Physician, Heal Thyself: Paul McGann tries to inject some life into proceedings, sometimes a little too enthusiastically given the story isn’t working half as hard to keep us interested.
Liv Chenka: If it were up to Live the Eleven would be tied up and locked in a cupboard. Don’t get her made. When asked to imagine meeting one of the people who inspire her she embarrasses Helen by saying that she does.
Helen Sinclair: Here’s a chance for Helen to wax lyrical about something and for Liv to be in the dark, this time about the Brothers Grimm. Not just the fairy tales that have made them so famous but their other work too; lexicology and linguistics, the things that Helen admires above all else. The Doctor says that he could wake up Helen with one of the conventions of a fairy-tale such as kissing her.
The Eleven: Think Missy in series 10, the Eleven is less of a grandstanding villain these days and more of a disturbed anti-hero who has teamed up with the Doctor and chums for his own unknown motives. I guess when the going gets tough and the stakes are higher than you can manager, to pal up with your former enemy of some repute is always a smart move. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Eleven and I’ve hardly been quiet about it either but this is a much better use of the character than as a Master like supervillain. He always was a bit comic book and one note and this gives him the chance to show off some new facets. It’s usually pretty fun when a previous villain turns ‘good’ (think Scorpius in Farscape or Spike in Buffy). Liv doesn’t trust him, naturally, and the feeling is mutual.
Standout Performance: Tanya Moodie fails to make much of an impression of Marathanga but I feel a lot of her efforts are hampered by the irritating modulation they have put on her voice. It means there isn’t much chance for her to give a nuanced performance when every word that comes out of her characters mouth sounds like nails down a chalkboard.
Great Ideas: Professor Marathanga amassed an enormous database of universal folklore drawn from many times and places drawn from an archive dedicated to the myths of Gallifrey. The Ravenous are officially listed as a clan of creatures that devour the lifeforms that exist on Gallifrey. The existence of the Times lords is open to speculation. L.E.G.E.N.D. has total control of the biomatter that flooded out of Marathanga’s ship. A powerful device that is being overwhelmed by a myriad of stories. It thinks it is creating the world in the way it should work, fuelled by the imagination of fairy tales.
Isn’t it Odd: There are two entirely unrelated storylines taking place in this story that seem as disparate as you can imagine for the longest of time. ‘I’m not an enchantress but I come from the future’ – you have got to give Hattie Morahan some credit for saying a line like that convincingly, but it’s the sort of line that would trip up any actress. When the climax comes down to ‘remove the plasma down to its constituent molecules…’ and you have a tale that trades creativity for technobabble.
Result: Far less focussed than the previous two stories and as such far less interesting to listen to. What happened to Matt Fitton’s sharp plotting of Deeptime Frontier? Here he’s plumped for two disparate storylines, one with an irritating comic book villain (unlike the previous story where that was supposed to be the case) and one with two much technobabble and not enough interplay between the Doctor and the Eleven. Helen and Liv and how Fitton characterises them is by far the best thing on display here but I question whether this is a story that really needs telling at this juncture. I remember the Doom Coalition set was really gearing up to its final set at this point but Ravenous is continuing its efforts to cram in as much standalone adventuring as possible. It wants to be a sci-fi adventure with fairy-tale trappings but we just had exactly that with the Salzburg tale in the previous set and there was no way it was going to best that (to put it bluntly Fitton is not as skilled a writer as Dorney) and comparisons were inevitable. I’m really struggling to take to the Ravenous sets as an interconnected whole because of the awkward structure of the arc which has led to the running story stopping and starting to allow standalone adventures to squeeze in between. There has been no chance to gather any momentum, or when they do in stories like Deepspace Frontier it is then put on hold for several tales before becoming relevant again at the end of the set. It's all very bizarre. There was an element of this in Doom Coalition too but that marathon felt far more like all the storytelling was heading in the same direction. However, I would like to point out that thus far I have scored Ravenous the following - 7, 8, 7, 5, 7, 9, 10, 4, 8, 9 – so regardless of whatever faults I might find in this series as a cohesive piece there have certainly been more than enough skill involved in the individual instalments. It just feels like this ‘season’ wants to have its cake and eat it, and it’s making a bit of a mess of it. I think the worst aspect of L.E.G.E.N.D. is that it has a premise that is really fun (mad computer makes fairy tales real) …and it, well, isn’t: 4/10
3 comments:
I typically feel this way about stories written by Matt Fitton. It's not that I never love his stories. It's just that I rarely do.
Matt Fitton has written some really good stuff but he has also written an equal number of meat and potatoes stories that are just lacking something.
Still better than anything from Series 11
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