Doctor Who Big Finish- Robophobia

‘Robophobia’

Story 149
Written and directed by Nicholas Briggs
Release date: July 2011

All is not well aboard a star freighter transporting a massive cargo of VOC robots. The Doctor arrives to find that his previous encounter the mechanical servants aboard a sandminer has been mainly forgotten and only survived as a tale greatly altered to make the company look good. Unfortunately, trying to hush up a murder spree does not prevent a similar series of killings from taking place, apparently perpetrated by the VOC robots, and no one can stop the body count from rising.

Chris Boucher and Robert Holmes’ Robots of Death is an absolute classic, one of the few stories that I would recommend to just about anyone. It has a palpable mood, stunning visual design, and Tom Baker at his best. A grim and gritty yet stylish whodunnit murder done in the style of Agatha Christie (though set on a sand miner on an alien planet), Robots of Death is nearly timeless.

So why even attempt a sequel?

Luckily, Nick Briggs loves Robots of Death as much as I do and has recognized what made that story work in his own story Robophobia. Set a short time after the sand miner murders, the Doctor returns to see the outcome on the culture of the future only to find that it has been hushed up by the company. In the process, he witnesses one man’s murder and is then throttled to death by the same killer robot. This is all in the first few minutes.

Nicola Walker (of the hit series Spooks) is superb as Liv Chenka, a somewhat out of sorts medical technician aboard the spacecraft, mourning the loss of her friend-who-could-have-been more. She suspects that something malevolent is going on, but, like the others of her time seems eager to just accept things as they are. The Doctor plays his trickster role to the hilt in this story, prodding others to peel away at the thin veneer of their world to discover what lies beneath.

In addition to Walker, comic actor and Doctor Who expert Toby Hadoke plays Farel, one of the jumpiest characters to ever grace a Big Finish Production. Most of the crew seem to stumble along through conversations, struggling for the right words or failing to convey the correct concepts, but Farel is purely mental. He drifts in and out of stammering fits and mumbles to himself as the situation deteriorates. One murder can be easily explained, but an entire shipment of robots exploding and a weird little man appearing out of a black box in the hold (yes, black) is another thing entirely. I was much more familiar with Hadoke from his writing and commentary, but he is sterling acting material.

As a sequel, Robophobia hits all the right marks. It correctly captures the style and feel of the original without needlessly re-telling the same story. It also embellishes the established tale without dishonoring Boucher’s script. Briggs dances a very fine line effortlessly, transforming what should have been a dreadful notion into an excellent experience.

Robophobia plays up the Seventh Doctor’s strongest traits. He appears to know far more than he lets on, but he may just be playing a game. He also seems to appear out of nowhere as if by magic, but he’s just using maintenance access ports. The Doctor is also spritely yet full of rueful passages that hint at the destruction of an entire population. Briggs takes hints from the New Adventures books but dodges making his story into a navel-gazing emo-fest that occasionally happened in that line of novels, though most of them are definitely an important part of the Doctor Who mythos.

Traveling alone, the Doctor is an entirely alien persona who only the listener understands and can chuckle with childlike glee as the other characters he encounters find him baffling. At one point he attempts to pass off his attire a the ‘latest thing in the engineering deck’ and that his hat is for small fluid leaks while the umbrella could be used for much bigger ones. It’s a delight and re-affirms the magical appeal of the Seventh Doctor.

Robophobia can be purchased from Big Finish and from local retailers such as Mike’s Comics.

Doctor Who Big Finish- Flip-Flop

Flip-Flop

Story 46
Written by Jonathan Morris
Released August 2003
The Doctor and Mel, desperate for some rare crystals needed to fight the Quarks, arrive on the planet Puxatornee on Christmas Eve. They are immediately chased by police and a blind slug led by a human guide. They are known and suspected of seditious acts against the government. Being a time traveler, the Doctor is aware of the dangers in crossing his own time stream, but not to this degree.

Everything to do with Flip-Flop is designed to unbalance you. To start with, you open the case and are confronted by two discs; one black, one white. They are unusually unnumbered, so it is a mystery as to which is first. Welcome to the experience of Jonathan Morris’ Mobius strip-style story, Flip-Flop.

The author of several unique and bizarre Doctor Who adventures for Big Finish such as the Haunting of Thomas Brewster and the Crimes of Thomas Brewster, Morris has a knack for the odd and experimental in narrative techniques. In this case, the plot involves a recursion of time travel that results a cat’s cradle of cause and effect, irrevocably interwoven into each other.

The planet of Puxatornee exists in a perpetual state if political unease. The Slithergees are slowly but surely ensnaring the governing body into a vise of political impotence. Two brave rebels seek to use the Doctor’s TARDIS to set matters right, altering history so that the assassination that caused the current state of affairs never happened. The Doctor refuses but is bullied into compliance in the usual way.

The altered time line is far worse from the initial situation and to make matters more complicated, there are multiple versions of the Doctor, Mel and the two rebels running around. As the listener struggles to keep the plot straight, it giddily re-arranges itself as the alternate rebels insist that the Doctor travel back again and change history… and so it goes.

The two discs tell essentially the same story from different time lines. The Doctor and Mel arrive on a strange planet, encounter the Slithergees and witness a world in chaos. Two individuals stubbornly attempt to ‘fix’ their world by altering history and only make matters more toxic until their planet is a radioactive husk.

Flip-Flop is a very odd story that is high on concept, but equally strong on character and plot. All too often, this kind of time travel gimmick would be used by an author as the beginning and end of his story (not that I’m naming names), but in this case it is rather ingeniously part of the story’s intent as well as the narrative.

The only nagging problem I have here is why does the Doctor cave in so easily to allowing history to be altered? Several times over? It makes little sense unless he knows that this is a fixed point of recursion that must be maintained, but that’s not implicit in the story. I suspect that in order for Flip-Flop to work, the Doctor must bring the travelers back again and again, so the option is moot.

I find that in general I prefer McCoy paired with Bonnie Langford in these audios as he is more playful. The pair play off of each other in a good way and their synergy is very productive. Langford was a (shrill) one-note character on screen, but in the audios has an astonishing depth. As Doctor and companion, McCoy and Langford allow the story to unravel around them without detracting too much attention with their own characters (as I find happens in the Ace and Benny adventures).

Never Mind the Daleks, Here's the Quarks!

I’m also very curious about the off-screen adventure with the Quarks! A seemingly random monster from the 1960’s, I’d love to see them featured again in some way.

This is one that you either love or hate, and for the most part I fall in the loving party.

Doctor Who – Flip-Flop can be purchased directly from Big Finish Productions and local retailers such as Mike’s Comics.

Doctor Who Big Finish- No Place Like Home

No Place Like Home

Written by Iain McLaughlin
Released January 2003
(supplemental story)

The Doctor decides to give new companion Erimem a tour of the TARDIS only to find that he has lost his way in his own home. The interior of the TARDIS is re-configuring itself much to the delight of a hidden foe who watches the Doctor and Erimem’s plight on a monitor. When a construct of the Time Lord High Council named Shayde appears, it becomes clear to the Doctor that there is more at stake here than simply being lost.

No Place Like Home was given away as a supplement with Doctor Who Magazine #326 (along with a sample of Dalek Empire). A ‘filler’ story in much the same way as the Ratings War and Last of the Titans, there’s not much to No Place Like Home, but Davison and Caroline Morris fill in the gaps with the opportunity to further flesh out the relationship between Erimem and the Doctor. It’s touching to hear the young/old Fifth Doctor talk about his solitude among his own people and his reluctance to think or even talk about his family. It’s a subtle way of dealing with these issues that would later be hammered home in the BBC Wales production. Erimem is also given just enough space to appear a more fully rounded character, in direct opposition to her rather flat first appearance in The Eye of the Scorpion.

The wardrobe of the TARDIS is used as an in joke as the Doctor sheepishly attempts to explain the long scarf, fur coat and frilly shirts of his previous incarnations. I quite enjoy the social awkwardness of the Fifth Doctor, a trait that would have made his portrayal stronger if it had been played up on screen. Erimem can’t really see the sense in most of the clothes, but is entertained by them. Her ability to enjoy the madness and random nature of life with the Doctor is a charming quality that reminds me of the classic companions of the 1960’s.

Along with being lost in the TARDIS, the Doctor is also uncomfortable with having Erimem’s cat on board as it is a nuisance in the long white corridors of the time vessel. But Erimem cannot see the problem from the Doctor’s perspective and suspects that he simply doesn’t like cats. The Doctor admits that he never had this kind of trouble with his faithful robot dog companion, K-9.

The real interesting part of No Place Like Home is of course the inclusion of the Shayde, a bizarre creation from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. I remember first seeing Shayde in the comic strip back in the 1980’s when Marvel Comics reprinted a few of the Tom Baker and Peter Davison stories in color. Able to blend into shadows and absorb information by removing his spherical head, he’s an impressive visual, but in the audio format Shayde is somewhat less successful.

The Shayde explains that the Doctor has been irresponsible in protecting his TARDIS and has allowed for it to become compromised. An alien entity is attempting to take control of the TARDIS which could in turn damage the web if time in unpredictable ways. After warning the Doctor that the situation has been identified by the High Council as catastrophic, the Shayde attempts to take control of the situation in eliminating the threat that the still unseen menace poses. Erimem prompts the Doctor, somewhat shaken by the situation, to take the matter to hand. They are then confronted by a villain so strange and unusual that they are overcome by fits of laughter.

A Gallifreyan rodent, transformed by radiation, has become mutated in a hyper intelligent being… and he’s angry. Furious at his lot in life he demands justice. All of this is too much for the Doctor who, even though he recognizes the implications, cannot get over being ranted to by a mouse. In the end, the solution is a simple one, but the Doctor still dislikes Erimem’s cat.

Like Last of the Titans and The Ratings War, No Place Like Home is a quick adventure filling up the time between Fifth Doctor audio stories. I quite like it and it has elements that remind me of the comic strip, such as Shayde and the weirdly villainous Rovie.

Read other Big Finish reviews at the Daily P.O.P. 

Doctor Who Big Finish- Bloodtide

Bloodtide

Story 22
Written by Jonathan Morris
Released July 2001
In an attempt to surprise his new companion Evelyn, the Doctor lands the TARDIS on the Galapagos Islands as the famed scientist Charles Darwin struggles to develop his theory of evolution. However, he has arrived just as a race of Silurians have been revived from their long hibernation. Just as Darwin’s theory on the origins of the human race are imagined, its fate hangs in the balance.

The Silurians, a creation of Malcolm Hulke are one of the classic monsters of the 70’s, brought back in 1984’s Warriors of the Deep and again in 2010’s two-part adventure The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. A brilliant race of reptiles that predate the human race, the Silurians remain one of the more inspired ‘monsters’ of the classic Doctor Who program. in the past they have been portrayed as a sophisticated if practical people, possessing an awesome technology hampered by xenophobia and a particular hatred of the humans that they once treated as pets. Bloodtide takes that relationship a step further by establishing that humans weren’t just pets for the Silururians, they were also food.

I have previously noted that the pairing of the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn is a fortunate one. They are so alike that it is comical yet the relationship between Colin Baker and Maggie Stables provides a modicum of comedy and drama. These two characters seem very real to the listener and move through the adventure displaying a wealth of cunning and emotion.

Bloodtide has gotten some stick from fans of the classic program as it borrows heavily from the eponymous Silurians (1970). I don’t really see that many similarities, but if you are going to borrow from any classic story, you can do worse than Hulke’s Silurians. In Bloodtide, the ruling power of the islands, Governor Lawson, has made a deal with the Silurians as a way to get rid of undesirable members of his society. To the Doctor’s horror, he discovers that they are being held in a larder as food. A brief preface establishes that Tulok, a member of the Silurian race, was cut off from their society for his outlandish ideas regarding the genetic manipulation of the ‘hairless apes’ in order to make them herd themselves, and be a better source of food.

Revived in a world over-ridden by humanity, Tulok strikes up a deal with Governor Lawson to meet their shared interest. However, the outcast Tulok has greater ambitions that are nothing short of complete and total domination of the planet, putting humanity back in its place, just as he had arranged it.

Artist Lee Sullivan's drawing for Bloodtide from Doctor Who Magazine

Bloodtide is a brilliant story that uses a classic monster in an inspired way. The addition of Charles Darwin to an adventure involving a race of reptilian beings that escaped the confines of history is clever enough but introducing the concept of humanity as a genetically designed food-source is so smart that it is stupefying. The Silurians retain their regal dignity tempered with a savage edge that has long made them a favorite amongst fans. Colin Baker is obviously reveling in the script that provides philosophical debates and monster attacks alike.

The adventure has several elements that I view as essential for classic Doctor Who ranging from historical and literate influences as well as fantastical elements. Warriors of the Deep failed to capture the dignity and power of the Silurians, depicting them instead as a bog-standard alien race of baddies intent on destruction. The modern BBC Wales program took a different approach and ended up giving an impression of the Silurians that bordered on Star Trek, a boring culture of people in rubber costumes. Bloodtide sticks to the basics laid out by Hulke and comes out the winner in my opinion, as the Silurians in this audio adventure are a complicated race with incredible intelligence and a brutally pragmatic view of life.

A charming and intense adventure, I thoroughly enjoyed this Big Finish Production and heartily recommend it to fans of the original Doctor Who series.

Doctor Who – Bloodtide can be purchased at local retailers such as Mike’s Comics and online from Big Finish.

Read other Big Finish reviews at the Daily P.O.P. here.

Doctor Who Big Finish- The Fearmonger

The Fearmonger

Story 05

Written by Jonathan Blum

Released February 2000

“Are you looking for the butterfly?”-The Doctor

“What, the one that beats its wings to tip the balance so the hurricane forms? There isn’t one, is there?”-Ace

“Not often. They just tell the butterflies that to keep them happy. No. Mostly they break the butterfly on the wheel of time. But over the decades and millions of butterflies… the weather still changes somehow. That’s time; a million multi-colored pieces of time. “-The Doctor

I had foolishly refrained from listening to this story for a few reasons. From the audios that I had sampled to date, I found that Colin Baker had found the perfect home for his Doctor and Peter Davison finally received some much deserved quality material. However, McCoy’s material came off as slightly less impressive by comparison.

In watching the Time and the Rani DVD, I was shocked to find that the casting of the Seventh Doctor was the first time that the BBC executives had gotten involved. Producer John Nathan Turner was asked to audition his prime choice of McCoy against other actors only to prove that his judgement was ideal. A children’s entertainer on television, Sylvester McCoy also has a distinguished background on stage. His unusual speaking pattern and body language hints at a genuine eccentricity tempered by a pair of deep soulful eyes. McCoy’s Seventh Doctor topped the charts back in the 90’s, but I fear he gets passed by too much these days which is unfortunate. His Seventh Doctor added so much to the legacy of Doctor Who at a time when the program was thought to be dried up and bereft of new ideas.

McCoy may have played the fool in his first year but even in those early episodes a glimmer of the deeper character that he wanted to explore could be seen. The subsequent two years saw the Seventh Doctor develop into a kind of cosmic trickster with a propensity for justice and a yearning to belong, hence his constant education of Ace to level the playing field of their friendship. The Seventh Doctor’s development continued in comic strip and novelized form past the 90’s and transfered to the Big Finish Productions as well.

So much work had been done on this version of the Doctor that I found myself rather bored with him. I had also recognized that much of his personality traits had been picked out by the BBC Wales team and transplanted in to the Tenth Doctor, but not in a good way (in my opinion). The ideas themselves of the Seventh Doctor as more of an active force rather than a victim is a good one, but it could easily be misused by the wrong script (Silver Nemesis). However, Gary Russell’s team had a unique opportunity to approach the Seventh Doctor and Ace from a new perspective, giving fans a mostly clean slate that picked up from where the televised version of the characters left off in Survival, screened in 1989.

In the audio line, actor Sylvester McCoy faces some of the same challenges he had as the Doctor on screen. A versatile personality, his portrayal often breaks up when he expresses outrage. His truly shining moments come when he is making small talk or delivering some of the colorfully poetic lines of dialog he received from time to time. It’s all in what he is given. Luckily, Blum’s script is full of pearls for the Seventh Doctor from the speech on butterflies to the antagonistic interplay with talk show host Mark Thompson.

Blake’s 7 luminary Jacqueline Pearce, known for playing the purring ballroom gown clad dictator Servelan, makes a wonderful villainess in this. Her cultured tones add so much to the already polished production.

Sophie Aldred saunters easily back into the teenage character of Ace with perfection, showing equal parts wild youth and wise adult. The characterization is done so well and shows an extension of what was hinted at in the final moments of Survival.

The Fearmonger by Lee Sullivan

The Fearmonger is an exciting, lushly characterized and emotionally driven adventure worthy of the grandest wishes fans like myself had for the 1990 series that never came. The Doctor is still presented as something of a manipulative player of games, but it as the story develops it becomes clear that this only one point of view on his personality. Rather than expounding on the trickster/god character of the New Adventures novels, this version of the Doctor is in some cases putting on a brave face, in other cases flipping a coin and still others just putting on a show. He may appear to have all the answers, but if you listen closely he mostly hints at truths rather than stating them outright. In short, he is far from the super-powerful genius who had planned for every eventuality, he must work through his problems using his cunning, intelligence and bravery along with a charismatic flair for convincing others to join him.

The world that The Fearmonger is set in is basically contemporary Earth with a few minor hi-tech advancements. Set in Britain during the rise of a new political power determined to take advantage of people’s fears, it is all too close to the real world that we live in where the media whips up the populace into a frenzy in the name of entertainment. It’s a garish and ugly basis for a story that put me off at first, but soon I was taken in by the warmth of the supporting cast, the simplicity of some of the settings and the maturity with which the material was handled. Steering the people into a violent furor is a formless creature inhabiting hosts and pushing the events toward a fever pitch. The Doctor and Ace are faced with a challenge in removing the extra-terrestrial entity while not getting involved in the actual politics. It’s a fine line that the heroes and author walk with great skill.

Jonathan Blum is a very active person online and he is certainly not afraid to speak his mind about Doctor Who. Personally, I try my best to stay away from online forums as I find that they bring out the worst in people. I briefly crossed with Blum online and after confirming with others that he is just ‘that way,’ it convinced me to stay well clear. It’s unfortunate because that interaction tainted my opinion of this story and caused me to stay clear of it as well until recently. Regardless of my opinions on the author, he has crafted a great story that proves he has a deep understanding of what makes Andrew Cartmel’s Seventh Doctor work.

I have heard others describe The Fearmonger as one of the greatest Big Finish Productions if not the best McCoy adventure. I still have a large body of material to get through but I have to admit that this one has left a high watermark for me.

Doctor Who -The Fearmonger can be purchased at local retailers and online from Big Finish.

Read other Big Finish reviews at the Daily P.O.P. here.