The Real McCoy: Having unlimited space in the TARDIS can be
a burden at times because it means there are an unlimited number of things you
can keep and an unlimited number of places you can put them. He probably has
one of everything but doesn't have a single clue where he put it. Tucker has
managed to capture that untroubled seventh Doctor from season 24, the one who
is flitting around the universe like a raving lunatic, hair, hat and attitude
carefree. The seventh Doctor seems to be exactly the sort of character who
would have a ton of shortbread bulging out of his pockets. I never realised how
amusing the seventh Doctor could be when he is sarcastic. His 'hello, we're
the Gods you've been worshipping' was very funny. When the Doctor bares his
teeth at the horror of the sacrifices, you really pay attention. McCoy has
rolled this many rrrrrrs in years and each one sounds like a death threat. If
he had Godlike powers then he wouldn't keep landing himself in situations like
this.
Computer Programmer: Again, it isn't hard to accurately
capture Mel in season 24. Just imagine somebody who has taken half a dozen Pro
Plus, spent four hours in the gym and is setting off to support every cause
known to mankind. She's bubbly, enthusiastic and almost unbearably twee.
Fortunately we have Bonnie Langford to bring her to life with the benefit of
hindsight being a wonderful thing and she tempers some of the worst excesses of
Tucker's writing. Mel is given plenty to do and her skills her vital to the
plot (if she can find the on switch then the planet is doomed) but I wouldn't
necessarily say she is written for intelligently. Giving a character a
substantial role and giving them knowledgeable and perceptive things to say are
two very different things.
Standout Performance: McCoy! McCoy! McCoy! I'm so excited to
say it that I had write it three times. Let joy be uncontained.
Dreadful Dialogue: 'Oh rats! Sorry, not the best choice of
curse in the circumstances...'
'You shall not find me wanting in points!'
'It's time to rid this warehouse of its mould!'
'A mould that can think!'
Great Ideas: 'What about the shops on the high street?'
'They'll become something of a novelty, I'm afraid.' The Doctor, unfortunately,
hits the nail on the button. How long will it take before the process is
finished and they are completely defunct? The warehouse is operated
automatically but there are clones on hand to complete the stock take. I guess
there are some things that a machine simply cannot do. There was a viral
outbreak and the warehouse was sent into orbit to stockpile supplies away from
the contamination. Unless the rats were incredibly smart to cause damage to non-essential
systems and thus not put their lives in jeopardy (when Mel suggested it I
thought this was going to turn out to be a sequel to Rat Trap) then the damage
has been caused by an extraneous force. Shopping lists of orders placed with
the Gods for a warehouse hanging in the sky with unimaginable bounty. A fungus
practically wiped out an entire world but by the time the survivors emerged
they had been cut off from the supplies set up into orbit. The rats are built
up to be the monsters of the piece and turn out to be nothing of the sort. And
the supervisor turns out to be a big lump of mould. Which is quite novel.
Audio Landscape: Crickets in grass, conveyor belt system,
screeching rats.
Musical Cues: Since episode seems to consist of revealing
physical detail about the warehouse and little else ('ooh those shelves are
dusty!' and 'we're on a conveyor belt, Mel!') it comes down to the
unconquerable team of Fox and Yason to make all this travelogue much more
mysterious and exciting that it might otherwise be. To their credit they
succeed. The Warehouse becomes a secretive, enigmatic location in their hands.
Come the final episode, the pair have ramped up the excitement levels to factor
ten with a score that suggests something terribly exciting is going on (when in
reality a few million parcels are going to be delivered). They are a real asset
to this story.
Isn't it Odd: Much like Paradise Towers, much like Spaceport
Fear (more to the point), this is a concept based location. This time round it
is the idea of a warehouse that has spun out of control and created its own
society with customs and rules and it's own unique dialect...you get my drift.
However with Tucker this is all surface detail, there is no real sense that
this is a society that has genuinely evolved and people have grown up within
it. Instead it feels like a location that has been specifically set up to tell
a Doctor Who story within it. 'Should that be such a bad thing?' I hear you
ask. Well yes, I think we should be aiming higher. And if messrs Platt, Morris,
Dorney, Guerrier can create fully functioning, detailed worlds that exist well
before and long after the adventure is over then I don't see why Tucker can't
too. It won't take anybody five minutes to realise that the inspiration for this
happens to be an Amazon style operation and the imagination doesn't seem to
stretch much further than that. When you break the ingenious code (the
catalogue = the bible) you'll see the sort of sophistication we are dealing
with. Unpretentious it might be, but the first episode is almost entirely
textbook Doctor Who staging with a cliffhanger that failed to make me clench my
buttocks. Was it my imagination or did the clone names (so and so F, so and so
A) recall The Happiness Patrol? Which in itself is another artificial world
based around a bizarre premise. A primitive culture being influenced and
worshipping a piece of technology apes The Face of Evil too. A wonder-drug that
wiped out a civilisation...add Gridlock to the shopping list. Sentient rats...wasn't
the same script editor responsible for Rat Trap? The villain of the piece
exclaims: 'At last, after 350 years!' He even sounds like Kane at the
end of Dragonfire. My biggest problem with this story is that as influenced by
immense warehouse distributors such as Amazon is ripe for some commerce themed
lampooning and a commentary on mass consumerism. I can only imagine the
substance, humour and observations Jonny Morris would have sifted from this
setting. Tucker instead writes this with absolute seriousness and the setting,
beyond a little graceless dialogue, is exact what it says on the tin. If you
spent the last however many years worshipping a church in the sky that housed
your Gods would you really find yourself throwing all those ideals away in half
an hour and choosing to sacrifice yourself to destroy it? Jean alters her life
choices on a sixpence and it isn't remotely believable. To kill your God is a
massive choice but it feels like a quirk of plot.
Standout Scene: The stock take has been going on for 350
years (that juicy bit of knowledge would have been a better cliffhanger than
any of the examples chosen for this story). The clones on board the warehouse
are being revered as religious figures (another intriguing reveal that would
have been a good point to pause the action...oh you get the idea).
Result: A 350 year wait for your order? That's about average
for Amazon, isn't it? The Warehouse is written by Mike Tucker (author of The
Genocide Machine, Dust Breeding and The Bellotron Incident) and without pushing
his face into the mud too deeply it was never going to sparkle like the best of
Big Finish. He's a meat and potatoes writer, understanding the basics of a
Doctor Who story without ever trying to push the boundaries or dig too deep. I
knew from experience this was never going to rock my world. However he has the
backup of some of the most reliable hands at Big Finish's disposal; Barnaby
Edwards directing, Fox and Yason handling the score and the irresistible team
of McCoy and Langford helming the story. It's not quite polishing a turd
(because the script is actually quite lively in parts) but it is like a wobbly
singer being supported by a stunning back up troupe, keeping the audience
transfixed and distracted from the deficiencies (in this case it is the stilted
dialogue and clichéd storyline). McCoy, in particular, is like an excitable
puppy desperate to be petted and recalling the addictive enthusiasm that he
brought to the role in his first season. It's rare for me to say that McCoy is the
best about a production so mark this day in your diary. Barnaby Edwards too
deserves huge kudos, he's such a magician he might just convince you that the
last episode is the most exciting thing you've ever heard. My big question
about The Warehouse is that since we have Paradise Towers telling essentially
the same story in 1987 (Tucker reveals his inspiration was this story in the extras) and in recent years Spaceport Fear doing an excellent
job of picking up it's ideas and doing something fun with them...do we really
need a third roll of the dice that isn't quite as strong as the previous two?
What you get here is a beautifully produced Doctor Who run-around. We're 202
releases into the main range and we've ditched the obscene amount of continuity
that was weighing down the seventh Doctor adventures. Shouldn't we be setting
our sights a little higher? I think the big question I have to ask about a
story like The Warehouse is have we run out of fresh Doctor Who stories to
tell? Has every plot twist been revealed, every character been written, every
setting been created? Has the huge engine of storytelling known as Doctor Who
played out every scenario so that all forthcoming stories are just an element
of that story plus a pinch of that story with a healthy twist of that
story? Or is it just the nostalgia driven Big Finish adventures that succumb to
this curse? I don't think so. I think it depends on the imagination of the
writer. Recently we have enjoyed The Entropy Plague and We Are the Daleks, both
of which took an individual approach. In that case I have to blame the writer
rather than the formula of the series on the lack of originality on display
here. If you have a few hours to kill and need something to help pass the time
whilst you browse Amazon and place a few orders (see what I did there?) then
this is serviceable but it is in no way an essential purchase. For an audio
drama it doesn't help that not one line of this script rises above the
everyday. The antithesis of season 24 which was imaginative and original but
often executed appallingly, The Warehouse is handsomely produced but a more
nuts and bolts collection of old Who stories I have yet to experience. And I've
not long heard Last of the Cybermen: 5/10
2 comments:
I'm an unashamed fan of Season 24 (and unashamed fan of Paradise Towers in particular), and I'm maybe one of the few people in Who fandom who has much more fun with the S24 Seventh Doctor than with the master manipulator having-the-whole-adventure-wrapped-up-before-starting and playing chess with the universe and going for a pints with Death (ughh, NA pretentiousness makes me SICK). I'm always willing to spend time with the metaphor mixing, spoon playing Seven and I enjoyed this adventure a bit more maybe for that. A society evolved from a group of trapped colonists, we have seent hat in The Face of Evil, The Whispering Forest and Spaceport Fear and it never ceases to fascinate me this concept.
I must confess I was having distinct spaceport fear vibes myself too, however again like Anonymous it's a concept I really like so I'm willing to let this one have a little lee way on that score.
My main issue with this one was some of the horrible, horrible clunky dialogue of the "it snapped off my umbrella" variety that sounds as though Tucker has no idea how to write for audio at all, however as you pointed out that is balanced by some lovely characterization of the 7th Doctor.
I'll also say that despite the spaceport fear/paradise towers revival (I really need to see Paradise towers), I did think there were some unique twists in the story and the execution. I really rather enjoyed the clones, their names and the ambiguity surrounding the F clones and whether the infection they were concerned about was real or not, I also liked the subverting of the "fix the godly computer" idea that occurred with Mel's plopt.
While I do take your cryticism that this story isn't exactly most original in concept, I personally did feel it managed to structure the concepts in an interesting way. Tucker might be a meat and potatoes writer, but I'd say this story is more like sheepherd's pie than the usual sunday roast.
As good as We are the Daleks or Entropy plague? possibly not, but I'd personally have gone higher than 5-10, maybe a 6.5 or so, just for how it plays with the concepts plus as you said, the lovely appearence of the 7th doctor (the bit about the three headed opera singers was great).
Post a Comment