Big Finish Folly, Part 27

The Jupiter Conjunction, by Eddie Robson

So… how to follow The Emerald Tiger? It isn’t a task I’d envy, but Eddie Robson does the sensible thing by taking the crew – including the newly-rejuvenated Nyssa – back into space. In fact, to a rendezvous with a comet that orbits erratically between Jupiter and Earth, thus providing a sort of second-class parcel service for the two worlds. The company that runs the settlement built onto the comet’s back is facing trouble however – while the comet will be in perfect conjunction on this run, orbital synchronicities will fall apart on the next run, and their prospective customers know it. Bankruptcy beckons.

And to top it all, the cargo is going missing. Someone is stealing it, but none of the company’s security staff can work out how they’re making it disappear. And exactly what is happening out in the Unstable Zone?

While Nyssa and Tegan browse in the first ever shopping mall in space (no, the Zocalo doesn’t count – wrong programme!), the base’s security force decides that a man who can appear from nowhere in a blue box is the most likely suspect for the thefts. Oops. Cue a great deal of running around, frantic negotiations, and sudden shifts of allegiance.

Where The Emerald Tiger was pretty straight-forward, The Jupiter Conjunction is far more about subterfuge and dastardly plans. The body count is also much higher, especially as the story kicks into top gear in the final episode. This would have been a particularly bloody TV story – in similar fashion to The Elite, which also powered its way through backstabbing and political machinations.

The characterisations here however, aside from the Tardis crew themselves, seem a little off. Possibly a bit flat. Major Nash in particular doesn’t quite work, though he isn’t helped by the fact that he only has Nyssa to bounce off in the final episode. Turlough’s sneaky style of self-preservation is written far better. There’s also less reference to Nyssa’s renewed youth than I was expecting – and, as usual, it’s Nyssa who has to do the tied-up damsel in distress bit. The devastation wrought by the implacable Jovians, and Violet’s deviously single-minded approach are what lifts this play up into four-star territory.
****

Buy it here.

Death of a Bloody Stupid Thing

The desktop PC – either the fourth or fifth incarnation of The computer known to us on a daily basis as Bloody Stupid Thing – is presently doing the equivalent of twitching upon the floor, tongue flopping pallidly from the side of its mouth (thus I’m writing this on Nettie, which doesn’t deal with the WordPress interface very happily).

This is a bad thing, obviously. If you’re trying to send me emails, I may not receive them. Rachel’s Photoshop work is on enforced hiatus. More pertinently to this blog, my itunes library is inaccessible, which means I will very shortly run dry of material for Big Finish Folly.

Hopefully we’ll soon be back up & running, either with BST 5 or BST 6, but in the meantime Big Finish Folly may be much more erratically scheduled.

Bah.

Big Finish Folly, Part 26

The Emerald Tiger, by Barnaby Edwards

Sometimes, to coin a phrase, Big Finish throw a leg-spinner at you. Along with sheer pace, they can really go to town and evoke a sense of place. The Emerald Tiger, set in India in 1926, does exactly that, and a great amount of that is down to Howard Carter’s magnificently epic score and sound design. If Carter cannot transport you into Calcutta’s turbulent streets and bustling railway platforms instantly, then your imagination is clearly at fault.

Rant over, let’s look at the play itself. The accompanying interviews note that Doctor Who has never gone into that great sub-continent, and it’s fitting that Peter Davison’s Doctor is the one who gets this honour – with his cream blazer and cricket shirt, he looks the very part; somehow even Tom Baker would be lost here (he certainly wouldn’t need his scarf). The setting and time period is perfectly judged to draw from a multitude of sources (just look at the names of the characters for the references – Haggard, Edgar, Forster, Burrows (sic)) and writer/director Barnaby Edwards certainly has great fun piling in both quotes and quips alike (“Easy, tiger”???!). What’s more, this is an action story: there’s narrative drive from the start, with steam trains, hot air balloons, elephants and raging torrents all employed to carry the team through to the end of the tiger’s tale.

On top of all that, the casting is superb – Cherie Lunghi is never less than brilliant as Lady Adela, by way of example, and Neil Stacy ought to have a moustache to twirl in villainous fashion. The plot is quite linear, with very few surprises, but the story itself is cleverly constructed and makes full use of the episode breaks. Actually I said there were no surprises, but I was wrong – the standard “Nyssa gets infected with something dreadful and lethal” subplot develops an unexpected side-effect. I’ll have some of that myself, if you don’t mind.

Looking at my rankings, it seems that the last “main range” stories to get five stars were The Game and Circular Time (The Elite also got five, but that’s from the Lost Stories line). I’m happy to say that The Emerald Tiger gets five too.
*****

Buy it here.

Big Finish Folly, Part 25

Rat Trap, by Tony Lee

Back to Earth once more, in the “last episode” of this fifth season of Big Finish Folly, and we find ourselves at Cadogan Castle, in the late 11th Century, watching the jousting… or we would be, if the Tardis’s finely-tuned navigational equipment ever actually worked. Instead, the Doctor has landed inside the old army installation at Cadogan, deep in the bunker’s tunnels.

It’s 1983, the Milksnatcher is 24 hours from a second term, and there are rats in this abandoned bunker. Big rats. This is gonna be messy…

In fact, this is what would happen if James Herbert wrote for Doctor Who. Cue up the treacherous civil servants, the aggressive military types, the red-shirted civilians caught in something they can’t understand, and of course the morally ambiguous scientists who caused the whole mess to begin with. The Doctor and his companions have to contend with all of them – along with the Rat King itself (and the cover picture should give you some idea of what that looks like

Like all the best Big Finish adventures, this one moves at such a pace that there’s no time to dwell on the inconsistencies, incongruities and loopy coincidences built into the plot. Every member of the crew has something to do here, separated from each other and struggling with their own narratives. Tegan gets to discover why the rats are down here to begin with, Turlough is trapped inside the Tardis along with a young civil servant who might not be all she seems, Nyssa gets to play with a chemistry set, and the Doctor himself has to try to keep everybody safe. No easy task.

The main problem is that with everybody in separate locations, they all need somebody else to interact with. That means the cast is a bit larger than some other recent plays, and it’s no big shock when some of the characters get trimmed back (um…they die) in the second episode for clarity’s sake. On the other hand, Tony Lee makes good use of the opportunity to explore the three companions, giving each of them a few choice moments to shine and develop their characters. Without spoilering too much, Tegan’s use of her Mara memories is pretty nifty, as is the way that Turlough’s natural sense of self-preservation is used against the rats. Terry Molloy’s performance is also well-judged, though ironically quite close to that other mad scientist he portrays so well…

In summation? A good show, once again, from a cast that clearly enjoys returning to these roles. Perhaps the only disappointment is that the story arc that brought Nyssa back into the Tardis (back in Cobwebs) seems to have been set aside during these last few stories. It makes a welcome reappearance here, but never gets any resolution – in fact the story itself halts as though it has run into a brick wall with neither a cliff-hanger nor a hook. Slightly frustrating after all that build-up, but it would be churlish to mark it down for that.
****¼

Buy it here.

Big Finish Folly, Part 24

Kiss of Death, by Stephen Cole

Was there ever a companion more maligned than Mark Strickson’s Turlough? After the Black Guardian trilogy of stories he was given very little to do, and that’s why he decided to up and off shortly afterwards (I’m sure I read that somewhere, but now I can’t find the damned page or link. Anyone?). Anyway, that’s already changed during the expanded adventures Big Finish have created, though some might argue that the writers have tended to emphasise his strong streak of self-preservation over anything else.

Now we get the added bonus of a story based around Turlough himself and his history. Kiss of Death makes use of his Trion ancestry while still managing to keep the Doctor ignorant of Turlough’s past. Suckered and kidnapped by gun-toting mercenaries after an apparent chance encounter with an ex-girlfriend, Turlough is bundled off to an asteroid that used to belong to his family – where, hidden within a secure dimensional bubble, is reputed to be a vast horde of secret treasure. The only way to gain access to the bubble is via a combined-DNA lock that opens when Turlough and Deela kiss, which is why the mercs have been scouring space for him.

Obviously, the Doctor isn’t going to take the abduction of one of his companions lightly. With the Tardis temporarily out of commission, he has to give chase in an old rust-bucket freighter. And his arrival – or, rather, his crash-landing – sets off the asteroid’s security system. Which is cranky. Oh dear.

There are good things about this play – the asteroid setting, the need to get by without the Tardis, the frantic subterranean struggle against the security system, Turlough’s frustration at being dragged back into a past he’d hoped to have left behind. Unfortunately there are also bad things about this play – Kanch’s accent and the horrible urban colloquialisms, the whoops-reveal of Deela’s allegiance, Rennol’s single-minded devouring of furniture (metaphorically), and the over-processed voices of the Morass (again!).

At least Janet Fielding’s performance as Tegan tips the balance back over to the side of good and light. Yes, that’s right – a decent, rounded script for Tegan! Plus, Turlough gets a moment to shine and for once the focus isn’t entirely on his perceived cowardice. All in all, a good show.
****

Buy it here.