What's it about: Future Britain is bankrupt, its corporate owners facing financial ruin. Fortunately, the Universal Monetary Fund, and its slimy representative Sil, are willing to give its President a multi-billion credit bail-out... but terms and conditions apply, and Sil's proposed austerity measures go far beyond mere benefit cuts. Responding to a distress call, the Doctor and his companion Flip land in a London whose pacified population has been driven largely underground. But the horrors down there in the dark are as nothing to the horrors that await them at ConCorp HQ, where a young biochemist in Sil's employ is working on a permanent solution to the nation's terminal unprofitability. Because in the final account, Sil plans to make a killing...
Softer Six: 'Psychic bacteria, now I've heard
everything!' It's rare to see Colin
Baker having to work quite this hard to bring such troubled material to life
with gusto. His characterisation is a little all over the place, hopping from
his acerbic pre-Trial incarnation and his softer post-Trial version as though
Martin wasn't quite sure where to pitch the character. Baker is a strong enough
actor to tie the two together and bring a consistency to the performance but
there is little that marks out his character in Antidote to Oblivion. He's
happy to let the universe pass him by for a few aeons whilst he relaxes away on
a tropical beach in the company of Flip. He's happy to lie back and forget
about the worries of the universe, even when the TARDIS' distress signal is
sounding. Sometimes you have just got to have a break from the stresses of
life. As Time Lord's go he is in his prime. He's been back at the Garazone
Bazaar recently. He once spent some time as a rat catcher in Hamelin, you might
have heard of him. Ultimately he is a Time Lord, not a beach bum. He only has
fragments of memory of the time he met Crozier but he goes to great pains to
point out that he lost somebody very close to him when he did. The Doctor is
desperate not to lose Flip in the last episode, ranting at her forcefully as if
he can will her back to life. He wants to go after Peri and find out what
really happened to her but there are one or two variables to be considered
first.
Standout Performance: Nabil Shaban, naturally. He's trying
his hardest to make this story count for something but this is the least
interesting material he has ever been handed in the role.
Sparkling Dialogue: 'Weren't they once called something
else? The Yuck?' 'The UK, my Lord. Or Not So Great Britain.'
'That coat of yours could light the way on its own.'
Great Ideas: ConCorp manufactures PPMC (Population
Pacification & Mind Control) drugs
to the rest of the planet. In the future London is a broken wasteland, the
Thames is a toxic swamp and everybody is drinking bottle water packed with
suppressants and happy drugs. Anzor tries to bargain the Doctor's life for his
own by showing Sil how to beam a distress call at the Doctor's TARDIS. Anzor
suffered a malfunction of the chromosomes whilst he was inside the isolation
chamber and wound up a 'pink potato with his eyes out on stalks.' Probably no
more than he deserved. The Velendari are biological bugs that have bound together
around an alien intelligence. Their intelligence wishes to leave the confines
of the microbial world and occupy the living spaces beyond but to do see they
need a point of entry. After patenting the treatment, Sil and Cordelia are planning an outbreak of the diseases so they
can make a killing. When the time storm abated on Thoros Beta, the Lord Kiv was
dead. Peri's fate remains unknown.
Musical Cues: Whilst the story adheres to many of the
problems with the series during the mid eighties, the music is similarly
authentic. If you listened to it in isolation you might be convinced that it
was the work of the radiophonic workshop.
Isn't it Odd: The first episode is full of clunky exposition
that forms a report from Sil to Mav which apprises him (and us) and us of the
situation on Earth. Bizarrely the first episode seems to be entirely built
around the idea of Sil returning, featuring as it does, one scene after another
of the reptilian nasty bawling and arguing with various members of the cast.
Rather than setting up an intriguing plot and him being a central part of it,
it seems that Antidote to Oblivion's entire reason for existing is to bring
this character back. So I guess this is authentically of the time it is
supposed to be set in (the mid 1980s) where that sort of thing happened all the
time but it hardly makes for a riveting audio experience. Given that Mission to
Magnus went down like a cup of cold sick perhaps it wasn't the brightest idea
to even mention Anzor, even in passing. The first episode is 35 minutes long
but there is barely enough plot to squeeze into 5 minutes and the slack is
taken up with lots of drawn out two hander scenes that lack an sparkle or wit.
The first episode of any Doctor Who story has the potential to be the best
because it is setting up a spanking new scenario but in Antidote to Oblivion's
case it is the worst, a dull plod of description leading up to a tenapenny
cliff-hanger. What is Philip Martin's obsession about genetic experimentation
all about? Why does he insist on threatening the Doctor's assistants with such
obscene experiments and have Sil lusting over the thought? Did he only ever
have one Doctor Who story inside of him because so much of Antidote of Oblivion
is made up of elements of Vengeance on Varos, Mindwarp and Mission to Magnus
(Sil himself, Cordelia Crozier, Anzor). Sil's financial inveigling simply isn't
as interesting as he would like us to believe. Dawn Murphy's Crozier is a
dreadful old ham, one of those characters that talks in nothing but clichés ('How
I longed for you to answer Anzor's distress cal! Longed...I ached for it!').
What the hell was Anzor's repeated 'fiddlesticks!' curse all about? Was
it supposed to be funny? I comes across as a desperate production team going
for the lowest possible denominator in order to get a cheap laugh. The
Velendari are a complete sideline to the main story, utterly superfluous and
yet weirdly the most interesting thing on offer. Interesting insofar as their
nature (psychic bacteria is an intriguing notion) but not their aim which is
predictably to 'conquer' for no other reason than that is what monsters do in
Doctor Who. Ho and hum. As fun as Nabil Shaban might be in the role there
seemed to be something amiss with the modulation of Sil's voice in this story
and at points when Sil and Mav we both talking where I started to get a
headache. How on Earth can there be a surplus population of 90% on the Earth?
How could any planet cope with an overspill of that proportion? You wouldn't
need to wait for Sil to come along and wipe them all out...the lack of
resources and food would do that for you. Surely Peri & the Piscon Paradox
dealt with the whole post-Trial Peri problem as well as could be expected. The
Doctor certainly seemed to walk away from that story heartbroken but satisfied
with the explanation. Why would Big Finish want to start mucking around with
the whole messy business again? I hope this isn't a precursor to an adventure
that this on the way...BF needs to push forward with some original storytelling
rather than wallowing and perverting the series messy past. To wait four
episodes to discover that Sil murdered Crozier after the transplant of Kiv into
Peri was a failure might have been worthwhile had the story been building to
that point but it just feels like a random additional element tacked onto the
climax. And it gives Cordelia an excuse to go even more over the top when she
discovers Sil's betrayal ('Nooooooo!'). 'Even the worst diseases in the
universe wont survive that holocaust...' - what? Cordelia has unleashed all
manner of virulent diseases in an insane revenge plan and the explosion of the
tower wipes them all out? That's a handy little solution that prevents the
Doctor having to anything then.
Standout Scene: The fate of Peri plays on the Doctor's mind
and he still misses here, a touching admission amongst all the shouting.
5 comments:
wow, this is the first time I've disagreed so strongly with one of your reviews. Admittedly it does drag in places, especially the first episode, but I found it at least mildly entertaining and a worthy comeback for Sil
I actually rather enjoyed Antidote to Oblivion. I really liked the fact that it was both a sequel to ‘Mission to Magnus’ & ‘Mindwarp’ so it wasn’t just a story with Sil bookmarked into it. It’s probably the better of the three stories; Magnus was idiotic (Anzor “the doctor’s bully”, the child actor, the rampant sexism?), and Mindwarp was confusing beyond belief, so having a story which was a little more straightforward was nice. I felt the only downsides to the story were its rather slight plot, and Flip’s characterisation; which came across as a rather bad Ace (‘amazeballs’). The ending reminded me of Resurrection of the Daleks with Davros becoming infected, much like Sil does in this story. Much like 80s WHO when every major villain was expectedly killed off before being brought back in suspect circumstances. Having said that, Nabil Shaban’s performance as Sil is well worth the price tag alone. Overall I’d give it a solid 6 or 7.
I liked this story quite a bit, a 7/10 I'd say. The ending was quite disappointing; it was very sloppily written and seemed like cop out, but that was the only complaint I had. I thought Martin did a very good job of giving it that 80s Doctor Who feel while still making it accessible to a 21st century audience
Awful story and poor characterisation. Shame because Flip had a lot of potential.
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