An English Gentleman: There’s an amusing reference to the
length of the Doctor’s hair which was at its all time most hippyish in season
20. One thing you can be sure of: things change around the Doctor. Sometimes
you’ve got to love the differences between the fifth Doctor and Sixie. The
former punches somebody and apologies politely whereas the latter would have
throw his whole weight into it and probably belly slammed him for good measure.
Alien Orphan (the Older): Within this foursome pairing up
Nyssa and Turlough is the most original thing you can do since they barely
clapped eyes on each other in the TV series.
Mouth on Legs: ‘Exploring a dark forest in the middle of
the night on a world where anyone we meet might have space rabies?’ is one
of the first things that Tegan says when she walks out of the TARDIS. Not ‘ooh
nice planet’ or ‘just feel that breeze on your face’ or anything
remotely positive. Oh no. It takes Tegan ten minutes to suggest they get back
to the TARDIS. Does she literally want to spend all her on the ship? Where is
her sense of adventure? ‘I’ve got such a headache!’ blah blah blah… ‘This
whole place gives me the creeps!’ yaaaaaawn. Cole can’t quite keep it up
though…as much as the script editor might want him to write Tegan as abrasive
as possible she becomes much more pro-active as the story progresses. In this
case that is a relief because she drops the attitude and gets on with servicing
the plot in an positive way. She gives some of her strength to Sasha when she
starts doubting herself and its probably the kindest thing I have ever heard
Tegan say. By the end of the story she has dropped the attitude and is
genuinely engaging with the story (a shame it isn’t really a story worth
engaging in but points for effort) and asking the right questions. I love that
she gives strength to Anulf as well, reminding him to focus on pulling his
community together rather than falling to pieces at the first hurdle. Tegan is
even concerned about somebody else for a change, reminding the Doctor that
families and childrens lives are at stake.
Alien Orphan (the Younger): Nyssa has a similar moment to
the one in Cobwebs where she comes face to face with a situation that
approaches medicine that is completely alien to her.
Standout Performance: Remember in Cobwebs when I said that
Janet Fielding’s delivery is believable in about one in three lines? In episode
one she has trouble saying the word ‘bye!’ with conviction. How is that
possible? It’s something we all say all the time! Listen to when Fielding is
given more casual dialogue to speak, like when she is providing succour to
Anulf and Seska. Suddenly she sounds perfectly normal. That’s how to do it, not
transforming her into a wailing banshee all the time. It might be that I’ve just listened to The Crimes of Thomas
Brewster and the Key2Time trilogy on the trot but is it my imagination or does
Paul Shelley sound an awful lot like David Troughton?
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Let us kill the spike haired girl!’ – I
was literally screaming ‘Do it! Do it!’ but alas my cries where for
nought.
‘The sickness is in you. Its all you’ve ever looked for’ –
there is an attempt to explain away Mertil’s bad attitude at least. Doesn’t
stop her being any less irritating though.
Great Ideas: The Doctor asked the TARDIS to prick up her
metaphorical ears and see if she could detect any mentions of Rictus syndrome
and take them there. The scenario of a medical team trapped in a forest
settling down and turning their profession into a religion over time with a
culture emerging that obsesses over cleanliness (just as a surgeon would) is
nice. But its highly unoriginal to anybody who has seen The Face of Evil which
is built on precisely the same premise with the emphasis instead being placed
on the instinctive and intelligence of a survey team. The Shades were once
living beings but turned by some cataclysm into revenants. They are the
colony’s ancestors, 44 patients with suspected Rictus syndrome were quarantined
and euthanised when no cure was found. There was an energy blast when the
burning of the bodies too place, an out rush of intr-dimensional energy tearing
through different layers of reality, mauling mind and matter and creating the
Shades. Living ghosts forged in the fallout of some tremendous explosion. All
this time they have just been trying to talk to them. Ooh scary.
Audio Landscape: With its jungle noises screaming out at you
from the off there is more than a little touch of Kinda to this story aurally
(and quite a nice touch considering the next tale). Snapping branches as they
tear through the forest, scrubbing hands, whispers in the air, the wind at the
top of the cliffs and the waves crashing down below, a rive rushing by, Nyssa
and Turlough fighting against the current, a disgruntled crowd, medical
computer voice, a sparking console.
Isn’t it Odd: Three is too many. There I said it. Unless the
writing is exceptionally good (there would be a couple that are the exception
to this rule in the nine stories to feature the 5th Doctor, Nyssa,
Tegan and Turlough) or there is the time to explore all of their reactions (the
reason the 1st Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan/Vicki worked so well
is that the stories were longer and slower and allowed them all to have a slice
of the limelight) one of four regulars is always going to end up short changed.
Given that Nyssa has achieved a new sense of dominance and that Tegan doesn’t
go anywhere quietly it usually falls on Turlough or even the Doctor (heaven
forbid!) to take a back seat and allow the others to take centre stage. It
should never be the way. In the case of The Whispering Forest, Nyssa and
Turlough suffer the same as Turlough and Tegan did in Terminus but instead of
wandering around aimlessly in ventilation ducts they are left to circumambulate
in the forest. I do appreciate it when writers go to the lengths of creating a
new form of diction to show articulately how different things are in this time
but Cole adopts a rather melodramatic flair for his characters cod-religious
dialogue which then encourages melodramatic performances. Everybody talks in
bizarre expository terms that don’t sound terribly natural (‘I will return
to Purity to give my husband’s people comfort at this difficult time!’). ‘This
stuff tastes pure as a mountain spring…’ – does anybody actually talk like
this? Mertil is so completely over the top in every scene that there wasn’t one
point where I could invest in this character. What is the obsession with these
characters that are always angry (‘you naïve little fool!’). Is
she supposed to be so unbearable that the contrast with Tegan makes Ms Jovanka
more tolerable? The politics of this world are far too argumentative, talky and
cod-SF (plenty of ‘I am my fathers daughter and you will listen to me!’
nonsense) to buy into. When politics are written in the form of clever plot
mechanics and subtle dialogue it can be very intelligent viewing (The West Wing
for example) but when its just a bunch of people standing around bitching its
just waffle. ‘ We know the Takers take! What else is there to know?’ –
oh dear… There is something very bizarre about crowd mentality in science
fiction communities. They seem to be the most easily swayed groups of people
depending on how the plot needs them to react. So in one breath in The
Whispering Forest they are condemning the Doctor and Tegan and attempting to
murder them but in the next they are accepting of them. All very weird. Because
they have been wandering about the forest and doing nothing of note for two
episodes Nyssa and Turlough have to discover all the things about the community
in part three that the Doctor and Tegan did in part one. Déjà vu? The
cliffhangers to episode two and three are the dullest kind of false jeopardy,
moments that spring up to serve no purpose than to be a cliffhanger rather than
growing organically from the story and they are resolved in seconds in the most
banal fashion. In a quirk of technobabble the story is over with nobody doing
anything especially clever and even Tegan mentions how neatly it has all worked
out. Ho and hum.
Standout Scene: The twist reveal that Purity is based around
a vast medical ship is probably this story’s most effective moment. Until you
think about how many times this sort of thing has been done before. The scene
where Turlough booms through the colony as the voice of the Shades was
absolutely hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Has the story really
sunk to the level of channelling The Underwater Menace? The ending is
spectacular for sure and really encourages the interest for the next story.
Result: I’m coming to the conclusion that achingly
traditional stories simply aren’t my cup of tea because I found my mind wanting
to wander throughout much of The Whispering Forest and I had to force myself to
keep it on track. It’s not a bad story, per se, it’s just commonplace
with very little that you wouldn’t have seen elsewhere in Doctor Who done with
a great deal more oomph. It’s not even that indicative of season 20 which, for
all its flaws, is a time of the thematic exploration of some quite weighty
scientific ideas for the show. Beyond The Kings’ Demons there is little that
year which is as conventional, plot wise, as this story. Whilst the story plays
out along familiar lines (monsters in the forest – Nightmare of Eden, Planet of
the Daleks, a colony that has been seeded by a crashed spaceship – The Face of
Evil, Frontios, cod SF politics – Meglos, Arc of Infinity) it’s weighed down
further by unbelievable dialogue (everybody talks as though they are imparting
notifications all the time – ‘we must deal with my step-daughter and the
strangers!’ or ‘so this is how the Takers keep taking!’) and weak
characterisation (not so much the regulars because even Tegan is well handled
for the most part here, but the guest cast fail to inspire) and a resolution
which fails to bounce (the nature of the Shades is easily guessed). Valiantly
trying to breathe some life into all of this is director Barnaby Edwards and
Fox and Yason taking care of the sound design and music but it’s not their best
work by a long chalk and adds to the feeling of dissatisfaction. The Whispering Forest has some pretty hefty
credentials propping up what is a very suspect script and like many an episode
in series six of the new series it tries to convince you with a riveting cliffhanger
that it is a lot better than it actually is: 4/10
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