Sunday, December 29, 2024

8-1. Deathworld.

Deathworld cover.

4 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 137 minutes. Adapted by: John Dorney. Written by: Bob Baker, Dave Martin. Directed by: David O'Mahony. Produced by: David O'Mahony.


THE PLOT:

On a beach, two figures are playing chess. One is the Lord High President of Gallifrey; the other is the personification of Death.

The President has been granted three kings: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Doctors. Now Death is stalking the three Doctors and their companions across time and space, snatching them out of reality and bringing them to his realm.

In an ever-shifting environment, the Doctors vie against figures from mythology, from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins. With their usual mix of cleverness and luck, they fend off the most obvious traps.

It's clear that "Death," whether he's who he claims to be or not, has the power to kill them at any time. They realize that this must be some kind of test or game.

But it's hard to win when you don't even know the rules...


CHARACTERS:

The 3rd Doctor: He's barely in the first episode, but he's given the largest role in the remaining episodes. An interesting character beat is his reaction to seeing Jamie again. He restrains his emotions, but he's overjoyed to see his old friend. When the 2nd Doctor tells him to just look up Jamie in his own time, he is carefully restrained in his reply. Still, his sadness is clear, since we know what the 2nd Doctor doesn't: that visiting Jamie is simply not possible. Tim Treloar does a fine Pertwee and gives a good performance in general. Aside from a few "off" line readings, I had no trouble picturing the Third Doctor at any point.

The 2nd Doctor: Michael Troughton's voice already quite resembles his father's, so it's little surprise that he's the most dead-on of the three "replacements." The 2nd Doctor's characterization is more in line with his actual television persona and is noticeably less exaggerated than The Three Doctors' more heavily comedic version. He mostly gets the least to do of the three, but he gets one outstanding moment in the final episode.

The 1st Doctor: Though I think the 2nd and 3rd Doctor recasts work well, Stephen Noonan's 1st Doctor doesn't quite work for me. It's not a bad performance, with him conveying the character's intelligence and impatience. What's missing is the childlike glee that Hartnell brought to the role, the sense of a man who sometimes seemed downright drunk on his own cleverness. It's clear that Noonan is putting in the effort, and I think some fans' online kicking of him is disproportionate to his actual failings. Still, while listening to Deathworld made me more likely to dip into the Michael Troughton and Tim Treloar ranges in the future, it made me even less likely to do the same for Stephen Noonan's.

Jo Grant: The one regular who's actually less well-served by this version than by The Three Doctors, with her mostly just tagging along after the 3rd Doctor for the bulk of it. Her best moments come near the end, when she resolves to find a way to do something to help after the Doctors leave their companions behind. When her Doctor requires an act of faith from the companions at the end, she is the first to agree, because her trust in him is absolute.

Jamie McCrimmon: Frazer Hines was attached to Emmerdale when The Three Doctors was made, and scheduling even a cameo ultimately proved impossible (most of his scripted lines ended up going to Benton). Freed of that restriction, Deathworld is able to give him the significant role he was meant to have. He's every bit as protective of his Doctor as Jo is of hers, but he's more willing to throw the Doctor's failures back at him. When he's separated from the 2nd Doctor, he still follows the instructions of the 3rd - but there's also a divide, with him not able to see this newer Doctor as "the real thing."

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Easily the character who is most improved from the televised version. He still has moments that inspire mockery from the Doctors, such as his insistence on shooting at monsters when he knows they won't be affected. But he's allowed to get a bit back, snapping that at least he's trying to do something. The story opens with him seeing UNIT destroyed and his men along with it, and that affects him throughout. When he finds that his men are all right at the end (not a spoiler; did you think even an alternate version was going to kill Benton and Yates? Offscreen, at that?), he runs out to find them to reassure himself that all is well. Though there was a spark in Nicholas Courtney's original performance that's not quite there in Jon Culshaw's recreation, the character is still instantly recognizable, with Culshaw doing a fine job with both the voice and line deliveries.

Death: A much more interesting villain than The Three Doctors' shouty, ranting Omega. Death is soft-spoken and patient. There's smugness in his interactions with the President and then with the Doctors, with him seeming certain of victory. A conversation with the Doctors ends with them rushing to rescue their companions... and Death sits back and sips his wine, looking on like a spectator. The character, who is already well written, benefits from Joe Shire's excellent performance. He speaks in silken tones, unruffled even when his quarry evades his traps, and he holds the listener even during a couple of moments that might have come off as infodumps. Oh, and his speech about chess is an arresting start, opening the story on exactly the right note.


BACKGROUND:

Deathworld was adapted from writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin's original treatment for the story that became The Three Doctors. This was before anyone realized the extent of William Hartnell's health issues, so the 1st Doctor has a major role. This was also before it became clear that there was no way to work out scheduling for Frazer Hines' Jamie to appear.

If those were the only differences, this would be a mild curiosity at best. But as the plot description should make clear, Deathworld is a completely different story than the one that made it to air in 1972. A few elements are similar: The story involves the Doctors and their companions being taken to an impossible world outside normal reality, and the Time Lords are heavily involved. But The Three Doctors was simpler, more straightforward, and a whole lot cheaper.

Bob Baker and Dave Martin were known for their imagination, which script editors often had to reign in to match the actual budget. While I suspect most of the story comes from John Dorney (my understanding is that the Deathworld treatment was only a few pages long), the scope here feels very true to Baker and Martin. Settings include: a void; a disused hospital; a World War I trench; a spooky castle; and monster-filled subterranean tunnels. Oh, and a literal hellscape.

This makes Deathworld an ideal choice for audio, where realization is dependent on the director, the sound design, the music, and the listener's own imagination. Dorney has done a terrific job of turning Baker and Martin's treatment into a coherent script, and I found the results to be enormously enjoyable.


THOUGHTS:

Deathworld is structured around different mythologies. After an introductory episode in which the three Doctors are ensnared by Death, the remaining episodes each center around a new myth: Episode Two, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Episode Three, the Seven Deadly Sins; Episode Four, creatures of legend.

This is a highly atmospheric release. Even by Big Finish's usual standard, the sound design is excellent, from the sounds of waves and birds at the beach hosting the chess game, to a slight echo in the tunnels, to a more pronounced echo in the void, to just a different sound quality inside the castle and hospital. The music is well utilized, and it all combines to keep the different scenes and settings feeling unified.

There are interesting themes surrounding the idea of death. The Doctors bicker amongst themselves, just as they did in the televised story, but Jo cuts through to the truth of why: Each Doctor is a reminder to the others that even for the "indestructible" Doctor, death is inevitable. For the 3rd Doctor to exist, his predecessors had to "die," and eventually the 3rd Doctor will meet his end, as well. It's an interesting angle on what's become the tradition of multi-Doctor bickering, one that enriches their interactions without stopping them from being entertaining.

There are faults. Deathworld is stronger on atmosphere and theme than it is on story. The first half features a lot of incidents that don't end up affecting much in the story. Part Two, in particular, does nothing in terms of the larger story. There are some terrific scenes - but had the entire episode been removed, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference.

There are also some fannish indulgences that I don't love. If the point of the "Lost Stories" is to bring to life stories we might have seen, then surely it goes against that to wink at other Big Finish stories or stories from much later eras? Deathworld has continuity nods to The Two Doctors, which was made more than a decade after this treatment was first submitted. It also references a connected Big Finish story titled The Black Hole that was made decades after that! For me, at least, that breaks the illusion of this being something that might have been seen in 1972.


OVERALL:

Despite some flaws, I ended up enjoying Big Finish's Deathworld significantly more than I enjoyed The Three Doctors. It's a more interesting story, richer in ideas and themes than what made it to air, and with stronger overall characterizations.

That said, I think producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks were right to reject Deathworld and get Bob Baker and Dave Martin to simplify their ideas into The Three Doctors. Even putting aside the budgetary limitations, The Three Doctors is a better celebration of the series, with more interaction among the Doctors (well, the 2nd and 3rd at least), and a stronger plotline.

Deathworld is a very good audio story, though, benefiting from excellent production values and good performances. Even though I'm far from sold on Stephen Noonan's 1st Doctor, I would still recommend this story - and it's left me feeling more open to sampling Big Finish's "recast" 2nd and 3rd Doctor releases in the future.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Television Story: The Time Monster
Next Television Story: The Three Doctors

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3-8. The Rosemariners.

Rosemariners cd cover.

4 episodes. Running Time: Approx. 118 minutes. Written by: Donald Tosh. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT:

Earth Station 454 is a space station dedicated to scientific research that is overseen by Professor Arnold Biggs (David Warner). But when the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe arrive, they find the station closed down. Only Biggs remains, carefully suspending his experiments so that they can be resumed later.

Commander Rugosa of the Rosemariners has requested Biggs's aid. The Rosemariners are a nonviolent species who deal with their criminals by subduing them with Rosedream, a serum derived from rosa toxicaera, a carnivorous flower from the planet Kembal. Rosedream puts its subjects into a trance that leaves them peaceful yet able to perform tasks as directed.

A small amount of Rosedream has gone missing, either through theft or carelessness. Given its properties, Rugosa fears a potential interstellar incident unless Biggs can create a cure.

All of which seems entirely reasonable. Except that Biggs's old friend Colbert, the CEO of the human station, is behaving very strangely, seemingly deferring to Rugosa in all things. In addition, Biggs is given no access to his staff. It's left to the Doctor to stall for time while he and his friends work out exactly what the Rosemariners are hiding...


CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Bonds instantly with Professor Biggs, the two men chatting so intently about science that Jamie and Zoe actually leave the room without either man noticing. He senses something wrong about Colbert even before Biggs points out the man's out-of-character behavior. Most of his conversations with Rugosa amount to him stalling for time, promising progress and making just enough inquiries to keep the commander satisfied.

Jamie: Left alone in the TARDIS control room at the start of the story, he can't quite resist the urge to push a button, which is what causes them to materialize on Earth Station 454 and kicks off the entire adventure. He's consistently resourceful throughout the rest of the serial. He insists that Zoe join him in dressing up in Security uniforms to avoid detection, and he comes up with a plan to rescue Zoe late in the story. He views her as someone in need of protection, telling Biggs that she always thinks she's in control of any situation, "and she's usually wrong!"

Zoe: When Rugosa mistakes her for a member of the Communications crew and asks her to translate messages from Earth, she plays for time in much the same way the Doctor has been doing. She's under the supervision of Colbert - or rather, Colbert's doppelganger. After carefully making sure that he isn't actually aware of the codes or procedures, she makes a show of translating the messages and makes something up to put pressure on him. This being Zoe, she can't help but push her luck a little too far... but not before her invented message forces Rugosa to adjust his plans.

Professor Biggs: David Warner lends considerable presence to the main guest role of Biggs, the expert botanist who serves as the Doctor's ally. When Rugosa reveals the properties of rosa toxicaera, and that serum from it has gone missing, Biggs responds with outrage, concerned for the welfare of his staff. But when the Doctor steps in to feign cooperation for Rugosa, the professor is swift enough to immediately follow his lead.

Commander Rugosa: The Rosemariner leader behaves in a calculatedly pleasant manner when interacting first with the real Colbert, then with Biggs and the Doctor. Actor Clive Wood perfectly captures the amiable way the commander simultaneously intimidates and manipulates the scientists into doing his will. The Doctor at one point accuses him of distrusting scientists. Once he's alone and free to drop his amiable facade, Rugosa laughs that he actually loves scientists' predictability: "They can never resist trying to give you what you want if they think it will prove how clever they are."


THOUGHTS:

Donald Tosh's The Rosemariners isn't exactly a highlight of the "Lost Stories" range, but it is a fun bit of escapism. Had the script been completed and shot at the time, I suspect it would be an engaging but fairly average Season Six story... which is certainly no bad thing, and I quite enjoyed listening to this.

Tosh was script editor during the first half of the series' third season, so it's perhaps unsurprising how well-structured this is. The first episode sets up elements that end up paying off later. Jamie and Zoe don the station uniforms, which results in Zoe's masquerade as a Communications Officer. A minor gadget of Professor Biggs, seemingly just a character beat to add color, ends up being key to Jamie's rescue of Zoe. A minor guest character in the first half becomes extremely important in the second half. There's even a nice bit of symmetry involving a killer plant and its victims. Nothing comes out of nowhere.

Like other early "Lost Stories" where one or more members of the main cast were no longer with us, The Rosemariners mixes fully voiced conversations with narration. It's more or less the same format that would be recycled for Big Finish's Early Adventures, and I think it's a good one. The narration allows for settings and actions to be clearly visualized with no artificially descriptive dialogue, while the cast interactions allow for immediacy. In effect, we get the advantages of both audiobook and audio play formats.

There are some highly visual settings here. Jamie and Zoe pick their way through a theater crowded with station staff in the process of being brainwashed, which is an effectively described scene. The most memorable image is the rosarium, a giant area filled with thousands of roses of all types and colors.

I doubt the rosarium would be half as effective had it been fully described through dialogue. For that matter, I also doubt that it would have been well realized by late 1960s Doctor Who. Jamie fighting a giant flower would doubtless have been a hilariously cheesy moment, rather than the genuinely tense one portrayed here.


OVERALL:

Well-structured, well-acted, and boasting a couple of interesting settings that engage the listener's visual imagination, The Rosemariners is a good audio release. The story itself is standard Doctor Who fare, and the way the villain is defeated is a little too easy to see coming. But it's engaging throughout: well-structured, well-paced, and consistently fun to listen to.

I don't regret that it wasn't made as a television serial, as I suspect it would have been a fairly "middle" entry in the season. Still, I'm happy that Tosh was able to write it up for audio, and in a format that's particularly well-suited to its strengths.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Set During: Season Six

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

3-7. The Masters of Luxor.


6 episodes: The Cannibal Flower, The Mockery of a Man, A Light on the Dead Planet, Tabon of Luxor, An Infinity of Surprises, The Flower Blooms. Approx. 196 minutes. Written by: Anthony Coburn. Adapted for audio by Nigel Robinson. Directed by: Lisa Bowerman. Produced by: David Richardson. Performed by: Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Joe Kloska.


THE PLOT

A mysterious signal draws the TARDIS to a seemingly dead world, a cratered planet with only one distinctive feature: an incredibly tall, crystalline building. The ship is pulled into the building's courtyard, where its power immediately begins to drain away. With escape impossible, the travelers are left with only one option: exploration.

They discover an army of robots inside the structure: The simplistic "Mark One" servitors, and the more complex "Derivitron" robots. The Derivitrons greet them as "Masters of Luxor," and see that they are given food, baths, and fresh clothing. Then they are taken before "The Perfect One" (Joseph Kloska), the leader of the robots - who is himself a robot, though one with a nearly perfectly human appearance.

The Perfect One's ambition is to become fully human. To that end, he experiments on any living subject who finds his way to the structure, originally built as a prison for criminals on the planet Luxor. All of these prisoners have been male, leaving him intrigued by the possibilities posed by Barbara and Susan: Women, who give life. He decides they will be the key to giving him true life... by draining their life force completely!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor:
 Initially dismisses Ian and Barbara's suspicions of the robots as primitive and unenlightened. He insists that there is no reasonable grounds to suspect any malice at work. That attitude fades fast when the robots begin evading direct questions, but he is still shocked and outraged when he discovers that they have actually destroyed living beings. As a scientist, he sees the work done by the masters of Luxor as a perversion: "They have become drunk with their science," he proclaims scornfully. When he and Ian discover Tabon (also played by Joseph Kloska), the man who indirectly created The Perfect One, the Doctor pushes him to action. He first calls the scientist on his past cowardice, then dangles the carrot in front of him that if The Perfect One was based on him, then some of Tabon's own traits can be exploited to defeat it.

Ian: When Susan marvels at his apparent fearlessness early in the story, Ian confesses that he is actually very frightened - He just keeps control over himself. He briefly loses that control when he and the Doctor encounter the hibernating Tabon. Despite the Doctor's call for restraint, Ian refuses to wait for the scientist to wake on his own and begins shaking, then slapping the man, fearful that any delay will be the difference between rescuing Barbara and Susan and arriving too late to help them.

Barbara: The early parts of the story see a slightly "off" characterization. Barbara talks about how the structure "feels" wrong - Something that would actually seem more suitable coming from Susan. That, and a few other bits (talking about Luxor's "evil society," for instance) can likely be put down to this being a very early script, with the characters not really fully set yet. The latter half of the story sees her much more in character, protective of Susan and pushing their attempts to find and exploit weaknesses in the robots.

Susan: Much more active here than in most 1960's scripts. In a rare switch in the division of regulars, she goes to explore with Ian at the start of the story while Barbara stays behind to help the Doctor try to repair the TARDIS. Susan gets to be observant and useful, noticing the cameras watching her and Barbara inside their cell. She also briefly transforms into Emma Peel in Episode Six, wriggling free of her bonds and tripping up robots to free Ian in an action scene that I couldn't make myself picture as being remotely convincing. Still, I suspect Ford would have been very pleased at having such an active script had this been produced at the time - It's a far cry from Susan catching "plot convenience" fever in order to get recaptured in The Reign of Terror.


THOUGHTS

The Masters of Luxor was originally intended to be the series' second story. Story editor David Whitaker had issues with the script which could not be resolved in time for that early production block, so it was pushed back and another set of finished scripts were moved into place. Those were Terry Nation's scripts for The Daleks, and the rest was history.

Rewrites continued on The Masters of Luxor, which grew from its initial four episodes to the six presented in this audio. But Whitaker continued to feel that the script had problems, and the story kept getting pushed back until it was finally dropped altogether. I actually think it was the correct decision. While there are several good elements in this story, and I did largely enjoy listening to it, I don't believe it would have been terribly well-regarded had it been produced for the television series. 

It does get off to an excellent start. The first episode is particularly good. It's an episode which features only the regulars, allowing us to follow them into this foreboding environment. I always enjoyed these types of first episodes. The Daleks, The Space Museum, The Mind Robber, The Ark in Space... Some of these stories ended up being very good, others not so much - but in every case, that first episode with the regulars exploring and confounded by a strange environment proved to be atmospheric and highly effective, and that proves to be the case even in audio form here.

The capture/escape/recapture formula becomes repetitive as the story moves along, but the strength of the production brings the structure to life, maintaining a genuinely unsettling atmosphere. Then the Doctor and Ian escape from the structure and meet Tabon... and that's when the momentum begins to stall. With the focus shifted away from the robots and the machine-laden trap of the building, the atmosphere subsides noticeably, and continues doing so right up to the end - an ending which isn't nearly strong enough to pull together all the various threads of the preceding five episodes.

What really stands out about this serial are the elements it has in common with The Daleks, the story that ended up replacing it. Both are long stories, one a six-parter and one a seven-parter. Both feature futuristic structures, and both take the first episode to follow the regulars around these structures before filling htem with guest characters. Both stories even feature a midpoint escape, with the escaped regulars sneaking back into the structure through a tunnel in the last part of the story.

The Daleks, however, made better use of almost all of the above. The Dalek/Thal conflict made for a more compelling backdrop than the Tabon/Perfect One angst; The Perfect One isn't even aware that Tabon is alive, so there is no pre-existing conflict before the Doctor and his party arrive, whereas the Daleks and Thals had been at war for generations when we met them in The Daleks. The mid-story split between the "capture/escape" strand and the expedition strand kept The Daleks fresh throughout its run, whereas here the story seems to stall around Episode Three. 

Big Finish continues to show a strong feel for the Hartnell era, and the production evokes the early black-and-white days of Doctor Who wonderfully. Toby Hrycek-Robinson's score could be right out of the early 1960's, being both effective in supporting the drama and just right for what would have been heard in the series at that time. William Russell and Carole Ann Ford do a splendid job as always, and this story really showcases how well Ford does both at recreating Susan and at bringing Barbara to life. The scenes in Episode Five, in which Barbara and Susan confuse the robots by reciting nonsense and singing hymns, are edited so that Ford's Susan voice is layered on top of her Barbara voice, their lines overlapping, and these scenes truly feel like there are two different actresses in the room: Credit to both the editing and to Ford's ability to both lower and soften her voice for Barbara's line deliveries.

An excellent production of a flawed but interesting script. Had this been a television serial, I would probably award it about a "5." Given the strength of the audio presentation, however, I'm going to bump it up just a little to a solid:


Overall Rating: 6/10.

Set during Season One.

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