1-4. The Hollows of Time.

2 episodes. Approx. 120 minutes. Written by: Christopher H. Bidmead. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.

THE PLOT

The Doctor takes Peri to Hollowdean, a small English village that is home to Reverend Foxwell (Trevor Littledale), an old friend the Doctor had met at Bletchley in the 1940's, working with Alan Turing among other great minds. The reverend had extended a standing invitation, which the Doctor has decided to accept in order to investigate gravitational anomalies.

The anomalies are tied to experiments Foxwell is working with another old Bletchley associate: Professor Stream (David Garfield). But something is odd about Stream: The Doctor finds him familiar, but only remembers him from Bletchley after meeting him. When he really stops to think, some of those memories seem to actually be memories of Foxwell. The experiments are also troubling, particularly when Peri and a local boy, 11-year-old Simon (voiced by Susan Sheridan), find a strange scale from the beach, one which seems to jump of its own volition.

The Doctor recognizes it as a Tractator scale, and he soon realizes that the experiments Reverend Foxwell believes are peaceful scientific advances may actually endanger all of Time and Space!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though some of Christopher H. Bidmead's dialogue is overly-florid, giving the impression of a Doctor who never uses one small word when four or five large ones will suffice, Colin Baker gives another first-rate performance. One thing that can be said for Bidmead: He writes a smart Doctor, and we can see the Doctor constantly thinking and rethinking the overall situation. Professor Stream's experiments have scrambled his memories as much as Foxy's, leaving him unable to recognize a villain he should know instantly, but he remains proactive enough to lay a trap for Stream's associates.

Peri: Very protective toward young Simon. She is gentle and reassuring when walking through the Tractator tunnels with him, doing her best to keep him calm even through her own fears. Once he is safe, she turns into a strict mother figure, ordering him to bed in an attempt to get him out of danger. She is also protective toward the Doctor, following him into the Time Corridor when she believes he intends to sacrifice himself for the group.

"Professor Stream:" This story was scripted for the original Season 23 with a major role for Anthony Ainley's Master... which poses a challenge for the audio version, as it was adapted during the period when Big Finish were restricted from using the character. Had the listeners been trusted to connect the dots, with the rest simply playing out as it would have minus the word "Master," the result probably would have been fine. David Garfield is a surprisingly good vocal match for Anthony Ainley, his kindly "Stream" persona particularly effective in recalling the Portreve from Castrovalva, and his sparing use makes his scenes far more effective than most '80's Master stories. The big problem is that Bidmead gives us a seemingly endless stream of knowing winks, drawing so much attention to the non-identification of Stream that it becomes rather distracting.

THOUGHTS

My complaint about Bidmead's winks at the Master can be equally applied to most of the ways he tries to write around the limitations he's been given. The Hollows of Time is a very visual script, and adapting it to audio was always going to create issues. Bidmead attempts to deal with this by grafting on scenes of the Doctor and Peri, reflecting on their adventure after the fact. Had this device been restricted to bookends, perhaps to justify bits of narration over certain impossibly visual moments, then it would have been fine. But the second episode particularly cuts back to them far too often, breaking up the flow of the narrative while largely just adding an extra layer of confusion.

For all of that, I rather like the story. Unlike the other cancelled stories of the original Season 23, I suspect this one would have been brilliant on television. It's vintage Bidmead: Imaginative, full of high concepts and set pieces, with just the right touch of the bizarre. It's a direct sequel to Frontios, but it isn't in any way a retread. The Tractators are used in an entirely different way by this story, cleverly playing with expectations that this will turn into a monster story (something which never ends up happening).

While the translation to audio isn't ideal, I still enjoyed closing my eyes and visualizing some of the bizarre set pieces: The first episode cliffhanger, which sees the Doctor taking a flight through space/time in a dissolving Citroen; the encasements which form the central part of the Master's plan, arranged into a Stonehenge-like circle to create a forcefield; a time corridor that encompasses Foxy's vicarage, with bits of furniture flying around the characters. Sure, it's a bit distracting to have characters stop and describe these things, but the images remain arresting, the atmosphere and style more than a little reminiscent of Bidmead's earlier Castrovalva.

I can't pretend that, in its current form, the story isn't a bit of a mess. The restriction against naming the Master would have harmed the story, even if Bidmead's attempts to make something clever out of that hadn't backfired spectacularly. While most of the performances are very good, the decision to cast actress Susan Sheridan as an 11-year-old boy is poorly judged, as it is all too clearly a woman putting on a funny voice (though it's debatable whether this is actually any worse than the wooden child performance heard in Mission to Magnus). The narrative is just about coherent - but even paying close attention, the climax is very confusing, and the brief epilogue does little to clear up the muddle.

In the end, my positive rating of the story comes down to personal taste. I've always enjoyed the imagination and atmosphere of Bidmead's television stories. Never mind his stated goal of "hard science" - His stories feature some of the most imaginative science fantasy found in Doctor Who, and the lyrical, semi-magical quality of his stories is something I respond to. The Big Finish production of The Hollows of Time is a shadow of what the story would have been on television... But I still find myself responding to Bidmead's concepts, set pieces, and atmosphere.

I won't argue with those who dislike this story, as all the common complaints made against it are valid. All I can say is: I still enjoy it, and am happier to have it in a less-than-ideal format than not to have it at all.

Overall Rating: 6/10.

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