What's it about: Winter at the seaside. The wind blows. The waves crash. People are dying and a strange spindly figure stalks the cold, deserted streets. A typical holiday for the Doctor and Leela in other words. When they stumble across a grotesque series of murders at the coast, the TARDIS travellers realise the local constabulary is out of its depth. Something supernatural has come to town, something evil. And it all seems to be tied in to a particular young family. Monsters lurk behind strange doors. Tragic secrets wait to be uncovered. And somewhere, deep within, the Crooked Man sits. He is waiting for you.
Teeth and Curls: The Doctor is in high spirits as he visits
the seaside, whistling to himself as he strolls along the prom. I was instantly
reminded of his trip to Brighton beach in The Leisure Hive. Showing how his
mood can turn on a sixpence he goes from happy go lucky holiday to harbinger of
doom, worried about the lack of activity in the seaside town and smelling death
on the breeze. The Doctor is about to tell the police not to do anything he
wouldn't do but that doesn't really narrow it down. He is a mere humble genius
who never gives out his autograph. This is one of those stories where the
Doctor is one step ahead of the audience and it is actually rather exasperating
because of it - he knows that Lesley is a walking cliché, he knows that Celia
is trying to poison them and yet there seems to be no connection to these
random moments until he joins the dots for us. He loves it when people try to
kill him because it means he is on the right track! Why does he wear such a
long scarf when he does so much running? Rather than sympathise with the
'lesser' characters the Doctor seems to taunt them for their lack of literary
merit. He really has developed a nasty streak this year.
Standout Performance: Unlike producer David Richardson I do
not hold Sarah Smart in high esteem as an actress, despite some impressive
credits on her CV. In particular her turn in Doctor Who (The Rebel Flesh two
parter) was appalling; an agonising, one note performance that turned a
sympathetic character into a pantomime villain. Fortunately Smart is far more
on the money in The Crooked Man, handed a more realistic character she finds
some emotional truth and delivers a much more considerate performance. However
given the character isn't given a great deal of interest to do in the first
half of the play and is poorly motivated in the second half it still isn't the
breakout role in Doctor Who for Smart that perhaps they were aiming for.
Personally I thought Neil Stuke's Crooked Man was far more impressive, a role
that could so easily have been bungled and yet he manages to be both over the
top and seriously sinister (this is probably the effect they were trying to
achieve with the Jester in Axis of Insanity but it is realised so much more
effectively here). His delivery of the cliff-hanger punchline gave me chills.
Sparkling Dialogue: 'Scarcity doesn't imply value. It can
represent a lack of interest.'
'You will die in terrible agony!' 'Only in the next draft!'
Audio Landscape: A crusty old till, seagulls screaming, a
sea breeze, a smashed window, baby gurgling, child's toy playing, scraping
vegetables, lighting the stove, creaky doors, pouring out wine, doorbell, tea
china, smashing china, pages tearing, burning, bashing in a door, tearing wood,
growling, flapping pages, banging on the door.
Isn't it Odd: I had one big problem with The Crooked Man, at
least in the first episode, that made it a frustrating experience. Whilst I
found the Doctor and Leela investigating the spate of crimes in the village
vintage material, I lost interest whenever the story shifter back to Laura and
her domestic situation. It takes an age to see how one is tied into another so
for some time it feels like two irreconcilable plots are existing side by side
for no reason whatsoever. Whilst on the whole I think that Tom Baker is
improving in leaps and bounds with each season of 4DAs, he still has the
occasional lapse where he hiccups on a line of dialogue and sounds terribly
stilted. Listen to the moment he repeats 'Procedure? Procedure?', it has
that Sylvester McCoy defect of sounding like it is the first time he has
clapped eyes on the script. Lesley King might be the very cliché of the TV
personality but that doesn't make Lizzie Roper's overdone performance any
easier to swallow. The Doctor suggests the baby is being stolen because it is
fuelled by a limitless imagination and it could be used to keep the bridgehead
open. A young child perhaps, but surely a baby doesn't have any kind of
imagination until it has a firm grasp on language and the world around it? It
would have been far more shocking had the baby been murdered for its place in
our world. I don't think it would take a genius to figure out that Simon comes
from he fiction world given he can sense where his son is and tackle the
creatures that exist there. I didn't buy that Laura would accept a substitute
father from another realm quite so easily with the evidence presented, even if
the boys father did abandon them so abruptly. The twist is foreshadowed insofar
as dropping hints that Simon isn't real but there is no real establishment of
Laura's motives in this arrangement. As far as she is concerned it just feels
terribly contrived, inventing a perfect husband who just happens to turn up and
pick up the pieces where her ex left off. Would anybody accept that quite so
easily? What was Dorney saying about poorly developed characters? The ending
where Simon holds back the hordes of clichéd characters and seals the breach is
too simple. What this story needs is time to breathe.
Result: I'm so conflicted with The Crooked Man because there
are a lot of good ideas in place and it has some effective moments but I don't
think it holds together anywhere near as well as it should. I'm not sure it is
the realisation because Nick Briggs' direction is typically strong (although he
lets a couple of poor performances through) and Jamie Robertson's soundscape
and music both capture the horror of the situation superbly. I can see what
John Dorney was going for with this adventure and intellectually he approaches
the Land of Fiction from a less showy and more substantial angle than The Mind
Robber. However there is no denying that waltzing with literary figures in a
fairytale land is much more exciting and colourful than meeting a collection of
fictional stereotypes turned baddies in a seaside town. Concentrating on the
unknowns in fiction is a smart idea in theory, those characters who are long
forgotten whilst the classics are given plenty of attention but the resulting
guest cast is pretty unmemorable as a consequence. There is a much more tragic
story to be told about these forgotten, embarrassing characters of hack
fiction created by lesser writers and unfairly compared to the greats of
literature. Instead of going for a more affecting angle he instead turns the
characters into stock villains trying to take over the world. It is a novel
idea but following in the footsteps of so many other Doctor Who stories. Maybe
he didn't want to go over familiar ground since he already approached the idea
of having clichéd characters take on greater dimensions in The Forth Wall. Mind
you he talks about the responsibility of the writer to his characters in the
extras for that tale and seems retract that here, suggesting that this cast of
villains is merely the sum of its not very skilfully written parts. Maybe he
doesn't have to accept responsibility when they are written as somebody else's
creations? Tom Baker veers between very good and awkward in this story and
whilst she isn't given her best characterisation in the range, Louise Jameson
supports him well as Leela. I find it sad that a story that made me think about
its ideas should just scrape an above average mark but whilst I can appreciate
what the writer was trying to achieve I don't think the overall story came
together quite as engagingly as he hoped. It's good but it could have been
great. After setting up an intriguing scenario with the Land of Fiction
rejecting its lesser creations, there is no time to explore the concept before
the story has to be wrapped up in a terrible hurry. Perhaps this is another
case for longer stories for the fourth Doctor, in which case there would have
been time for the villainy and a chance to flesh out the characters too. Kudos for trying something a little more
subversive and less traditional though : 6/10
3 comments:
I enjoy it when your conflicted!
6/10 was a bit harsh. Worth an 8 at least. Gave me a proper lump in my throat.
I think this story's more enjoyable to think about than it is to listen to for most of its running time, but the ending is quite moving. I'm not sure how I'd score it, so I'm glad that's your job :P
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