Tempestuous Temp: The fact that she is being addressed as Doctor Donna Noble is a constant reminder of her ultimate fate. Donna is very quick with her pop culture references and it is refreshing for somebody to tell her they have absolutely no idea what she is talking about. She wonders where on Earth the Doctor is and if he is trying to rescue her from this predicament he is taking his sweet time. How hard can it be flying the TARDIS? I was watching this scene through my fingers. She’s smart enough to know that when walking out of the TARDIS, it isn’t usually safe. Donna is smart enough to check the radiation readings. Donna has trawled online enough to know exactly what it is like to get swept up in the latest craze or trend. She understands immediately what is going on – these people have been invaded and thanks to some stunning PR they are being convinced that it is for their own good. And she isn’t having any of that. Donna becomes a revolutionary by playing the PR company at their own game. The thing this bunch of insurrectionists have been getting wrong is what Donna understands perfectly; you can’t fight lies with facts. You have to tell even bigger lies. And if anyone is good at driving up hype through overexaggerating, it’s Donna. Proving she has learnt from the best, Donna refuses to take credit for the uprising and the freedom of the slaves. She just brought down the PR machine, the rest they did for themselves. She considers herself a wanderer, a traveller, a righter of wrongs.
Sidechick: Through Nat, we can see just how well Donna has adjusted to life in space. Where she is a newbie at all this, Donna strides through it all without breaking a sweat and remaining completely non-judgemental about alien life. Nat insists that they cannot stop an invasion on their own…and Donna, taught by the best, refutes that. Nat proves astonishingly adept at the whole PR game, able to construct notions that could be sewn into society to smooth other political rough edges. Because Nat has a heart she is identified as an Anti-Invasion Activist and she can spot Donna’s anti-propaganda propaganda a mile off.
Standout Performance: Heightened performances across the board in what is essentially a farce but it is a credit to all of the actors that the entire cast felt authentic to me.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Skegness, is that another planet?’ ‘Some days it feels like that, yeah.’
Apparently driving the TARDIS is ‘not like slipping down the shops for a Take a Break.’
‘People don’t tend to mind who dies…as long as it isn’t them.’
‘The reaction on social media to the culling is amazing. Disapproval ratings are plummeting!’ ‘That’s because people are dying. There are fewer of them to disapprove.’
‘It’s amazing how quickly a rebellion can start when nobody is twisting the facts.’
Great Ideas: The idea that any company can try and put a positive spin on a bloody massacre so that it ‘works out well for you, me and, well, all of us’ shows exactly what sort of people we are working with here. As a perfectly naive member of the public who is fed even worse data in order smokescreen mistakes (or worse, good news stories that we want to hear even more), I am not used to thinking like a PR giant who needs to cover up all kinds of atrocities in order for life to continue with people content. But of course, those wheels are spinning all the time. Donna is rubbing shoulders with the real enemy of society here, those who would convince the public to look at something wholly evil in a positive way. Dorney offers a brilliant backstory for how things have gotten quite so out of control with the PR (or should that be in control with the PR) because the company saw that in a post-apocalyptic world that their services might not be necessary to the victims and so they reached out to the invaders and offered a way for them to keep control of the survivors. It’s completely ridiculous and entirely logical. The Kanton just walked in and were welcomed with open arms, thanks to a stunning public relations company. When half the planet needs to be executed because there isn’t much use for the labour force, it is the job of the PR company to convince those remaining that it was for their own good. Seriously, this is corporate greed at its most insidious. The solution? Make it seem like the less desirable people have died! Imagine celebrating the anniversary of Invasion Day with a special treat of extra hours in the factory?
Audio Landscape: I especially like the sound effects in the news broadcasts that manage to highlight the ‘facts’ that are being released that make the comment less blunt and more amusing.
Standout Scene: In a brilliant moment of realisation, Donna understands that the people of this world have been so indoctrinated by the propaganda machine that they are enslaved willingly and have nothing to stop them being restrained…they have been convinced that their slavery is good for them. It’s conceptually one of the most horrific scenes Big Finish have ever put out and it’s played for laughs. This story is quite unique. ‘This is the good life!’
Result: ‘There’s nothing sexy about a massacre!’ I remember when John Dorney burst onto the scene with Solitaire and quickly made his mark on the main range with a phenomenally meta and smart tale that studied the responsibility of writers to their characters. Here he has an equally thought provoking and comedic concept at the heart of his tale: invasion by PR. Can you successfully maintain control of a planet by putting out a convincing media presence that spreads the idea that an invasion has been a positive experience? Just when you think that Doctor Who has exhausted all possibilities for handling an invasion a writer like Dorney comes along and turns the whole thing on its head and lets you look at it in a completely different way. Let’s be honest, the writer has the entirety of the printed newspaper, online gossip, political machinations and promises and social media manipulation to trawl through to see just how the ebb and flow of a populace can be controlled by introducing memes and moods. It’s a brilliant idea, ripe for vicious commentary and hilarious jokes and I had a great time with this. I could imagine an entire television show being built around an idea like this, albeit darker and more insidious. This is essentially what RTD was going for in The Long Game; control by media, but that had to adhere to being a Doctor Who episode and thus included a ruddy great monster and guest star villain of the week. Having Donna loose in the universe means the rules have changed this boxset can embrace absurdity and play by its own rules. As if we needed the confirmation (Turn Left did that very nicely) but the first two stories of this set have proven that Donna more than has the chops to take the narrative reins without the Doctor present and do her own thing and it still be brilliant. Catherine Tate is phenomenal and she is great support from Niky Wardley but truly the entire case guest should be praised here. This is an invasion that Donna is custom made to topple. Not even the Doctor could top her mouth or her gift for over exaggeration when it gets going. I mean it as a huge compliment when I say that this is exactly the sort of Doctor Who that Douglas Adams would be writing in this day and age and/or it feels like a bloody good episode of The Orville: 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment