Oh My Giddy Aunt: His eyes glitter with intelligence and
mischief, a perfect summation of Troughton’s Doctor. They glitter with
excitement at the chance to solve a mystery. When the Doctor says he knew a
pilot that shipped pre-fabricated units all across the system (Steven) it’s the
first instance I can remember (Polly and Ben aside, obviously) where the second
Doctor has referred to companions of his previous life. The whole point of
Troughton’s Doctor was looking forwards, not backwards but this was a lovely
touch that added a little extra depth to the scenario. Sophie tries to look for
a reason to trust the Doctor but with his heavy lined face like your favourite
Uncle, his good humour and knack of getting everybody out of a spot how could
anybody not have faith in him? There’s a wonderfully tense sequence where the
Doctor is completely alone and trying to salvage the situation but is all
fingers and thumbs and menaced by his own shadow. He knows that he shouldn’t
linger because the shadow could catch up with him at any moment but he cannot
resist a look at the incredible sky…it’s the reason he left Gallifrey after
all, to see wonders like that. The shadow doesn’t attack because it recognises
that the Doctor has a different relationship to time than the others. I love
the twist thrown in that the Doctor was out on the surface for a few years,
making sure that Sophie’s expedition could communicate with the Quiet Ones
safely. If it wasn’t for his message from the future he would never have spent
those years setting this all up.
Who’s the Yahoos: Jamie hardly ever knew what Zoe was
talking about because she was always thinking in terms of maths but to save
face he nods and smiles and pretends. He struggles to understand that
because he is a thousand years after his time then that means that he is
technically a thousand years old! This rocky, arid world reminds Jamie of when
he walked on the moon. Jamie suffers claustrophobia and culture shock inside
the spacesuit as they walk across the airless surface – he was never meant to
exist in this kind of setting!
Brains’n’Beauty: Zoe sighs as she has to explain things to
Jamie scientifically knowing that he isn’t going to understand her. The truth
is he grasps some of the words and manages to intuit the rest. The Doctor has
absolute faith in Zoe, if she says she has done something then despite
testimony to the contrary he still believes her.
Standout Performance: Hines’ second Doctor continues to be a
revelation, Troughton in all but name. I can’t really add much that I haven’t
said before; Hines offers an affectionate, realistic and most of all accurate
portrayal of the most impish of the Doctors whilst simultaneously playing Jamie
with wild eyed wonder. How he hops from one to the other in one scene with such
conviction deserves much praise. It doesn’t even feel like an interpretation
like with some of the other actors, it just feels like Troughton is really in
the studio which affords these second Doctor stories a great deal of scope.
Great Ideas: The central difference that I am noticing about
this series and the Companion Chronicles is the prominence of the Doctor in
each release (but then given each ranges title that is hardly a great
surprise). He step from first to third person really makes a difference in that
respect. Realising a pulsar hanging in the skies of a deserted, rocky world is
the sort of visual that show would have had trouble visualising at the time (although
with the camera sliding so evocatively between the Earth and the moon in The
Seeds of Death opening titles I wouldn’t say impossible). Its another tragic
reminder of the wondrous sights that the two time travellers would lose when
the Time Lords catch up with them in The War Games. An ancient city on a planet
orbiting a pulsar, the Doctor describes it as ridiculous but then the best
locations in Doctor Who usually are. There are different time zones in
different sections of the building, shadows of time like wraiths moving through
the rooms and turning its victims a perfect silvery white whilst ageing them to
death. I love the way that Guerrier sets up his surprises early on, the statues
that the travellers spotted when they first arrived aren’t statues at all but
members of Sophie’s crew trapped in time like flies caught in amber. The
extreme gravity of the pulsar means that time moves much slower but the base is
in sync with standard time. If you go outside it will feel like its only been a
few minute when it fact its been a couple of weeks. By the end of the mission
they will have all done the same number of shifts in and out to make sure they
are all in sync chronologically. By the time they get home everyone they know
will have aged twenty years. That’s a fantastic premise for a story with lots
of intriguing possibilities. Whether they came to this planet to unpick the
mystery of the people who lived here or to dodge military service we will never
know. There’s no sign of an exodus or a crisis, the population have simply
vanished. The Quiet Ones haven’t been trying to attack but communicate, trying
to ask them to keep the noise down. They had lived on a rogue planet that moved
freely through space and they had developed a technology that allowed them to
capture starlight to power their great city. Their planet had been caught in
the gravity of the pulsar and as a last resort to stop themselves from going
extinct they used their resources to turn them themselves into beings of pure
light and energy. The idea that Sophie and her team can now communicate with
the Quiet Ones and start a real exchange of ideas is quite an exciting one. The
things they could learn could change a civilisation.
Audio Landscape: These Big Finish/Audio Go hybrids are
setting out to prove that you don’t need to swamp the audience with sound
effects to tell an evocative story. The audio setting is actually rather
limited with only the basic sound effects filled in but this lends the audience
more time to focus on the cold beauty of Guerrier’s writing and the strength of
Hines’ performance. I wouldn’t want all stories to be cut back like this but as
a range of stories that puts its ideas and storytelling before a deluge of
sound effects, the Destiny series is proving to be surprisingly dramatic in its
simplicity. TARDIS console hum, materialisation sound, squeaky doors, walking
on grating, clipping on space suits, bleeping consoles, spacesuit hydraulics,
connecting a wire.
Musical Cues: The music feels astonishingly accurate for the
period, revelling in the dramatic stings of musique concrete to make its
mark. As things get more tense towards the end of the first half, the music
takes on a sinister, ghostly wail that creeps under the skin and festers.
Standout Scene: The audacity of the eleventh Doctor turning
up in this story is marvellous. The second Doctor is appalled that the laws of
time could be broken so flagrantly, psychic paper, a Doctor from the future
sending him a message on psychic paper. He gets an impression of a young man
with a floppy fringe and bow tie trying to warn him about salvaging Sophie’s
research. The fact that Matt Smith is such a fan of Troughton, it feels like a
lovely touch that he should be able to (in character at least) get to speak to
him across time. Guerrier draws a parallel between them which is a point well
worth making. We never do learn why it was so important that he does as
instructed so maybe that storyline will be picked up in the eleventh Doctor’s
story.
Result: ‘This thing is intelligent…one touch and we’ll
age to death.’ A story that definitely lives up to its title! With its
mixture of hard science and adventure-lust, there is a great deal in common
between Shadow of Death and the recent Stephen Baxter novel The Wheel of Ice.
Simon Guerrier is at his best when writing these hour long adventures,
capturing the era he chooses to set in with pitch perfection and always given
his chosen set of regulars some firm development. His mixture of cold science
and wonder recalls The Cold Equations from the Companion Chronicles range and
there are even touches of the new series’ The Impossible Planet in the scenario
of a colony on a rocky planet being watched over by a spatial phenomenon. This
isn’t just a hotch potch of other peoples ideas though, it has a chilly
strength all of its own that comes from Guerrier’s naturalistic dialogue and
tough as nails atmosphere. It’s a massively embryonic setting with plenty of
storytelling possibilities that Guerrier sets up in the first half so he can
get under your skin in the second. This is a period of the show that I have so
often come to associate with fun (not just the fact that Troughton, Hines and
Padbury were like three kids tumbling about time and space but the general tone
of the stories is pure entertainment) and so its like having a handful of cold
water tossed in your face to see the era being treated so seriously. It works
because of everybody’s commitment to the project and because the writing is so
clear of the tone it is trying to achieve. You may just find yourself shivering
at the chilling ideas before the end of the piece. My only disappointment was
the quick wrap up and the audacity of making the apparently dangerous situation
all a big misunderstanding…it wasn’t exactly the conclusion I was hoping for.
However the teeth-on-edge tone of the piece for the most part more than
compensates and this is still another win for the prolific and consistently
excellent Simon Guerrier: 8/10
1 comment:
It's the best impression of Patrick Troughton I've ever heard. He's actually there! Hines gives a masterful performance. Hopefully there's a lot more of Hines work to discover through Big Finish. I've always been bitterly disappointed that so much of Troughton's work has been lost. This fills the gap nicely.
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