The Real McCoy: Poor Sylvester McCoy. He’s supposed to be the main protagonist in this trilogy but in his first story he barely turns up in 25% of the run time. It isn’t the case that this is one of his dark Doctor adventures where he is pulling the strings from the sidelines…because when he does show up he is either loathed by Ace or acting as a jester in the Eleven’s court. He’s demeaned. It’s a very odd approach for him to take. He’s told a few stories in his time, and been some too. His favourite stories and the ones that fill his life tend to be adventure stories; packed with danger, mystery, villains and monsters. The Doctor always knew he was the best, whichever regeneration he was in.
Oh Wicked: Dorothy McShane is CEO of Charitable Earth. When the TV series makes a leap with a classic series companion, you can hear those in Big Finish towers salivating at the chance to take those ideas and expand upon them. In this case, Russell T. Davies’ suggestion that Ace wound up as the head of a charity in London is a lovely one, and so I can fully endorse this as a creative endeavour. The Blu-ray release of season 26 came with a trailer that got a lot of fans very excited and so to see that material pared with this release, it cements Ace’s adventures as ending with her ending up back on Earth (although Big Finish doesn’t avoid the fact that she spent some time on Gallifrey here – something that they had already set up in their Gallifrey series) and doing fantastic charity aid around the world. Good for her. Settling down to a quiet life just wasn’t Ace’s raison detre. She always had to be doing good in some way. Otherwise how could she let people know that she hates Nazis? She’s described by a drug cartel leader as a rich little white woman with her charity and it forces her to declare that putting men like him out of business and stopping suffering is exactly why A Charitable Earth was created in the first place. Describes herself as having a few misdemeanours in her youth and so she went travelling far and wide and saw a lot of stuff. It was great, but sometimes you swap one problem for another. It took Ace a long time to come to terms with what the Doctor had put her through, something that she considers an emotionally abusive time and one that she has since spent too much money in therapy trying to forget. She’s become considerably more sarcastic with age; it has brought out the cynic in her. She always used to call the Doctor Professor and then she became one herself.
The Eleven: Where Mark Bonnar’s The Eleven is concerned, Big Finish and I are of very different opinions. The producers seem to think that the character has been a glorious success and deserves to spill across ranges and that he should particularly plague the eighth Doctor. He’s been the ultimate supervillain and the Doctor’s anti-heroic companion and everything in between. The one thing he has failed to be with any great accuracy is particularly interesting. The idea of a Time Lord who’s regenerations are splintered in his mind and he hops from one to the other like a man with multiple personality syndrome is a glorious one. And it was really rather fascinating for his first story. But beyond that it has just been an excuse to bring Mark Bonnar back to the fold and the comical excesses of both the personalities that he is playing and the voices that Bonnar gives them have rendered the character particularly irritating and the worst possible thing for audio, grating on the ear. When you have an idea that is psychologically stimulating but the presentation is this grating and unmemorable you have to wonder what the point is. Maybe some Big Finish fans might salivate at the chance for this villain to skip into classic Who and face up to some of the earlier Doctors but I would rather they focussed on something more original rather than flogging this dead horse over and over again. The confrontation scenes between the Eleven and the seventh Doctor in the last episode lacks sparkle and doesn’t feel earned simply because they have never met before. Had the same scenes played out with Bonnar and Paul McGann they might have had a little more power because of all of their previous work together. They’d still be underwritten and obvious, but their history would at least generate some fire.
Standout Performance: ‘Cardinal Ollistra. Still dryer than the soles of my boots’ For one thing whoever let that line past the script editing stage needs to be spoken to (stand up Matt Fitton) but also, we’re left with the unfortunate truth that nobody could bring Ollistra to life like the unstoppable Jacqueline Rayner. I understand the desire to continue to use this character but there is a nasty taste in my mouth that nobody will be able to bring her to life with the same arrogance and dry humour. Carolyn Pickles tries, and fails. She’s a terrific actress. Give her a character to play and I’m sure she’ll do a marvellous job. But she isn’t Jacqueline Pearce in this role and that’s all I want.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘If this thing was so lethal then why didn’t the Times Lords just get rid of it?’ Many Doctor Who stories could be prevented if they followed this logic.
Great Ideas: Once upon a time on a planet so very dull and so very full of itself a team was charged with exploring alternate dimensions and universes. They spied on everything, the universe where everyone had time travel, the universes where the Time Lords never existed, the universes where the most violent species (Daleks, Cybermen, humans) came close to winning. Then they discovered the Dark Universe. A place where one species had risen to unlimited power. A terrifying, beautiful authority. The only species left. A species so powerful that they could literally destroy everything else. This handful of Gods, a pin prick of all-consuming life. A black universe. The planet Rox – is that a dig at all those Terry Nation worlds?
Isn’t it Odd: This trilogy of stories concerns me. It feels like we are back in the eighties again with a shopping list of continuity elements; The Eleven, Ollistra, the Psychic Circus, the Master, the Monk, Churchill. Creative things could be achieved with all of those elements (perhaps not the Eleven) but to have so many continuity elements weighing down the trio of tales suggests that the main range is still in state of artistic bankruptcy. It reduces what was once the shining star of Big Finish’s output to little more than fanfic. I’m ready to be proven wrong, but I doubt that is going to be the case.
Honestly, read that synopsis closely. A collection of clichés so appalling that it actually promises very little. An appalling plan. An epic confrontation. A plan to endanger all life in the cosmos. It promises everything that Doctor Who does at its most melodramatic without actually telling you anything except that it is mired in continuity (Ace, Ollistra, the Eleven). It’s fanfic in other words. Ace gave up in the end and decided that if she cannot fix herself then she will have a go at fixing other people instead. Which is why she set up A Charitable Earth. I’m sorry, what? That’s psychology gone mad. She was so fucked up by the Doctor that in her lust for some kind of normalcy she decided to save the world and put things to right the way she sees it? Who is she to decide who is good and bad? The idea of the latest species of ultimate destroyers from a dark dimension where they reign supreme is more cliché in a script that is burdened with them. These ultimate forces of destruction are tenapenny these days. Scenes between the Eleven and Dark Citizen in episode three are incredibly tedious. Somehow, we have skipped the dramatic bit of the Eleven taking over this corner of space and building a relationship with the Dark and instead have leapt straight into the aftermath, when he is in charge and their power struggle. Because this is a relationship we have no investment in and because we know that everything will go back into the toy box at the end of this story (ie, the Eleven won’t rule an entire universe) it renders all of these scenes pretty pointless. Or at least a very dull diversion. Add the Doctor in as the Eleven’s pet and you essentially have the same set up as Last of the Time Lords, just without Russell T. Davies ability to write awesome characterisation. The way the Doctor pulls out the rug under the Eleven and reveals that everything in the last two episodes has just been a terrible dream of his making...did anybody read this script before it made it to the studio? Essentially the writer gets the Doctor press a massive reset button and he gets to walk away smugly.
Standout Scene: At the end of episode two we get both ‘what have I done? and ‘It’s the end of everything!’ No seriously.
Result: I can’t believe I am about to say this because I have been begging Big Finish to give the character of Ace a rest for some time now, ever since she featured in her 900th adventure (I exaggerate for comic effect but only slightly) and stopped showing any signs of development (in fact she has started to devolve in recent years in her adventures with Mel) but the A Charitable Earth concept gives a new creative avenue for the character and this would have been much better pilot for a boxset that featured Ace as the central protagonist rather than trying to shoehorn all of this into a Doctor Who story. As a result it never quite feels like a Doctor Who story, despite how much continuity they attempt to stuff in. Sophie Aldred is actually rather good here, and she’s embracing the chance to do something different but giving her the limelight means that McCoy is side-lined (not always a bad thing) and feels superfluous. Dark Universe is unfocussed and overlong, and it fails to give us what it promises: a reunion between the seventh Doctor and Ace that is lives up to the weight of their relationship. This should have been character drama all the way. There was an opportunity to look over the entirety of their time together and to bring to a head all of themes and development. To truly get to the heart of what the seventh Doctor and Ace are all about. Instead this wants to be a big, bold epic Doctor Who story with lashings of danger for the universe. But in Big Finish terms that kind of overblown storytelling is practically every week in the main range. Going smaller and more intimate is sometimes far more effective, and unusual. The first two episodes is a ton of walking around and exposition and the last two episodes, which feel utterly disconnected, want to ramp up the stakes to monumental proportions to the detriment of all the characters. Why is Ace in such a grump with the Doctor? She had plenty of opportunities to leave him during their adventures and yet she seems to think that he forced her through emotionally traumatic experiences against her will? Is that really where we want to see their relationship end? I never once bought that Ace hated the Doctor so much that she would deliberately set out to break his hearts. It sets out to invalidate about 15% of Big Finish’s entire output (which is about how much Sophie Aldred appears in). Spreading out this bizarre turnaround in her character over a four story box set would also have benefited the character as we would have had four hours to explore the concept and for her to come to terms with her past, rather than the brief conversation at the climax that resolves nothing here. The less said about the Dark Universe and its ultimate super beings of destruction the better. Every single McGann adventure these days introduces us to a race like this and so it has lost its novelty. Dark Universe is a story that seems to want to promise a lot (read that ridiculous synopsis AGAIN) but ultimately delivers very little in way of satisfactory storytelling or characterisation. It’s confused, over the top and does bizarre things with its characters. Poor McCoy, I really want him to get some decent material soon. It’s been a while. There are a few ideas in here that are worth exploring but the execution of the piece from the writer to the director to the actors has drained those ideas of their worth: 3/10
If the post-Doctor modern day Ace interests you, read At Childhood’s End, a novel by Sophie Aldred where this version of Ace encounters the Thirteenth Doctor and fam while investigating an alien oddity. Granted there is some magic wandery at play with the screwdriver and another component that does exactly what the plot needs to advance, but it’s a great use of Ace and her relationship with the Doctor and her new companion.
ReplyDeleteThe last good story McCoy had was Muse of Fire I just want him to have some good material regularly not once in a blue moon
ReplyDeleteAnd yet you like the utter dross that's Series 11 and 12. I'd rather have the Eleven than the "fam" (puke)
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