Are mutants human and how should they be taxed?

The story of two international trade lawyers and their battle with the US tax courts on what makes a human being bore strange fruit.

The dispute over tax rates for importing dolls versus toys got very interesting when the investigation reached the Marvel Comics line of superhero toys. Dolls were classified as anything resembling a human being, toys are everything else. The difference between the tax rates is significant.

Proving that characters such as Beast and Wolverine are not human beings as they did not meet qualifications raised some very interesting issues on classification of not just products but people (fictional or not). They were actually classified as ‘monsters’ and not human. The case is one of taxes and merchandise, but it also taps into the very basis of the civil rights themes in the X-Men comic books where the heroes struggle for equal rights in a world that hates and fears them.

Beast and Wolverine (due to their skin color and augmentations) were classified as inhuman and therefore toys based on these characters can be imported at a lower tax rate… but essentially the line was drawn at what makes a person a human being in the US courts over an action figure.

Weird.

It’s a fascinating (and entertaining) listen.

Click on the link to listen!

Thanks to Sean Jamison for the tip!

Doctor Who Big Finish -The Dark Flame

The Dark Flame

Story 42
Written by Trevor Baxendale
Released March 2003
“Ace, how nice to see you. I’m happy to see that you’ve found a nice big gun.”
“Happy?”
“It’s a figure of speech.”

The Doctor and Ace are on their way to reunion with Bernice Summerfield, a character from the New Adventures series in the 1990′s. They receive a psychic alarm from a good friend of the Doctor’s an aged Professor Remnex, warning the Time Lord of a deadly evil entity. Arriving on a facility hovering over Sorus Alpha, the Doctor is a VIP of sorts due to an upcoming controlled black light explosion that could use his input. However, the scientist Slyde seems ill at ease with the interference of the Doctor and does his best to make the visitors feel uncomfortable.

The Doctor is having something of a crisis, seeming to be overwhelmed by his current lifestyle full of galactic-level threats and god-like creatures threatening all of creation. He is doubting himself and his role in the scheme of things, making him all the happier to see an old friends like Remnex. Unfortunately, Remnex knows nothing of the psychic cry through time and seems oblivious to the Doctor’s concern.

One time companion to the Doctor and space-faring archaeologist, Benny is on the facility to meet an old colleague, but cannot find him anywhere and has made herself busy performing menial tasks such as refuse disposal via TRANSMAT. Unbeknownst to Benny, her friend Victor is hard at work excavating a relic with the help of a mechanoid named Joseph. Joseph is something of a know-it-all and is antagonistic with Victor which is completely sensible when you take into account they share the same brain pattern. The relic retrieved, Joseph and Victor are relinquished of their find by their employer, a mysterious figure who knocks Victor out cold when he asks too many questions.

Soon it becomes clear that the Black Light explosion and the skull are tied together by the cult of the Dark Flame, a mythical association with so many mentions throughout history that many scholars, including Benny, insist that they don’t exist. But the Doctor knows better. The Dark Flame is an evil entity of immense power from the future long after our universe has died. The impulse to destroy, control and murder are attributed to the influence of the Dark Flame’s flickering embers reaching out from beyond and its intention is to break through completely.

The Doctor and Ace combo in the Big Finish audios have left me sort of cold on occasion, especially the previous The Shadow of the Scourge which drew on the New Adventures series published by Virgin. This time around the blend of humor, fantasy and moralizing gelled just right for me. McCoy is a voracious actor with a deep appetite for emotional delivery. So many of his stories feature confrontations where he struggles with a villain in a argument rather than physical conflict. In some cases this backfires and looks rather childish, but here it really works.

It must be very difficulty for Sophie Aldred to pretend to still be a twenty-something when she has two kids at home but she finds her way there. The rebellious soldier with a fearless attitude and explosives to back it up is in full effect here, daring dangerous megalomaniacs to try and get her one moment and kicking him in the jewels the next. Ace can be a bit too over the top in some adventures but is used in just the right amounts here.

Likewise, Bernice Summerfield is lots of fun, voiced by the alluring Lisa Bowerman. Benny was a big hit with readers back in the day and even earned her own line of novels and audio adventures before Big Finish even branched out into full Doctor Who. She’s a fun character, equal parts rollicking adventurer and cranky scientist.

Lisa Bowerman (Bernice Summerfield)

The character of Slyde has an unusually smooth purr to his voice that makes him an almost iconic villain. This is of course due to the vocal talents of Michael Praed, familiar to some as the star of Robin of Sherwood and of course the title character from Blake’s 7 in the Big Finish audio revamp.

The story reaches a fever pitch as Remnex is murdered and used as a vessel by Slyde and Lomar to bring about the emissary of the Dark Flame, Vilus Krull. Krull is the former cult leader of the followers of the Dark Flame, thought long dead. But with his skull unearthed, he can begin again, reaching out with his mind and bending others to his will. Krull ‘turns’ Benny to his way and she violently attacks Ace before leaving with her new masters. The Doctor, Ace and a damaged Victor have a massive army of the dead to contend with, Krull’s revived followers who were burried all over the planet… with just an umbrella for defense.

Of course the Doctor extricates them from the dilemma with a cunning plan and is soon toe-to-toe with Krull again for the final show-down. No magic wand, no gunfire, no timey-wimey nonsense, this Doctor stands just about 5 feet tall and stares down the best of them with his cold steel gray eyes. BBC Wales take note. THIS is how it is done.

Having seen a few interviews with Sylvester McCoy I witness in him an old gentle soul who truly wants to believe in the betterment of Mankind and the value of life. This comes through in his dialog with both Lomar and Vilus Krull as he asks them why they would give into to such a dark hopeless force of evil. Vilus Krull insists that the Dark Flame burns in everyone, but the Doctor simply cannot accept that. One must give themselves over to evil in order to be ruled by it. This bears fruit when the Doctor and Krull have a soul/mind duel and the Doctor flat out refuses to give in. Just like his battle in the Curse of Fenric, the Doctor draws on his belief to defeat the evil force and even manipulate it to do some good!

The conclusion may be a bit pat as the Doctor rewrites history so that not only is Benny healed and Remnex granted a peaceful death but the entire research project removed from history. Benny and Ace chide the Doctor for interfering with the ‘precious web of time,’ but he impishly insists that he didn’t interfere, he just made a few small alterations. McCoy’s childlike enthusiasm shines through in this excellent adventure filled as it is with walking corpses, senseless murder and impending doom.

I cannot help but smile at the final line spoken by the Doctor as he surveys his work, “I love my job.”

Doctor Who- The Dark Flame can be ordered directly online from Big Finish Productions.

Doctor Who Big Finish -Nekromanteia

Nekromanteia

Story 41
Written by Austen Atkinson
Released February 2003

The Doctor is trying to expand the experience of his companion Erimem, a former priestess from ancient Egypt, by taking her to the Garazone bazaar, a kind of wild expanse of shops and creatures from all over the universe (something like it was attempted in the BBC Wales version in Human Nature and Turn Left). The Doctor wanders off on his own, leaving Erimem and Peri to find their own fun. Usually a rather staid character, Peri is very feisty in this story, proclaiming a desire to meet boys and get into trouble. It’s a nice change and makes her much more interesting.

The Doctor visits an old friend, a shifty businessman named Thesanius who is busy breaking into a vault. It’s a small scene but conveys so much of the Fifth Doctor’s social awkwardness and straight-forward English sensibility that I really enjoy it. With the local police on his heels, the Doctor swoops up Erimem and Peri into the TARDIS. While their protector was off on his own, Erimem was trying to convince Peri that a local artisan was a wise old seer. The seer impresses a message into Erimem that causes the TARDIS to land on the planet Talderun within the system of Nekromantea.

Above the planet, a violent space battle is taking place. The commander of one of the ships, the gravelly voiced Harlon, manages to escape disaster with his aide Cochrane and they land in the midst of a terribly dangerous situation. The area below is overrun with necromancers who worship a dark god named Shara. Harlon is undeterred, however, as he is employed by the cut throat executive Marr who is desperate to obtain a mysterious source of power on the planet.

Another person just as determined to control the same power is the leader of the sisterhood, Jal Dor Kal (a character very reminiscent to the leader of the Sisterhood of Karn in Brain of Morbius). Trapped by Harlon, the Doctor manages to pull some psychological trickery on the mercenary, convincing Harlon that he was sent by Marr to check up on him. But the Doctor’s impulsive lick runs out when he barges into the middle of a ceremony led by Jal Dor Kal. The blunder results in his death. As the sisterhood decapitate the Time Lord and lift his head high in triumph, the Doctor finds himself in a cricket match he long dreamed of attending.

Nekromanteia is a story with a lot of angles and tends to dole out details in a somewhat devious manner so that while we do not know who Harlon is, we also don’t know what he wants either, making it difficult to stay invested in the action. That’s where the script really comes into its own, though, as there is plenty of action, humor and psychedelia that is at home in the Fifth Doctor era, home as it is to stories like Kinda and Snakedance.

When the details do come together behind Marr’s mission to Talderun and Jal Dor Kal’s ceremonial sacrifice, thankfully it’s all worthwhile. So often in fiction, a writer refuses to back up actions with reasons, promising that the answers are coming and when they do it makes no sense. That’s not the case here. It’s all very well constructed.

I have said this before, but Peter Davison is so remarkable in these audio adventures. I know that Colin Baker is the Big Finish king, but Davison is a close second as the Prince (or Duke… or whatever). His vocalizations are so subtle that he often mutters his lines and stammers through conversations but with such alacrity that it is immensely entertaining.

I simply adore Erimem, an amazing companion combing elements of Leela and Katarina along with something new. I wasn’t exactly sold on Erimem in The Eye of the Scorpion but the more I hear her the more I really like her as she is such a well-devised creation. Her resolve is solid yet she has the soul of an innocent, unfamiliar as she is with the world outside of her home in ancient Egypt. When she is threatened by the malicious Harlon she flatly states that she will gut him yet later accepts the horrific fate of the scientist Rom as he is tortured by the fiendish sisters. She can appreciate that there is a higher moral code at work that must be honored and accepted. This of course jars with Peri who thinks of Erimem as ‘one of the girls’ yet needs to be reminded that Erimem may as well be from another planet.

I truly wish that there were more examples of companions with cultural differences in Doctor Who as it adds so much to the drama.

Glyn Owen may sound familiar to fans of the classic series as he played the gun-runner Rohm-Dutt in the Key to Time: Power of Kroll. If anything, his voice has become more distinctive and fully-rounded, though that may be the result of whiskey and cigars (we should all be so lucky!).

Nekromanteia does tend to get very over-dramatic and there’s a lot of screaming, violence and near-deaths, but that is often the case with Doctor Who. I love the notion that the Doctor spends much of the story in a daydream cricket match talking to an immortal creature in a struggle to regain his sanity while his companions are running about dodging bullets and trying their best not to get sacrificed.

This story has a lot of energy, heap loads of talent and a generous helping of charm. A lovely adventure.

Doctor Who- Nekromanteia can be ordered directly online from Big Finish Productions.