Rarely have I been
fully transported back in time in pure nostalgia by the Big Finish Classic Doctor Who audio releases. That sounds like a
criticism, but it’s not. It’s because challenging narratives, creative
storytelling and true character development are firm areas in which Big Finish
have excelled, and which their TV counterparts back in the day couldn’t always
achieve.
Even Gareth
Roberts’ Season 17 ‘Missing Adventures’, recently reviewed and enjoyed on these
pages, were to a large extent merely summarising the essences of that period in
the programme’s history – almost as a commentary on, or celebration of, the
stories from that time.
That is really
not the case when it comes to The Foe
From The Future in Doctor Who The
Lost Stories: The Fourth Doctor Box Set. This really did feel at times like
1977 with toddler me being enraptured by monsters and jeopardy and all sort of
strange and wonderful things on the television: pure, unadulterated nostalgia.
Perhaps this is
to be expected – it is after all based on a disused storyline from Season 14.
Disused and not fully developed either. Robert Banks Stewart was unable to
fulfil his commitment to the script to close the 1976-77 season so script
editor Robert Holmes found himself writing at very short notice the fan
favourite The Talons of Weng-Chiang
to fill its place. Weng-Chiang
borrows a few motifs from Foe From The
Future, but it’s certainly not a re-writing of the story and they can exist
side by side without any trouble.
John Dorney has
adapted the original story breakdown into audio script form. He says himself he
had hardly anything to do for episode one as it was virtually all there in
Stewart’s notes, but by episode five there was little more than rough notes and
episode six hadn’t been plotted at all! There are a few modern concessions
which in fairness started with Veet and Marn in The Sun Makers the following season anyway: he transposes the sex
of some characters to avoid Leela being the only speaking female character in
the story. Charlotte from the village, Dorney’s own original addition to the
storyline, works very well as she grows across the story and finds her feet in
her pseudo-companion role whilst the Doctor and Leela are separated.
Episodes one
and two race through with almost unseemly pace and action. Episode three has a
lot of new scene-setting to do and the story calms down considerably for the
middle third. Episodes five and six return to the almost break-neck speed and
relentless action. I don’t think that makes the story unevenly plotted, I think
it’s just the natural flow of the narrative with its ups and downs. Six fast-paced
episodes would have left the listener shattered at the end, and there are few
TV six-parters that don’t have lulls or instances of padding to give everyone a
breather. I really wanted to punch the air with joy as I walked along the road
listening to episode six, when Leela rides out the Pantophagen from the time tunnel
as I hoped she would after the previous cliff hanger.
I had two
niggles: the first was that we got no pay-off or closure to the spooky voice in
Jalnik’s head, and secondly that the Doctor doesn’t comment on Leela’s broken
leg at the end. Otherwise I think that this was pretty much a perfect story
with some really solid performances all round and a great soundscape.
The other story
in the box set was The Valley of Death,
written by Jonathan Morris from a story breakdown by Philip Hinchcliffe. I can
only assume Hinchcliffe enjoyed the experience and was pleased with the results
as he came back a couple of years later for the box set Philip Hinchliffe Presents…, to which I have yet to listen.
I had a vague
idea about The Foe From The Future
because it’s been in the fan domain for a while now, but I had no idea what The Valley of Death would involve at
all. If this had been a serious proposal at the time it’s clear it would have
needed a lot of scaling back, but budget being no consequence on audio the
story really goes to town. What I find most curious about the story, though, is
that it feels very much like a Graham Williams / Anthony Read era story rather
than a Hinchcliffe / Holmes era one. Again this isn’t a criticism in any way,
it’s just a curious observation because it’s refreshing to find one producer
adopting a style of character realisation and storytelling more in line with
his successor after the violence was pared back and wit and comedy pushed
forward. It feels at times like a Williams-produced version of The Hand of Fear, a story very much like
this one that borrows UNIT to get somewhere, starts off as one narrative in one
location and ends up somewhere completely different, telling a very different
story. And The Hand of Fear unfortunately
struggled with production demands that couldn’t be met satisfactorily in the
way you’d expect this story to have done if it had been made at the time.
Morris is aware
of this, and possibly the sense of displacement between production ‘eras’ is
played up as a result. He sets it in early Season 15 (The Horror of Fang Rock is referenced in passing, but K-9 is not) the
first half of which was admittedly a phase of transition from horror to wit. Valley of Death is not a comedy by any
means, and it very consciously exhibits certain motifs from across the whole of
Tom Baker’s varied time as the Doctor. Not least among these is the Bob Baker /
Dave Martin habit of giving a story a catchphrase: ‘Eldrad must live!’ ‘Contact
has been made!’ ‘The Quest is the Quest!’ Here it’s ‘By the light of the Luron
sun.’
I liked where
the story was going at first, but I was less keen on where it ended up. I
didn’t dislike the story as a whole, I just felt unmoved by it and at times
disappointed that it had wasted some good ideas which could have been developed
further. It felt like too much of an homage
to old classic B-movies; like it was a story that wanted to do too much. It was
more focussed on location and spectacle than about good story progression and
fully thought-out concepts. Like the eager explorer that started the whole
story off it was always looking to where it wanted to go next, rather than appreciating
where it was at that moment, I felt. I was also ever so slightly irritated by
Jane Slavin’s character Valerie Carlton, photo journalist, which I appreciate
is slightly unfair but with audio it’s all you’ve got to go on and it can
really make or break a production.
I’m aware also
that my expectations may have been higher because I’d enjoyed The Foe From The Future so much, giving The Valley of Death too much to live up
to. I’ll certainly give it another listen after I’ve caught up with a few other
releases.
One noteworthy aspect
that is consistently good across all ten episodes is the performances by Tom
Baker and Louise Jameson. The relationship between The Doctor and Leela is clearly
defined and works very well on an aural level, unlike the rather poor treatment
they’ve received in print from BBC Books over the years. Tom relishes the words
and seems to have ‘bought in’ to what Big Finish are trying to do. Louise
Jameson gives an acting masterclass with every scene, her energy and intensity
of performance, her understanding of precisely who Leela is and what she’s
thinking at every moment and with every line is simply breath-taking. Hers are
the most measured, intense and capable performances across the whole range of
Big Finish audios in my view.
I look at this release
and it strikes me that if you’ve got a box set of two good length stories and
one is absolutely brilliant and the other is average, with solid performances
across the board (my irritation with Jane Slavin excepted, of course) that’s
still a pretty good box set overall. Cheers Big Finish.
