance: I would say Nicola Bryant in this
story because compared to Watling’s deranged rantings she really does shine. After
a while I wondered if listening to Watling was a punitive experience for any
pessimistic reviews I had written in the past. Dominic is a superbly
underplayed (especially compared to everything around him) villain brought to
life by Miles Jupp who I would suggest deserves a second story because there is
clearly some mileage in the idea of a planet assassin. Especially one as silky
as this.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘What would you prefer, John Smith?’
‘Are you saying that someone’s put a contract out on Earth?’
Great Ideas: What a simple idea – the intergalactic police!
Why hasn’t the show ever indulged in such a thing before? If anything the
Doctor’s erratic driving would be cause for a considerable fine and possibly
imprisonment! The Doctor doesn’t have any of the correct paperwork if he should
be pulled over but then it has never been a legal requirement. An element more
powerful than Uranium 235 being introduced to a nuclear reactor? It was
Transuranic; an element higher then uranium in the periodic table. One of the
earliest known complex multi organisms to evolve on the Earth which vanished in
pre history has turned up 500,000 years later. When the Doctor breaks in it is
like a ghostly nuclear power plant. A starship parked incongruously at one end of
a temporal corridor to prehistoric Earth. Dominic can provide a naturally
occurring element that generates more energy through fission than uranium
coupled with the means to dispose of the waste product safely by dumping it
500,000 years in the past. Which is long enough for the spent isotopes to burn
out before life begins in earnest on this little planet. He’s trying to turn
the entire planet Earth into a bomb and use the time corridor to escape justice
with the stockpile of fission material to power his spaceship. The Doctor
thinks that he is a con man, tempting the people of any planet with what they
desire, winning their trust, taking whatever he is after and leaving them high
and dry. When he is in fact a planetary assassin, contracted to destroy worlds
in their entirety or render them uninhabitable. That was a pretty decent twist,
actually. I never saw that one coming and what an awe inspiring (in a very dark
fashion) job that is to have! The reason the aliens have been pursuing the
Doctor is because they want to frame him for Dominic’s crimes. He destroys the
planet, the Doctor shoulders the blame and Dominic nips off in the TARDIS to
start off again elsewhere. Loved the reveal that it was the Terrible Zodin that
put the contract out on the Earth (it made me smile so much it lifted the score
of this story by a whole point). She is Terrible, after all.
Audio Landscape: The TARDIS having a total paddy with
explosions rocketing the console room, crows screaming, car revving and
growling along the road, rebellious marches, banging on the TARDIS door, the
Doctor and Victoria trapped in the time corridor, the gurgling alien voices,
clanking chains, the closing explosion and static.
Musical Cues: I couldn’t get on with the crude electronic
score for this adventure. It does have a feel of Timelash about it so I can’t
say that it isn’t authentic but that’s as far as my praise goes. It fights
against the tone of most scenes, suggesting things that simply aren’t happening
and causing a great deal of confusion because of it. The weird ‘space invaders’
tune that accompanies Victoria when she returns possessed is so insistent it
rams the idea down the audiences throat. Simon Robinson’s music for the seventh
Doctor’s Lost Stories was similarly misjudged and it’s a strong reminder how
the atmosphere can be threatened with an ill judged musical score. How many
times can you possibly insert the Doctor Who theme tune into the music?
Robinson threatens to topple Keff McCulloch’s ranking on that score! So pleased
to see Jamie Robertson back next month.
Isn’t it Odd: The early scenes of rioters protesting about
the oil industries are ripped straight out of the opening episode of The Green
Death. After the carefully considered sound design and performances of The
Guardians of Prophecy the first episode of Power Play is plagued with
discordant music, out of control performances and a general sense of hysteria.
Its quite an assault on the ears! The first episode is literally all over the
place with lots of unconnected events taking place but failing to cohere into a
dynamic narrative – there’s the Doctor and Peri being chased by the
intergalactic police, Victoria and
David being kidnapped, the anti-nuclear demonstrations and the oddly timed
reveal about the Transuranic element just in time for a cliffhanger in a
nuclear meltdown. Its so scatterbrained I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to
be focussing and the torturous production values and deafening performances
didn’t help. Episode two gets even more deranged with Victoria shrieking and
screaming her way through every scene. They should have been able to guess that
Victoria had been possessed by the aliens because that was the only point where
she wasn’t emoting like a Catherine wheel. When she starts talking with the
slurred tendencies of Iris Wildthyme after a night on the town and having
guzzled down a dozen bottles of Tequila why is it that nobody seems to
notice? She’s…literally….talkinggggggg…..like….thiisisssss! The least
convincing and most obvious possession ever. Irritatingly the synopsis seems to suggest that Victoria has a
grudge the Doctor and his return will see some fireworks erupt but in fact that
is all a big ruse. She’s taken over by some forgettable aliens and its them
that want him dead. What is the point of bringing her character back for that?
The ‘I must find the Doctor and destroy him’ cliffhanger must rank as one of
the worst of all time; horrendously performed, obvious (its signposted for
about ten minutes), badly paced (there’s an odd pause between the Doctor’s
‘Noooooo!’ and the title music) and entirely without threat (like Victoria is
going to kill the Doctor!). Come episode three we have been listening to these
aliens converse in their own little subplot for over an hour and I still didn’t
have any idea who they were or what they were about. There is a really odd
moment where the protestors who aren’t used to this sort of outer space
malarkey discuss how cliché ridden pretending to be ill to escape is as though
they have done this sort of thing all the time and then as a knowing wink to
the audience their escape plan goes completely unnoticed. I think its
supposed to be funny but it just feels jarring and superfluous and strangely
out of character. The thought of old lady Victoria dribbling over Dominic was
enough to turn my stomach. I’m not entirely sure how the Doctor reaches the
conclusion that Dominic wants to turn the planet into a bomb because he hasn’t
even hinted at such a scheme…its just that we’ve reached a point where this
kind of crisis is required. ‘Fortunately unlike the male of your species I
don’t have any vulnerable organs in that area!’ – really? The scenes of
the Doctor and Victoria have an audible resemblance to those precious moments
of the Doctor bumbling about in the Timelash. Thanks for reminding us of that!
There’s an odd effect of a creaking sailing ship that keeps sounding and gives
completely the wrong idea about the setting. I thought given the tone of the
synopsis and the setting of a nuclear power plant that there would be some
ethical lesson to be learnt from this story but Hopkins chooses to shy away
from the moral implications of his villains use of nuclear power to destroy the
planet. It is literally just a plot point rather than a message. In an example
of a narrative that hasn’t quite fulfilled its function of explaining away the
events of the story the Doctor, Peri and Victoria tie up all the remaining
unanswered questions in one long last gulp of exposition at the climax (why the
Doctor and Peri were dragged down and why Victoria and David were kidnapped).
The double whammy conclusion is another reminder of Timelash, especially
considering the second climax involves missiles screaming towards the planet.
David’s sacrifice is blunted by the fact that we never had time to explore his
relationship with Victoria or understand what he meant to her. It feels like a
superficial act to close the story on rather than a heroic one. There’s an
agonising moment at the climax where the Doctor asks Victoria to go with him…I
knew what the answer would be but the very idea filled me with bone gnawing
terror. Would this really have taken place in season 23a? I just can’t see it
somehow…
Standout Scene: Any scene with Victoria as a reminder not to
do this sort of thing again. Ever.
Result: Probably the Lost Story that I was anticipating
listening to the least, Power Play didn’t let me down on that score. The
thought of the sixth Doctor and Victoria being paired up didn’t fill me with
any excitement and anything that might have come from this reunion is
squandered thanks to Deborah Watling’s abysmal performance. There is no
other way to describe it. Sounding like she has had one drink too many, needs
to swallow down some phlegm and that the HRT has been overdosed, I was either
squinting to try and understand what she was saying or cringing with
embarrassment when I could decipher her overdone hysteria. Its rare to find a
performance that is so attention grabbingly awful in a Big Finish production
and even rarer that the return of an element from the past feels this
perfunctory. However Hopkins does portray Victoria as a useless, wailing victim
so you can’t exactly say his characterisation is perfidious. Lacking the
charming characterisation of Other Lives or the apocalyptic urgency of The Last,
Power Play proves that most writers do mature over time like a fine wine and
this journey into 80s storytelling lacks many of the essential ingredients that
might have made it work. The (intriguing) ideas are only superficially
discussed, the is pacing all over the place, the cliffhangers superfluous and
the characters little more than ciphers to service the story rather than
anything worth investing in (the protestors are, without exception, completely
hollow). Episodes one and two are all experience and no explanation and
episodes three and four are all explanation (or rather exposition) and no
experience, I preferred the latter half of the story because the hysterics of
the early episodes were brought down to an acceptable level and the whole play was
much more manageable once people stopped shouting and started talking. Plus
some of the ideas on display did have merit. Don’t let Simon Robinson score any
more of these stories, his style is a collection of discordant sounds that
polluted any good will I might have had towards this adventure. A more robust,
melodious score would have made this a much more pleasing experience. Dominic
is a great silky smooth villain with a wonderful modus operandi but he
deserved a much better playing field to strut his stuff on: 5/10
5/10? I'd say you were being extremely generous! Distinctly average, and let down by one quite shockingly bad performance.
ReplyDeleteI've just listened to this one knowing it wasn't very popular but I have to say I rather enjoyed it. I thought Deborah Watling was perfectly fine and I could hear the young Victoria in her performance. Miles Jupp is great as Dominic as is David Warwick as Dysart. The protesters were a bit more generic and I do agree that David's sacrifice had no impact as we knew very little about him or his friendship with Victoria. I quite liked the disparate plots and how they eventually tied together.
ReplyDeleteHorses for courses and all that.