Mockney Dude: A very pleasing take on David Tennant’s tenth Doctor and probably the best interpretation of him in the Tenth Doctor Chronicles. Put him up against a good villain and the Doctor always shines and this is a particularly loathsome one that taps into the Doctor’s most sensitive subject, being the last of his kind. Guy Adams writes him as a bubbly and fun character with a tough interior and keeps throwing witty descriptions of his lifestyle throughout the story. It’s very nice when it appears that the Doctor is calling Lady Christina his friend that it transpires that he was talking about the rhino all along. This is always going to be a love/hate sort of thing then. I’d forgotten that it was the Doctor who had said no to her, not something that usually happens when he has shared an adventure with somebody. Trust the Doctor to travel the world and collect endangered species and prevent them from going extinct. The Doctor treats safety in the same way that most people treat cannibalism, we’re aware that it exists but we have no wish to try it. In the face of difficult decisions, the Doctor always reaches for a gadget. Below his affable and cheery exterior there is a heart as solid as rock. The Doctor is used to running: some people join a gym to get this done but he just sticks his nose where its not wanted. He admits that he is dying, which sets this story during his extended regeneration in the End of Time. It’s nice that he got to sort things out with Lady Christina before he goes. I guess he really did go and visit everybody. I wonder how Amelia Ducat was doing.
Rich Bitch: Featuring the much-anticipated return of Lady Christina de Souza, this story re-introduces Michelle Ryan to the world of Doctor Who. When I say much anticipated, I mean as sought after as more episodes from the 60s and 70s going missing. I have a friend whose least favourite Russell T Davies era story is Planet of the Dead and I don’t think he is entirely alone in that assessment. I found it deeply unengaging and Ryan’s Christina de Souza was one of the reason why. Unconvincingly high-born, smug, barely breaking a sweat and lacking even basic chemistry with David Tennant, this was a character that seemed design to get on your nerves and yet she was packaged as somebody that we were supposed to admire. Even want to continue travelling with the Doctor. And whilst Big Finish are determined to cash in on the New Series in every way, shape or form, the return of Lady Christina in her own box set based on the very lukewarm reaction of the audience at large is pretty baffling. Who with half a brain cell wanted this to happen? Were people lobbying it for it? Featuring in this one-off story is fine, it’s a celebration of the entirety of the tenth Doctor’s era after all. But a whole season of adventures spearheaded by Ryan’s icy cold and calculating character? It defies belief. Give it time, we’ll be seeing the adventures of the stewardess who gets sucked out the door in Midnight before her untimely death soon. Tales of a Hard-Nosed Stewardess that Met the Doctor Once it could be called. It’s no less fanciful than what is happening with Lady Christina.
She likes stalking big prey, the wealthier the better. She’s not used to hearing the word no in her life and she wasn’t going to take it from the Doctor again. Because we have access to Lady Christina’s inner voice (thanks to some sympathetic narration) it means we get to experience her doubts about her self and the Doctor and as result she seems so much more human and so much less of a caricature. She’s somebody who has spent a lot of her life hiding her emotions. Emotions are power and she doesn’t believe in revealing sides to herself that people could later use against her. See in that simple sentence alone it gets us closer to the character and more on her side than we did in the entirety of Planet of the Dead. If there’s one thing that she learns about the TARDIS in this story it is that she loves a corridor. I really liked how she was thrown into very dangerous situations and we get to experience her fear and panic and see how she intelligently works her way out of those problems.
Standout performance: What’s interesting is that Michelle Ryan doesn’t really play the character much differently to how she did in her debut. She’s still as haughty and insulting. But it’s tempered with a lot more humility and a affable personality, which brings out a much gentler and warmer side to the character.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Stupid people do like a tusk.’
Great Ideas: Imagine being as ugly as the Deagle where mirrors would rather shatter than reflect his image? His latest pastime is that he is the last of his line and he likes that because it makes him exclusive. He knows there are other species in the universe that are facing extinction and has developed an obsession with hunting done the last of each species and staring them in the eyes and sharing a duality of loneliness before blowing them away. Give the Doctor is (unofficially) the last of his species, the Deagle has an obsession with tracking him down and mounting his head on the wall of his toilet.
Standout Scene: The Deagle getting his comeuppance at the nasty end of a far more effective predator than he was really is his just desserts.
Result: The return of the infamous Lady Christina to Doctor Who! Straight off the bat this has several elements to it that Planet of the Dead lacked; a terrific villain (someone who thinks he is the alpha male of the universe), a decent use of the ‘last of the Time Lords’ idea, a worthy social commentary (although nobody would ever cover it with as much aplomb as Jac Rayner did in The Last Dodo) and some sparkling lines between the Doctor and Lady Christina. I’ve lamented her return in the review above but what Last Chance does achieve it to give the character a second crack at the whip and lo and behold when she isn’t written by Roberts & Davies she’s perfectly tolerable. I like the location hopping that takes place in this story very much, taking us to corners of the globe that Doctor Who has never touched before. I also though this story featured the strongest narration of the four, very witty and dry in places with some intelligent factual description thrown in for good measure. It’s chatty and omnipresent and gives Dudman the chance to inject some life into the narration, rather than just stating facts. One of the most annoying things about Planet of the Dead was that both the Doctor and Lady Christina were competing for ‘smug git and gittess’ of the year award, and their prickly interaction that was supposed to soften over time lacked the genuine chemistry of when this was tried previously in The Runaway Bride. Here they have a mission to complete that let’s you buy into the pairing with much more likeability, globetrotting to save species from extinction. Who couldn’t like a pair that had that on their agenda? Last Chance is very nicely written (I’m coming to find Guy Adams synonymous with a certain level of quality) and achieves something that I would have thought impossible: it gives Lady Christina a agreeable voice and whets my appetite for her upcoming box set. Given I was seen delivering the most spectacular eye roll (you know in the way only a cynical long-term fan of anything can) when I heard about that box set, this story has done some pretty marvellous repair work indeed: 8/10
5 comments:
I've never really understood all the hate directed at Lady Christina. People say she's smug and annoying, but she can't even hold a candle to the likes of Clara, River and Rose in that department.
I wish you could review ATA Girl. These are some of the best stories BF produced.
This 10th Doctor set is fine, particularly the one with Jacqueline King and actually Jake D it turns out is a much better audio performer than David Tennant himself! He has a better vocal range, is more attuned to the dialogue and less mono-tonal than Tennant who tends to be just shouty with little modulation. Given how poor all around the Piper/Tennant box set was after the Tate/Tennant set which, while uneven, showcased how good Tate is as a vocal performer, I could see Jake doing more of these instead of Tennant in the future. His acting in these is better than either Tennant box set performance and the stories are certainly as good.
Enjoying ATA Girl at the moment. A notch above this, indeed one of the best things BF has done.
What a ridiculous thing to say. I'm sure Jacob Dudman would be the first to admit he isn't as good as David Tennant, and the idea that he should do more of these over a full-cast Tennant-starring trilogy is a bit of an insult to David Tennant.
With River, I always thought it was clear that her smugness was a mask hiding deeper sadness and insecurity, and with Rose and Clara the writers acknowledged (implicitly in the case of Rose and explicitly in the case of Clara) that their attitudes were unhealthy. With Christina in Planet of the Dead, it seemed to me as though Roberts and Davies just thought she was fun and expected us to think the same. What "Last Chance" effectively does right is give Christina the same depth and complexity that Rose, River and Clara had.
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