1-7. The Song of Megaptera.

4 episodes. Approx. 109 minutes. Written by: Pat Mills. Directed by: John Ainsworth. Produced by: David Richardson.

THE PLOT

The TARDIS is drawn by the song of a space whale, a creature that swims through time and space much as earth whales swim through the ocean. This particular whale is being hunted by a factory ship, a mile-long edifice devoted to catching these creatures and killing them, earning a bonus from the company for every whale destroyed.

When the ship catches the whale in a tractor beam, the Doctor steers the TARDIS straight in - freeing the whale, but resulting in the TARDIS being dragged into the factory ship's "termination bay" instead. He is brought to Captain Greeg (John Benfield), the resentful head of a very motley crew.  Greeg hates the Doctor on sight, despising him as much for his educated manner as for costing him his kill. He lets the Doctor know that his actions have merely delayed the inevitable, as the ship is already closing on the whale's new position.

But the factory ship has another visitor: A fungus-like "Caller" (John Banks), hunting the whale for its own purposes. And inside the whale is a colony of human castaways, worshiping the creature and naming it "Megaptera." If either Greeg or the Caller succeed in their plans, then these castaways will be as doomed as the whale itself!

CHARACTERS

The Doctor: When he and Peri first see the space whale being hunted by the factory ship, it takes almost no convincing on Peri's part for him to intervene. He continues interfering with Greeg's whale hunt at every turn, sabotaging the computer to make it into the ultimate peace-nik (hilariously followed by the computer overcompensating and assuming the personality of a psychotic gamer), then using the TARDIS to act as a decoy while the whale dives into the time vortex. He remains highly protective of Peri, and when she is in jeopardy in Part Two he runs to her side and insists on treating her himself rather than let the "Auto-Doc" amputate her arm.

Peri: Gets an amusing scene in which she is rendered delirious and in short sequence: fails to recognize the Doctor because she is picturing the Fifth Doctor; complains about the Sixth Doctor's dress sense; muses about how wonderful it is that she's turning into a plant; wonders about having a Dalek as a pet; and demonstrates her American-ness by singing the Star Spangled Banner (badly). The Sixth Doctor's personality also seems to have rubbed off on her a bit, as she responds to his statement about "a slight impact" after a torpedo hits the TARDIS by repeating "a slight impact," in a steadily rising voice - much as he often does. Outside of these moments, most of the material here is generic companion stuff, likely a side effect of this story having been previously developed for entirely different Doctor/companion teams.

THOUGHTS

The Song of Megaptera had probably the longest development process of any of the Lost Stories. It was originally submitted as Song of the Space Whale in 1980, envisioned as a Fourth Doctor story. It was commissioned for full scripts for Season 20, drafted as the introduction for new companion Turlough, only to be pushed back due to writer Pat Mills' disagreements with Eric Saward over the working class character dialogue written for the captain and castaways (Saward evidently wanted the captain to be a "Star Trek-type figure"). The script was revamped one more time for the Sixth Doctor and Peri before finally being dropped altogether.

In its audio form, the serial is a fun piece with some big, over-the-top visuals and some enjoyably insane ideas. Larger-than-life imagery greets us right from the start, as a mile-long factory ship hunts an equally enormous space whale. The factory ship's interior is almost like the inside of a dying beast itself: rust cakes the walls, decay is everywhere. The end of Part One even sees Peri falling into the bowels of the ship, where she encounters a fungus-like alien Caller (John Banks) that lurks within those depths almost like a parasite.

The second half keeps throwing big visuals and weird ideas at us. The Doctor and Peri go into the whale itself. There, they encounter "The Framily," a large group of castaways changed by the whale's time radiation into an insane cult worshiping "Megaptera."  Meanwhile, the factory ship continues its hunt, Captain Greeg (just one letter removed from "greed")'s obsession with catching this space beast and earning a huge bonus allowing guest star John Benfield to give a proper, scenery-chomping turn; for what whale hunt story would be complete without its Ahab?

It's easy to see how these visuals and concepts would have appealed to commissioning script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, whose season as script editor and whose subsequent scripts always showed a fondness for the big and bizarre. Meanwhile, the fast pace and the mercenary motives of the factory ship crew doubtless held enough appeal to new script editor Eric Saward to keep him toying with it for quite a while before officially dropping it. There's little question this would have been a fun television outing, whose main challenge (as the liner notes observe) would have been the realization of the space whale itself.

Big Finish's production standards are in top form bringing this to life. Daniel Brett's music and sound design evoke just the right atmosphere for the whale in space even before the story truly gets underway. In the second half, there's a noticeable divide between the harsh, mechanical flight deck of the factory ship and the organic caverns of Megaptera. Scene transitions are seamless, and even an action scene in Part Three that sees the TARDIS fleeing from a torpedo is tightly structured and easy to picture in the mind's eye.

In Season 20, this ended up being replaced by Mawdryn Undead; in Season 22, by Vengeance on Varos. That makes it hard for me to argue that this was a missed opportunity, as I genuinely prefer both of those stories over this one. Still, this is a brisk, imaginative serial, and I found it a lot of fun to listen to.

Overall Rating: 7/10.

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