The Real McCoy: The Doctor will provide his expertise for nothing more than a good cup of tea. When the next best thing is somebody offering their help for half their food supplies, it seems even more generous. Helping people is his vocation. After trying to set straight a stray Nazi scientist from another timeline, it feels very natural for the Doctor to hunt down a werewolf and help her to explore her bestial nature. Every now and then he gets an urge to revisit old business, which suggests he is at the tail end of this regeneration. ‘Ears and eyes open, mouths closed’ is good advice in any Doctor Who adventure. He’s a genius and he never passed any exams. He doesn’t even break a sweat at the thought of holding back an entire army of monsters on his own. When asked where Ace is he simply replies ‘somewhere else…for a while now.’ He’s getting old but he’s not too old for new adventures and travelling companions.
Werewolf in Space and Time: I’m going to start to sound like a cynical fan if I don’t turn my acrimony around regarding Big Finish’s desperate need to plug every continuity gap, explore every possibility not taken on television and generally cross every t with a Judoon spaceship and dot every i a Sontaran scout ship. They’re obsessed with playing fan service rather than delivering completely original content, which is a fair route to take when you are trying to get the fanbase of a show to part with their hard earned cash but when it comes at the exclusion of all truly original storytelling to the exclusivity of fanwankery I cannot help but make (admittedly token because who at Big Finish is listening to the protestation of one man) objection. Do I like the idea of a trilogy featuring ‘what if Kamelion had had a bigger role in the series?’ followed by ‘what if Mags had followed the Doctor?’ To be honest I hadn’t given either possibility much consideration but if I had the former would have excited me far more simply because there was so much untapped potential there. Mags was a brilliant one of character who worked a treat in the setting she was placed in (I don’t think anybody can forget her slavering transformation into a punk werewolf) but does she immediately spring to mind as companion material? Not really. Having said that I’m more than happy to be proven wrong…
The monsters are the reason that Mags came to Gokroth. Mags has been asked to place her trust in people too many times. She handed it to the Captain and look how well that ended for her. Lately she hears the wolf inside her all the time and sometimes she feels like a slave to her nature. To remove the wolf would be like losing part of her. When it comes down to it and she has to make a choice, she cannot extract her animal instincts. She had to leave the Psychic Circus because her changes were becoming more and more unpredictable and it was becoming too dangerous for the others and the audience. That would be one hell of a circus experience, seeing the audience torn into and murdered (just as long as it isn’t you). She thinks she is a freak on every planet but the Doctor insists she is simply unique. She feels that she cannot live around people because of her condition.
Standout Performance: I question the logic in casting another actress that sounds alike to Jessica Martin because there were times when I found it hard to differentiate her from Victoria Yeates. It’s an mature turn by Martin all the same and she has a very natural attitude for audio (I would argue far more natural than Sophie Aldred, who I am pleased to say is for once being kept away from a McCoy trilogy…oh wait) and a pleasing dynamic with Sylvester McCoy. Martin’s natural deadpan delivery and investment in Mags is by far the most impressive thing about this tale.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You can control the wolf.’
Great Ideas: The cover has a very similar aesthetic to the few stabs at gothic horror that Farscape attempted. It’s rather gorgeous and is saturated with colour and interest. The whole trilogy has enticing covers. When she got posted to station Zeta she thought the research would be ground-breaking but all she found were egos willing to put ethics aside. She thought she would be curing disease but the station was all about genetic manipulation. They took humans who were dispossessed and used them, splicing them with alien DNA. Eventually she freed them, hundreds of creatures.
Isn’t it Odd: Some very typical horror elements in play; a town under siege by monsters, a curfew, a morally questionable scientist and her disfigured assistant, using wolfsbane to disguise scent, a circus entertainer with a menagerie of creatures, a hunt through the forest, flame wielding natives seeking out the monsters. However, there are few concessions made to the fact that this is set on an alien world. For all Matt Fitton’s weird SF names for characters and the setting, this could just be set in a medieval village. Sure use the clichés…but subvert them in some way. I question these cliff-hangers that feature horrible slavering monsters going ‘raaawwwwwrrrrrr!’ not only because they have been done to death by now (seriously, you could compile a top 100 list at this point) but because of the severe lack of imagination in doing so. We know the Doctor isn’t going to meet a sticky end in The Monsters of Gokroth and we’ve not come to care enough about the original characters come the first cliff-hanger so really it is just a lot of noise before the credits to create a pause in the action. John Dorney is the master at conjuring up decent cliff-hangers, he understands that moments that create a fork in the plot (revelations, subversions) are much more intellectually exciting than hearing an actor do his lungs in and the other actors cowering in fear. I skipped ahead to the next episode hoping that there would be something substantive to the cliff-hanger beyond false jeopardy…but there wasn’t and it’s dealt with in an instant. Mags was never going to kill the Doctor, otherwise this would be a very short trilogy. All the scenes of the slavering monsters grunting and groaning are a little hard on the ears, and probably the sort of nonsense any fan who hasn’t given Big Finish a go would imagine these audios sound like. My other half kept walking past the door, frowning. I try and convince him that I’m discussing substantive audio work. The sweet character work where Sylvester McCoy gets to reach out to Jessica Martin’s Mags brings out the best in him but the scenes of him screaming at her as a werewolf see him at his humiliating worst. Poor Andrew Fettes gets lumbered with the Condo (well, Igor) role of speaking like a tomfool with slurred speech. There’s some sympathy to be elicited from such a role but as written he’s just a lurching simpleton. Almost as bad as all the hysterics elsewhere as various actors have to snarl and gurn and scream their way through the story. After a while it just becomes as agonising as white noise. The twist at the end of episode three is actually quite a surprise but its delivered as though somebody is reciting what they need from the supermarket. One character screams ‘It’s ALIIIVVVVEEEE!’ Of course they do. ‘Look at what unites you rather than what sets you apart’ – does the Doctor really try and talk (shout) down the situation with that argument?
Result: It’s like somebody has watched The Brain of Morbius and taken out all the inventiveness. It’s as blatant and as cliché ridden as a Doctor Who gothic horror story could possibly be without any of the creativity that you would expect from a series that can take you anywhere in anytime. The first episode is the superior one because the atmosphere is fresh and the return of Mags is novel and I really liked how Sylvester McCoy was kept in the shadows for the most part to allow the story to breathe. The idea of Mags coming to a place packed with monsters to fit in is very sweet and I enjoyed the dilemma of her having the choice to extract her bestial side. It automatically gives her more depth than the companions of the recent seventh Doctor trilogies. I found it really difficult to listen to at times because of the assault of monstrous voices and effects. It had a disorienting effect on me, at once convincing me of the horrific nature of the creatures that populate the story but so unpleasant it refused to allow me to get any entertainment from it. As usual with these two-hour long stories there isn’t enough plot to fill up the running time and as such we fill the time with endless scenes of Mags transforming, the monsters on the attack and false jeopardy cliff-hanger. After listening to the tighter, one-hour stories in some of the recent box sets reviewed it is feels even more obvious that the four main range stories are often swollen beyond their ability to fulfil their premise. It’s no wonder that two two-part stories are starting to creep back into the range. The regulars are strong and the dialogue mostly works, but there are far too many scenes of creature attacks being explained (‘they’re going to fight and we’re caught in the middle!' is a cliff-hanger ending). Not needed when there is a soundscape that is doing all that work for you. How do you rank a story where the character work is enjoyable but the story itself is seriously lacking? Fitton’s scripts usually work in the other direction and I’m still hoping for another The Wrong Doctors from him, one that marries both seamlessly. This is pure gothic horror without much concession for the fact that it is sent in space. This story could just as easily be told on Earth with a few tweaks and swapping the monsters for circus freaks. The twist is actually pretty clever but it is such a monstrous experience to listen to by that point that I think it its effect was completely lost on me. I’m looking forward to more of Mags but that’s pretty much all I took from this: 5/10
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