Audio Review 23: The Marian Conspiracy, written by Jacqueline Rayner (2000)

Released: March 2000

Cast:

The Doctor – Colin Baker

Evelyn Smythe – Maggie Stables

Lady Sarah – Jo Castleton

Queen Mary – Anah Ruddin

Reverend Thomas – Nicholas Pegg

Francois de Noailles – Barnaby Edwards

George Crow – Sean Jackson

William Leaf – Jez Fielder

Royal Guard – Alistair Lock

John Wilson – Gary Russell

Main Production Credits

Producers – Gary Russell & Jason Haigh-Ellery

Writer – Jacqueline Rayner

Director – Gary Russell

Incidental Music – Alistair Lock

Recording and Editing – Alistair Lock

Sound Design and Post-Production – Alistair Lock

Title Music – Ron Grainer, Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Remastered by Mark Ayres)

TARDIS Sounds – Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Executive Producer (for BBC Worldwide) – Jacqueline Rayner & Stephen Cole

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

History lecturer Dr. Evelyn Smythe finds herself whisked away by a mysterious stranger into the past, for a hair-raising adventure in Tudor England. The stranger is a loud, flamboyant and ridiculous man calling himself “The Doctor” and identifies Evelyn as a temporal nexus point, an anomaly in the timelines due to some unforeseen event being undone in the past. Evelyn is forced to take his words for granted, when her own family tree begins to literally vanish from history, including herself at one point. The Doctor takes Evelyn back in time in the TARDIS, hoping to put history back on its correct course...

However, instead of the expected arrival in Elizabethan England of the late 1500s, the time travellers find themselves some years out, in the time of the infamous Tudor Queen, Mary. While the Doctor hopes to find potential clues by attending the Queen, Evelyn unwittingly finds herself embroiled with Protestant Christian conspirators, plotting against the Queen, in the hope of crowning Elizabeth early, even if it means murdering Mary herself.

The Doctor meanwhile has worked himself into Mary’s favour, but both he and Evelyn are arrested and locked in the Tower of London after Reverend Thomas Smith, one of the Protestant conspirators, deceitfully implicates them in his plot in order to protect himself from execution, when caught out. The Doctor and Evelyn manage to escape the Tower, and foil the plot to kill Queen Mary, by warning her in time. The Doctor also saves Evelyn too, thereby saving the lives of her descendents, Lady Sarah Whiteside, and her child from near death, thereby restoring history’s true path and repairing the timelines. Evelyn decides to continue travelling with the Doctor on his future travels through time and space, looking forward to the wonders they’ll experience next.

Story Placement

Between The Acheron Pulse (BIG Finish audio) and The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (BIG Finish audio).

Favourite Lines

Evelyn Smythe – “I find that cake is an excellent solution to so many of life’s problems”.

Evelyn Smythe – “Last time I felt like this was the Yard-of-Ale race against the students at the history soc social”.

Doctor – “Really? Who won?”

Evelyn Smythe – “Oh, the Yard of Ale, definitely”.

The Doctor – “What would you say if I were to tell you that I once destroyed an entire race. That I have led friends to their deaths, and caused numerous wars. That my intervention has led to peaceful races taking up arms, and good people having their faith or reason destroyed. That because I failed to act, millions upon millions of people had been enslaved or killed. What if I had done all those things, but had always, always believed I was doing the right thing”.

Evelyn Smythe – “I’m a historian! This is a time machine. You can take me anywhere, and I’ll still be home in time for tea”.

Review:

The Marian Conspiracy represents a landmark audio release for Doctor Who, Big Finish, and perhaps most significantly for the character of the Sixth Doctor himself. Before Big Finish started, both the fans and the writers seemed to have given up on the Sixth Doctor, his character written off as one of the weakest and poorest ideas for a Doctor ever produced. Although writers throughout the 1990s had tried some attempts at rehabilitating the character, they were slight, half-hearted, and completely failed to get to the root of the character, and improve him. There was still a perception that the character’s TV persona was still his default position, and that any portrayal shouldn’t try to break away from it. Enter Big Finish, Gary Russell and Colin Baker, who in 1999, all wanted to bring the Sixth Doctor to audio, but in a way that was different from before.

If I may take you back to 1984, when Doctor Who’s production team were formulating the character of the Sixth Doctor in preparation for his future TV debut, Eric Saward came up with the great and brave idea of making the Doctor unstable, brusque, amoral and untrustworthy, while at the same time being egotistical, intensely passionate, and very assertive. Despite the great dramatic potential of the idea though, it wasn’t entirely well executed. Furthermore, The Twin Dilemma, the Sixth Doctor’s opening TV serial which introduced the concept to the audience, wrapped the idea in one of the weakest scripts and most basic and contrived storylines ever produced for Doctor Who on Television, which ironically Eric Saward was also partly to blame for. The Doctor’s instability was phased out by the end of The Twin Dilemma, but his brusque, amoral and untrustworthiness continued. The original intention of the production team was to gently phase out these elements as the Sixth Doctor gradually became a more balanced, considered and mellow persona, gradually learning to be the caring and compassionate Hero again. However, due to the premature suspension of the series in 1985, and Eric Saward sabotaging the concept by lazily bringing back endless bickering and the Sixth Doctor’s earlier brusque self just to pad out some of the later 1985 serials with false melodrama and senseless arguing, even this part of the original concept failed to be realised. In the end, by the time Trial of the Time Lord entered development, most of any sense of transition or character development had to be dropped completely just so the Sixth Doctor could enjoy a much more happy and amicable relationship with his companion Peri before she was written out mere episodes later. Before the audience knew it, little after that the Sixth Doctor himself was axed from our television screens, so there was no resolution or payoff of any kind for any loyal viewers who had stayed with this character throughout his two troubled years in the spotlight.

Fast-forward back to 1999 then, Colin Baker and Gary Russell agreed that they wanted present the Sixth Doctor in his final settled persona, the one the 1985 and 1986 audiences of Doctor Who on television, should have got to see. Sure, the better parts of his persona would remain, like his intense passion, his flamboyant larger-than-life manner, with a smaller remainder of his entertaining egotistical side, reminding listeners of where the Doctor had come from, and reinforcing that this was a natural evolution of the Sixth Doctor’s character. The main differences were intended to show that this was the Sixth Doctor in his natural default state, away from the turbulent beginnings that occurred in his Television episodes. He was now sensitive, attentive, fiercely loyal and caring of his friends (although there were hints of that in his later TV episodes), with passionately high moral beliefs, although he never sees things in black and white; a true, old-fashioned, idealistic and romantic hero (and a man after my own heart). The impact of this change in Doctor Who fandom was seismic. No longer was the Sixth Doctor a character which you were embarrassed to like or enjoy, now you could even love him, as by removing his toxic traits and moving the character towards being a more moral and romantic character, combined with his determination and passion made him one of the most heroic, likeable, enjoyable and convincing Doctors of all, and is now one of my firm favourite Doctors of all time, and I have Colin Baker and Gary Russell to thank for it.

Of course a fair amount of the credit for the successful realisation of this change also has to go to the writer of The Marian Conspiracy, Jacqueline Rayner. Jacqueline took this new remit for the Sixth Doctor and ran with it, instantly showing the best and improved sides to his nature. Despite the Sixth Doctor knowing someone for only a day or so, already he’s worried intensely about their safety; he can diplomatically empathise with the Queen Mary, despite her strong views; he reflects with strong regret, on his own actions in the past; and he even makes good on one of his old boasts, persuading Mary with a perfectly articulated and powerful plea to spare the life of an unwilling and unknowing co-conspirator, saving her life, which on its own is a huge, terrific and triumphant ‘punch-the-air’ moment for the Sixth Doctor. In fact, he’s even very funny too, which is the perfect icing on the cake. Sure, that was also the intention back in 1984 too, but Jacqueline Rayner clearly has a far wittier and better sense of humour than Eric Saward ever did. Suddenly, the Sixth Doctor’s past persona is blown away, relegated to being a distant memory that can be left behind, while his brand new/current persona can be remembered in its place, and one that in my view, should be greatly celebrated.

If this astoundingly brilliant realisation of the Sixth Doctor wasn’t enough, Jacqueline Rayner also has the opportunity to tackle two further innovations to the Doctor Who franchise in The Marian Conspiracy. The most notable of these is the inclusion and introduction of new companion, Dr. Evelyn Smythe, and it’s one that Rayner tackles equally brilliantly. Gary Russell’s idea of creating a much older female Doctor Who companion is an inspired one, particularly given how both the original and new TV series of Doctor Who have lazily avoided the creative potential for such a direction, choosing to play it safe with their target audience. Although, we did have Wilf during episodes between 2007 and 2010, he didn’t feature much in any stories but The End of Time, so it’s still something the current TV programme is shying away from doing on as large a scale as this. Nevertheless, with Evelyn Smythe, it’s great to have a companion who is wise as well as smart, who is intelligent as well as clever, and is much more thoughtful, considered and sensitive to others, and significantly less self-absorbed, and yet wonderfully still has a bit of ego of her own. In other words, the Doctor’s equal, or at least in different areas to other companions, which makes Evelyn stand out as a very unique and fresh character, that opens the listeners’ proverbial eyes up to new creative and dramatic possibilities, which Big Finish are still having great fun with today.

The other great innovation is the long awaited return of the ‘pure historical’ format, or at least on a medium that can be performed and realised by a cast of actors, and directed, edited and produced by a production and post-production crew of media technicians and professionals. The last Doctor Who story on Television to be focused purely around actual historical events was The Highlanders, starring Patrick Troughton; way back in early 1967. The fact that Big Finish would risk trying out this format again is a testament to their bravery, inventiveness and open-minded attitude to continually experiment with new and old ideas, to never rest on their laurels, and never take anything for granted. Sure Big Finish like to have fun wallowing in nostalgia and bringing back old characters from time to time, just like other Doctor Who fans do, but that is far from what they do the majority of the time. They always endeavour to come up with new variations on this age old classic franchise, and 9 times out of 10 succeed magnificently in doing so.

As the title suggests, Jacqueline Rayner decides to set this particular ‘pure historical’ in Tudor London, during the time of the infamous Queen Mary, and I can partly see why. I myself have a great interest in British history, particularly between 400-1960 AD (with the exception of most of the Georgian Period, plus parts of World War 2 and the Cold War, which thanks to High School and A-Level I have read and re-read so many times I’m a bit fed up of them by now!), and I find medieval and Tudor (and Victorian) history particularly fascinating. Queen Mary’s short reign on the English throne was itself a turbulent time, full of political and religious upheaval. The tragic events surrounding Lady Jane Grey were only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as it were, and set the tone for the greater momentous events to come. Queen Mary Tudor, is of course now infamous as the Royal ruler that put protestant Christians to death in their thousands, just for not recanting their faith and turning back to the Catholicism, the most prominent form of Christian belief and practices in England, prior to the reign of King Henry VIII, Queen Mary’s father, who first introduced Protestantism to the country. Mary’s strong obsessive views, matched with the cruel, merciless and tragic mass executions that she brought about, ordered and enforced, provide thought-provoking ideas and material that have great creative potential for drama, and Jacqueline Rayner certainly makes good use of it in The Marian Conspiracy. This audio is one of the best dramatic and fictional realisations of Queen Mary Tudor and England during her reign that I’ve ever encountered. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly in-depth, and it certainly doesn’t delve deep into real historical events or people, but it delves deep enough to be able to confront and discuss the moral issues and attitudes of the day without falling into the trap of using crass modern simplicities. Furthermore, the realisation of Marian times is also very convincing and believable. Rayner has clearly worked hard to ensure that all her characters are four-dimensional and yet true to the mindsets and behaviour of the time, while at the same time making sure not to get stuck down in historical minutiae. By doing this, it gives Jacqueline Rayner the artistic licence to let her characters act and develop naturally according to their created or perceived personas, rather than being contrived by the needs of the plot or historical detail, which also helps to support and improve the overall story.

The central storyline to The Marian Conspiracy though is a simple tale, which as the title suggests involves the the Doctor and his new companion becoming entangled in a protestant plot to murder Queen Mary; a plot that they desperately need to prevent in order to keep history on the right track. It’s a great and gripping premise, but it’s sadly not quite fleshed out or complex enough to fill four 25 minute episodes, so some padding does creep in during parts two and three. There’s also the slightly contrived point to the Doctor’s necessary intervention in these matters. If the failed plot was already a part of history, then what happened to suddenly make it a success that need preventing? I suppose it could be answered by saying that perhaps the timelines were always broken prior to the Doctor’s arrival, or that maybe the Doctor turning up to sort it out was always a part of that history. Whatever way you look at it, it appears to me that the threat of Evelyn disappearing from history is something of a cheeky sleight of hand by Jacqueline Rayner to help provide a plot device for the story to occur the way it did. However, it certainly doesn’t lessen what is still an enormously entertaining story and script. The conspiracy of the title may not be complex, but the standout red herrings Rayner puts into the script is enough to keep the listener guessing about the full plot just long enough before the climax arrives. What raises The Marian Conspiracy above just being a good historical caper though is Jacqueline Rayner’s outstanding characterisation.

The standout character in this audio of course is the radical and fresh new companion, Dr. Evelyn Smythe. An academic Doctor and a University lecturer with a strong passionate interest and expertise in Tudor history, Evelyn is a wonderful woman of great spirit and gumption, strong of will, and takes no nonsense off anyone. Her large experience and knowledge, not just of the history of which she loves to teach, but also of life, thanks to dealing with rebellious, temperamental and emotional students, as well as a divorce, makes Evelyn very certain and concrete in her views; and as a result makes her come across as rather opinionated. Evelyn is also a very witty person, and can match the Doctor in her ability to produce withering put downs. Importantly though, underneath her seemingly steely exterior is one of the kindest and gentlest people in existence. Even when faced with the brutalities and tragic events of the history she knows all too well, her conscience cannot help but compel her to fight them in the protection of harmless innocents. Not only does all this make Evelyn the perfect companion and equal to the flamboyant, erudite and egotistical Sixth Doctor, but the character also acts as a great soothing and humbling influence for him, breaking down what’s left of his negative tendencies, and turning him into a nicer and greater person and hero than ever before. Furthermore, to top it all, Evelyn has an adorable penchant for Chocolate, and loves to make Chocolate cake. In short, Evelyn Smythe is the Auntie you wished you had grown up with.

The Sixth Doctor himself is also in better form than ever, thanks to the renovation of the character I mentioned earlier by Colin Baker, Gary Russell and Jacqueline Rayner. He’s far less abrupt than he used to be and nearly all sense of his pomposity is gone, although that doesn’t mean he won’t still try and tease at the expense of others from time to time. The Doctor is still a bit of a proud man, even if it is more for appearances than before, however, it certainly cannot escape the listener to hear how humble and considered he is in his thoughts and actions now. No longer does he just burst into a situation and nonchalantly deal with the resulting consequences. He enters Queen Mary’s court delicately and diplomatically, and as a result is able to directly engage and listen to the Queen herself. Despite his bluster, one also cannot help but notice that deep down he really likes having Evelyn around, and that his vocal protests against Evelyn’s teasing are a pretence hiding how glad he is to have a friend to accompany him on his travels. This is no more evident than when the Doctor allows Evelyn to persuade him to save Leaf, Crow and their families. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe is one of the most perfect Doctor and companion matches ever written. Evelyn’s wit and teasing pairs up wonderfully with the Doctor’s ego and sarcasm, and her big heart and gentle kindness helps to smooth over the Doctor’s remaining aloofness and rough edges to his personality.

Furthermore, the Doctor saving Lady Sarah’s life, just by the power of his persuasive argument is a glorious heroic moment to behold. In fact, it’s my favourite scene in the whole audio; such is the sheer power and outstanding writing and characterisation of Jacqueline Rayner’s script, particularly during that moment. I don’t mind telling you that listening to the pleading of Lady Sarah, and the Doctor’s desperate protestations to Queen Mary moved me to tears. Maybe I’m going soft in my gradual build-up to middle age, but in this case, I think I’m right in saying it’s a superb example of Doctor Who at its best. It was during my original listen back in 2000, that and in the space of this one very scene, the Sixth Doctor went from being a middling incarnation to being one of my top three favourite Doctors of all time, and Jacqueline Rayner certainly played a sizeable part in that for me.

Outside of that stellar moment, Lady Sarah Whiteside is a fairly shy and unassuming character. Despite having the appearance of a simple and naive woman, in reality Sarah possesses a quiet intelligence that she keeps to herself, as much for her own safety as it is for the sake of politeness. In fact, Lady Sarah is one of the most loyal, innocent, kind-hearted and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. Her loyalty to the Queen is as much out of love and respect as it is out of duty, just as it is for her husband. However, her deceitful, selfish and manipulative husband, the Reverend Thomas, repugnantly uses her to further his own political conspiracy and plot; while the Queen has Sarah living in fear of her life, due to her marriage to the Protestant Thomas. A rose between two thorns indeed, which the Doctor and Evelyn happily saved her from in the end.

Queen Mary Tudor herself meanwhile, is a fascinating and captivating interpretation of the English monarch by Jacqueline Rayner. Mary is still the devout Catholic Queen that is obsessed with removing the whole of Protestantism from England, as confirmed by all the history books, but importantly here she is still a person who can be reasoned with. Despite her strong religious loyalties and beliefs, Mary is determined to do the best for her people, and do right by them. Even when her religious teachings say differently, deep down Mary still has a moral consciousness that calls on her to listen, forgive and even help those who have been good and kind to her. Mary is also a very intelligent woman, and far from just politically as her past experiences has taught her to be. The Tudor Queen is more than willing to hear the thoughts and opinions of others, especially if they’re intelligent people also, who’ve given her the due respect she deserves, not just for her position, but also as a person. Mary even takes time to visit the traitor Reverend Thomas, to hear his reasons for treason, and to see if he’s the kind of person who’ll listen to her words. It’s not something that Mary had to do, particularly given Thomas was already a proved and convicted traitor, but her interest and willingness to hear the views of others show Mary to be a far more rounded, human and kinder woman than many lazy documentaries, history books and period dramas have portrayed her being.

Despite this still being a fictional portrayal of the English monarch, I still find Rayner’s Mary far more convincing and believable than the pantomime villain that other writers have written her to be. Having said that though, even in The Marian Conspiracy, Mary is still clearly partly insane (which was probably still true of her real life persona). Her fear of Protestantism is comparable to that of uncontrollable disease, and Mary’s vision of it as a plague upon humanity, certainly impacts upon her warped and extreme reaction to it. In her eyes, the only way Protests can be saved is through death, which Mary describes as ‘purification’, almost just the culling of diseased animals, or the burning of plague victims. Even Protestants recanting their religious beliefs isn’t enough for Mary, as in her mind, their souls have already been forever tainted. I suppose at this point it’s worth remembering, that even during the 1500s, medicine and the common practices of health and cleanliness as we know it was still centuries away, and that illness was either seen as entirely incurable, or could only be only cured by religious faith, practices, or even prayer. In those days, religion was directly linked to one’s perception of wellbeing, even despite the greed and depravity of men, accentuated by money. Also worth noting is that I’m sure there were many fanatical Protestants who would have happily burned Catholic Christians for their beliefs. However, even at the time Mary’s actions to burn, or effectively execute thousands of Protestants was on the whole, still considered extreme. Today we would undoubtedly call such actions to be government-sanctioned mass murder, or even attempted genocide, but back in the 1500s, murder, even in the name of religion would still be something most people would avoid or refuse to do, either in fear of the consequences, or because they could never bring themselves to commit such an evil destructive act. Sadly, Mary was far beyond mere fanaticism, but I still believe that she had a conscience deep down, even if it was overcome by her obsessive religious beliefs to understand the enormous wrongs she was doing.

Moving onto the lesser Tudor characters, while they’re not as complex or vividly portrayed as the other characters, they’re still well-rounded, and for the most part convincing. George Crow is an everyday working class Tudor Protestant type, who merely wants to peacefully help the cause of his fellow Protestant believers. He also in turn takes care of William Leaf, a much younger, innocent and naive friend, who is merely just trying to get through life, and through Crow accidentally becomes involved in the Protestant conspiracy plot, masterminded by the Reverend Thomas. Reverend Thomas Smith meanwhile is a fanatical Protestant priest who is determined to overthrow Queen Mary from the throne. He only attempts her assassination through poisoning as a last resort, when the Doctor inadvertently foils his earlier plans. I find the Reverend Thomas to be a bit of a basic character in truth. There’s never really any depth to him, and he also never develops beyond the role of incompetent villain, and a fairly one-note one at that. His French Catholic accomplice, Francois de Noailles isn’t much better either. A slimy villain that is almost pantomime in his level of menace and faux objections, de Noailles is a mildly annoying character who’s only saving grace is that Jacqueline Rayner intelligently used a far more subtle choice to be the mysterious assassin, although the obvious headlining by the script as to de Noailles’ villainy, practically screamed out ‘red herring’ to me. Any such deficiencies in the characters though, are often easily overcome by the strength of the cast performances.

As much as I want to say Maggie Stables, the real star of The Marian Conspiracy is undoubtedly ol’ Sixie himself, the legendary Colin Baker. Along with his large part in rejuvenating his Doctor’s character, Baker goes further and delivers what is definitely one of his best performances in the role. All hints of pomposity and acidity that could previously be heard in the Sixth Doctor’s voice have entirely disappeared overnight. In its place is gentleness, unassuming subtle witticisms, sincerity and humility. Even the Doctor’s trademark sharp sarcastic wit has no trace of meanness, unless it’s against those he despises and mistrusts. Colin Baker portrays the Doctor's changed and evolved personality both effortlessly and powerfully. He channels the character’s passion into the care and affection the Doctor has for others, as well as those he vows to defend and protect, and the fight against the forces of malevolence and injustice in general. Colin Baker has literally turned the Sixth Doctor into the hero he always should have been, and furthermore one of the most heroic Doctors ever come to that, and one that from this point on, I’ve cheered on all the way (well mostly in my head anyway). I salute you sir!

Even with this magnificent new rebranded Sixth Doctor however, that doesn’t lessen Maggie Stables’ achievement of establishing Evelyn within moments as one of the best and most enjoyable companions ever created for Doctor Who. One of the key parts of this is Maggie Stables’ effortlessly naturalistic performance, one of the best that I can remember in fact. Stables gives Evelyn a subtle crabby and cynical edge that wonderfully melts away as she first finds herself back in Tudor times, and then works out how true and good a person the Doctor really is, trusting him properly for the first time as well as having her old views and way of life blown away by travelling in the TARDIS. Maggie Stables also expertly reflects Evelyn’s age and years by conveying her vulnerability, through slight nervousness, and making her worries and pleas honest, and genuinely heartfelt. Furthermore, I love how, even when far away from her everyday life, she still maintains Evelyn with the manner of a lecturer or protective grandparent from time to time; whether its sternly standing up to Reverend Thomas’ petty paranoia or her passionate pleas to the Doctor to save George Crow and William Leaf from execution. Maggie Stables’ Evelyn is one of the elite number of companions who are not just convincing and loveable, but also someone who you’d like to meet and know in real life if they existed. In my mind that’s more than a successful companion debut, it’s an absolutely outstanding one, and a revelation at that.

The supporting cast is fantastic too. Anah Ruddin brilliantly underplays such a key and daunting a role as Queen Mary, delivering dialogue calmly with authority, expressing enthusiasm without emotive excitement. When the script calls for it though, Ruddin still superbly portrays Mary as the steely stern and outraged Queen that History remembers, without feeling the need to fall into melodrama, as many actors in period drama have unwittingly done excessively in the past. Jo Castleton is another actor who employs subtlety to great effect. Her Lady Sarah is quiet, calm and collected, but also fairly timid, cleverly hiding the character’s true intelligence and feelings till much later in the audio. This isn’t just so the listener can be pleasantly surprised later, and experience her character growing as the story progresses, but also to equally cleverly hide Sarah’s real loyalties and her actual part as an unknowing assassin in the Protestant murder plot against Mary. Once the character’s secrets and feelings are revealed, Jo Castleton beautifully and astutely opens up Sarah’s heart and character for all to see, her good nature and conscience naked to the World, showing us how great, innocent, kind and giving a person she has been all along. Castleton’s performance of Sarah’s heartfelt breakdown into despair, and her passionate cries for help and mercy, are an acting tour de force that moved me to tears, and definitely made that scene the moment of the audio for me. Jo Castleton’s performance as Sarah was a big part of how I had taken this Tudor character into my own heart, but then so is Jacqueline Rayner’s characterisation. However, this is certainly not a guest performance I will forget in a long, long time.

Sadly, the performances of Barnaby Edwards as Francois de Noailles, and Nicholas Pegg as Reverend Thomas, while being perfectly decent, are perhaps brought down by weaknesses in their respective characters and dialogue. Both performances have convincing moments, but Edwards’ French accent is perhaps a bit too close to the stereotype than is ideal, and Pegg’s Reverend Thomas has more than the occasional air of a pantomime villain, which combined with a similar style character, is a feeling that is difficult to shake off. Meanwhile, Sean Jackson and Jez Fielder, as George Crow and William Leaf respectively, fair a lot better rounding off their more down-to-earth working class characters, who are easily alarmed by the Reverend’s murder plot, and who have strong consciences. There’s also a nice double act going on between the two actors. Sean Jackson makes George as the older, gruff sounding everyman, who has a soft spot and paternal streak towards his younger friend William, whom Jez Fielder plays as naive, innocent and vulnerable, but also fairly simple and essentially upbeat in his attitude to life. Both performances wonderfully complement each other, and while the two characters are very much kept in the background of the story, the performances of both Jackson and Fielder are so delightful that it’s a treat to hear them return, in a coda scene after the main story is over.

While the performances are a sizeable part of what makes The Marian Conspiracy such a joy to listen to, it’s clear that a lot of good audio production has taken place as well. They say that good direction can be invisible at times, and while on audio it sometimes feels that way, the level of subtlety and technical precision across the majority of performances, as well as how brilliantly some scenes flow and are set up, shows that Gary Russell has clearly been tirelessly working wonders behind the scenes, and it shows. I keep coming back to that scene where the Doctor persuades Mary to spare Sarah’s life once the whole plot has been revealed, but it’s so beautifully done, that I would call it an audio work of art if it’s possible to say such a thing. The post production impresses too. The sound design may be light for this production, considering how light the story is on plot or action, but it’s still very effective nonetheless, with the sounds of splashing in the Thames, horses trotting on roads of stone, as well as the creative audio reverb of both a large modern space and an old confined one to convincingly reflect both a lecture hall and a prison cell within the Tower of London respectively. The Marian Conspiracy also has a very good soundtrack, courtesy of Alistair Lock, one of Big Finish’s first stalwart composers. The listener is swept into a period mood, thanks to the use of Medieval-esque instruments, which act as a wonderful base for rather more modern, but subtle strings, which never dominate or hijack the great Tudor/early Baroque sound that Lock is clearly aiming for. The melodies are kept wonderfully simple, even they’re still more complex than what music was being made at the time, but a good composer has to draw the line somewhere. Why sacrifice good music entirely for the sake of absolute historical accuracy. Anyway, I’m drifting from the point. The music itself beautifully and gently underscores the story develops while also giving the story, and perhaps also by association, Evelyn, a musical theme of its own that weaves in and around the plot as it develops. Lock also notes the various plot climaxes in the music superbly, but wisely never allows the music to take over and dominate the listening experience. The Marian Conspiracy score is one of the small number Big Finish soundtracks I’m glad was given a CD release, along with some of Alistair Lock’s other Big Finish work, and it’s still a CD I enjoy delving back into from time to time.

The Marian Conspiracy is undoubtedly one of the all-time highlights of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio range. So many fantastic elements came together and performed wonderfully, whether it be Jacqueline Rayner’s script-writing and characterisation, the superlative cast, Gary Russell’s great direction, or Alistair Lock’s erudite music composition. The story of Evelyn Smythe, who travelled back in time to foil a plot to kill Queen Mary, has been one of the most memorable productions Big Finish have ever made. Being one of their very first audios, as well as one of the first Big Finish I ever heard myself after Sirens of Time, Whispers of Terror and The Genocide Machine, it is an audio that I’ve become very fond of over the years. I can hardly believe it’s nearly 13 years old; such is the originality and freshness of it that still remains to be the case today. You could remake it for TV today, and it would still feel as brand new as the day it was first released on audio. Then there’s the introduction of Evelyn Smythe, a Doctor Who companion unlike any other, and very possibly one of the very best companions ever invented. A much older companion with great heart, but also great intelligence, who can equal the Doctor for wit and cunning, compassion and intellect, effortlessly winning a place both in his hearts, and over time, in ours too. The only things which stop The Marian Conspiracy from being a fully fledged classic to me is the simplicity of the overall storyline, the amount of padding that creeps into the script, and perhaps also the slight one dimensionality of the male villains, but it’s definitely still the best audio production Big Finish had ever done up to that point, and it’s a fantastic one at that.

So the landmarks of The Marian Conspiracy that I referred to at the start of the review were that the audio was the strongest, most original and creative Big Finish Doctor Who release so far, and marked the beginning of an early golden period for the audio company that helped make it the fearless artistic force it is today. For Doctor Who itself, The Marian Conspiracy features the introduction of the first fully developed and fully fledged elderly companion, and a rather wonderful and super one at that; as well as the reintroduction and updating of the 'pure historical' story format. I suspect though that The Marian Conspiracy’s biggest legacy will be the complete reinvention and renovation of the character of the Sixth Doctor himself. The work done in this audio alone by all concerned completely transformed him into one of the best ever Doctors he was always meant to be. Fans who liked him before, loved him overnight. Fans who hated the character on TV were persuaded to reconsider and re-evaluate his true and proper worth, with many liking him properly for the first time. Many of those who had meanly slurred and scoffed at Colin Baker’s talents before were resolutely and definitively proven wrong beyond all doubt, and humbled. For this we have Colin Baker himself, as well as Gary Russell and Jacqueline Rayner to thank. So while the Virgin Missing Adventure novel Time of Your Life posed the question of what if something else happened to the Sixth Doctor after Trial of a Time Lord, then The Marian Conspiracy asks the question of what should have happened to the Sixth Doctor, as well as the wider point of how the TV Series should have continued before the mean, cynical, clueless and devastating hands of Michael Grade and Jonathan Powell wrecked all chance of future life and success for the show in the following years and decade. So now the problems of Doctor Who’s past are now well and truly consigned to the past, let the revolution continue, and great new original adventures begin!

Score: 9/10

(Illustration by Lee Sullivan)

Book Review 6: Time of Your Life, written by Steve Lyons (1995)

Released: March 1995

Story Summary (BIG SPOILERS!):

The Time Lords have sent the Sixth Doctor on a mission, but that’s the last thing he feels like doing right now. In the wake of his recent trial and the sudden loss of his friend Peri, the Doctor secludes himself amongst the shadows of the planet Torrok, mourning the loss of his companion, and cursing the Time Lords for their treatment of him. He resolves to change his ways, to never interfere with time ever again. However, an unexpected meeting with a native girl called Angela will change his life again for good...

Angela seeks to lose her loneliness and depression for good by accompanying the Doctor on his future travels, much to his reluctance. However, the Time Lords direct the TARDIS to a derelict spaceship closing on a large TV Broadcasting Space Station, and the Doctor and Angela become separated. As the Doctor hopelessly searches for the purpose of his mission aboard the Space Station, he is swept and caught up in some of its various horrifically violent, dangerous and tasteless Television programmes, at times even forced to fight for his life. Meanwhile, an organic alien, but digital viral intelligence kills Angela and sets about invading the TV Space Station with the aim to absorb as much digital data as possible. The Doctor discovers that the Space Station has two dimensionally transcendental sphere capsules, which are being unethically manipulated to impose two combative TV programmes on the environments of other planets. However the arrival of the alien virus has made both of these capsules unstable, as well as murdering those who stand in the way of its digital feast upon the station’s computer systems. Suddenly the chaos rapidly spirals out of control with people dying in their hundreds and the station simultaneously in danger of imploding and falling into the nearest Sun.

The Doctor manages to shut down the unstable Spheres and sends what little survivors are left down to the planet Torrok, where they unexpectedly find themselves having to fight the unruly and violent dropouts (known as Watchers) of the local population. The Virus is finally tricked by the Doctor into letting him escape and siphons part of itself into an Android in an attempt to bond with the intelligence in his TARDIS. However, upon being betrayed it fights with the Doctor to the death. The Android is successfully destroyed and the Doctor arrives upon Torrok to discover to his surprise that the Space Station survivors have championed over and negotiated with the Watchers to help start a more positive and proactive future for Torrok. The Doctor himself finally accepts that he still needs to interfere after all to save lives where it’s needed, and to help continue the fight against evil once more. He takes on a friend he made at the Space Station, called Grant, to join him and travel in the TARDIS. The future beckons...

Story Placement

After The Trial of a Time Lord (TV Serial) and Killing Ground (Virgin Missing Adventure).

(Time of Your Life indicates that it happens directly after the Doctor returns the future Mel back to his future self, however whether any adventures occur between The Trial of a Time Lord and that action is unknown at present.)

Favourite Lines

The Doctor – “ This morning I was on a hermitage, concerned about my increasing propensity towards violence. Tonight, for the first time, I bludgeon a foe to death with the TARDIS hat stand. Things aren’t getting any better”.

The Doctor – “Normal service will be resumed”.

Review:

When Colin Baker was unfairly, ignorantly, callously and scandalously fired from Doctor Who on BBC Television in 1986, it didn’t just leave a wound in the heath and stability of the show (as did the recent large fallout between producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Eric Saward, who promptly went AWOL soon after), which had already been gradually in decline over the last few years; but it also left a huge chasm in the fictional story of the programme itself. Like nature it seems, Doctor Who fans also abhor a vacuum, and imagined new adventures of their own for the 6th Doctor that occurred prior to the first TV appearance of the 7th Doctor in Time and the Rani, and have continued to do so to the present day. However, some of these Who fans later became professional writers themselves, for both books and Television, including the now recognisable and famous names of Mark Gatiss, Paul Cornell, Steven Moffat, Russell T. Davies, Robert Shearman and Gareth Roberts. So when Virgin Publishing acquired a licence to make original Doctor Who fiction in the early 1990s, both for current and past Doctors, this large gap in the fictional story of the 6th Doctor was one that many writers leapt at the chance to write for. The first of these new books to explore it was Time of Your Life by Steve Lyons.

Time of Your Life tries to examine a Sixth Doctor directly after the events of The Trial of a Time Lord, and explores how he reacts to them, as well as the immediate after effects they have upon his character in the short term. As we rarely get an insight into the Doctor’s intimate thoughts and feelings, Time of Your Life presents us with a special opportunity not only to get a sense of how he thinks, but also to delve deep into the character with him, holding up his perceived flaws and mistakes to the light. However, the book also presents a much appreciated opportunity to provide some real character development payoff for the Sixth Doctor after The Trial of a Time Lord, so in that sense Time of Your Life really is a missing adventure, showing how the character could come to terms with what came before, and slowly begin his journey to a better and brighter future; a future which would bring out the best of him, and the future that we never got to see on Television. However, I’m getting ahead of myself, but suffice to say it wouldn’t be till Big Finish came and really rejuvenated and renovated the Sixth Doctor many years later, that audiences would really get to experience the best of him. Back to Time of Your Life though, Steve Lyons neatly has the Sixth Doctor contextualising and reacting to his Television adventures in the same way that he reacted to his regeneration trauma in The Twin Dilemma.

The Doctor’s reaction to the events of The Trial of a Time Lord, and perhaps in a more general extent his actions and behaviour since The Twin Dilemma in retrospect, is a combination of regret, sadness and quiet alarm. Sadness at the loss of of his friend Peri, regret for not treating her as well as he should have done, and for not being as considerate and aware of others as he should. Most of all though, the Doctor is still deep down in shock at the truths revealed during his recent trial, the indirect consequences of his actions and arrogant behaviour, the unnecessary deaths and suffering of innocents and perhaps most of all, the thought that the continuation of this path could at some point turn him into such a callous, unfeeling, bitter and evil person such as the Valeyard. Over time, this shock has turned to anger – angry with himself for not seeing the error of his ways sooner, anger at the continued hypocrisy of the Time Lords who are still using and manipulating him for their own ends, and anger at his own sheer helplessness. If he continues to meddle in space/time events, then he fears he will be cementing his seemingly inevitable future to become the Valeyard. However, if he does nothing, he still has to watch others suffer anyway. Like in The Twin Dilemma he has decided to become a loner and a hermit, only this time he means it, and goes about it with much greater resolve and determination than previously. On Torrok, the first planet the TARDIS takes him, the Doctor separates himself from the ongoing events of his surroundings and hides away, resisting the wishes of the Time Lords and cursing them for their continued interference in his life.

This development in the Sixth Doctor’s character arc is not only understandable and believable, but it also fits with everything we know about the character up to now and his behaviour during his short Television adventures. The Doctor isn’t just trying to prevent the becoming of the Valeyard, he’s also trying to make peace with his own demons, and hopefully try to mend his ways. It’s not very often, prior to Big Finish audios, and the resurrection of Doctor Who on Television in 2005 that we get to see such a naked insight into the Doctor’s character and psyche, and the experience is both refreshing and fascinating for the reader. Also in a cruel twist of fate written by Steve Lyons, it is perhaps precisely the Doctor’s inaction during the first half of the story that allows the disaster at the Meson Broadcasting Service Space Station to escalate to the catastrophe and massacre that it does. However, that’s one of the main points to Lyons’ story, as the Doctor needed to go through his ‘trial by fire’ in order to come to his senses about who he really was deep down, and that he still needs to be the hero when others are in desperate need and that he shouldn’t stand by while there is great suffering and evil to be fought.

There also seems to be a sizeable metatextual element to Time of Your Life. The original Television series in late 1986, was as I mentioned at the start of the review in a very vulnerable state, and of course with the benefit of hindsight, we know that by then the damage had already been done, and that in the eyes of contemporary TV audiences and BBC executives, Doctor Who was living on borrowed time. Time of Your Life seems to be asking the Meta question of whether the Doctor should still be part of the future cultural landscape, and more importantly should Doctor Who continue at all. Steve Lyons’ answer is a resounding yes, of course, but interestingly with the fictional collapse of a huge Television company, maybe isn’t necessarily saying it should have to be on Television. It’s hardly an insightful statement for 1995, I know, given that the original Television show had already been axed by 1989, and I could be reading too much into this, but it’s interesting that by this point Doctor Who had come more to terms with its transition from BBC Television programme to multimedia cultural franchise, arguably started by the blossoming of the Target book range in the 1970s and 1980s; and while temporarily losing its shelf life as a TV Show it had successfully established itself as a cultural work of fiction with a near endless shelf life, just like the immortal fictional franchises of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond; and Time of Your Life is perhaps another reiteration of the Doctor Who franchise and fandom’s final acceptance of this.

However, the main metatextual element of Time of Your Life seems to be a critique of Eric Saward’s script editorship of the Television show, or at least the 1984-1986 part of it. So while the Sixth Doctor is holding his own personal character flaws to the light, Steve Lyons is doing the same with aspects of the Eric Saward era of Doctor Who, although his conclusions aren’t necessarily what you might expect. This brings me onto my first big criticism of the book, in that I found it be quite gratuitously violent and gruesome at times. Of course, any critique of the Eric Saward period of Doctor Who is going to mention violence at some point, but ironically I never found the Saward-scripted episodes of Doctor Who to be too violent, in fact being just the right side of what could be appropriately broadcast for a mass audience, but Lyons deliberately evolves and heightens this to an illogical extreme. So much so, that by the last third of the book, Time of Your Life at times feels like Doctor Who meets Saw, with Steve Lyons seeming to particularly relish killing off a multitude of his characters in as many horrible and gory deaths as possible, which would certainly give squeamish readers, more than a tinge of nausea. So while the concept of Doctor Who turning into a slasher/gory horror film may be a novel one, I would say it’s not really an agreeable one.

Another element of mid-1980s Doctor Who that features in the book is the Doctor being relegated into the background along with the rest of the characters for the central part of the story. While it gives the lesser characters a chance to have their moment, Steve Lyons once again ramps this element to the extreme, badly plotting his narrative so that for a lot of the second act, it slows down to a very casual stroll, and the background characters are oddly made the main focus of the book for a while, with sizeable chunks of padding where every sub-character is explained to us and examined to the nth degree. While I commend Steve Lyons for trying to develop all his characters, quite a few of them are merely knowing references or satire to elements of the TV industry, and really only deserve a couple of scenes at best, and offer nothing to the reader afterwards beyond yet another opportunity for Lyons to create a nasty death for them later on. I suppose it wouldn’t be so tiresome if 90% of the characters in the story weren’t unlikeable, pretentious, criminal, narcissistic or completely self-serving types, which again mostly end up as cannon fodder for Lyons to play with in the final acts. While it’s an important part of the Doctor’s character arc in the story to see the negative effects of his reluctance to act, the plot of the second act should really have advanced earlier than it did. So in summary, Steve Lyons doesn’t just examine Eric Saward’s vision of Doctor Who and acknowledge it as a legitimate direction for the Television show to take, but seems to wholeheartedly endorse it, and even exaggerates its effects to suit his own tastes, to the detriment of the storytelling itself. However, there are other layers to Lyons’ story than just a reappraisal of Eric Saward.

The most important part of the narrative is of course the central storyline itself. I love the idea of the Doctor retreating into a silent rebellion against the Time Lords in order to take stock of not just the tumultuous events of the character’s recent past, but also to try and work out how to move on. It allows the unmissable opportunity for the wonderful introspective character development Steve Lyons puts the Sixth Doctor through during the story. However, it also allows for a very different kind of story, one that tests the Doctor to his personal limits, both emotionally and morally. The tragedy of Peri has made the Doctor become much more introspective and closed to others, avoiding any personal connections or ties that he might then endanger or hurt by association. However, his moral sensibilities are still as sensitive as ever, so he can’t help but succumb to Angela’s persistent cries to join him after claiming to be an abandoned and parentless youth, desperate for companionship and escape from her miserable existence on Torrok. However, Lyons is always able to keep us on our toes, particularly with clever, albeit brutal plot twists, the first being the death of Angela, who had up until that point looked like being a possible future companion. In fact it’s pretty clear that Lyons cunningly wrote the character such that we, the audience would inevitably like and feel for her, just before being floored by the event of her sudden and early death.

The central story about the invasion of the Meson Broadcasting Space Station by an intelligent, living and organic computer virus is a fairly standard generic Doctor Who plot, albeit a very modern one, even in 2012, seventeen years later. It’s a testament to Steve Lyons’ skill as a horror writer (as that seems to be what a lot of Time of Your Life is) that it’s introduced and developed so effectively and atmospherically. From the creature’s arrival halfway through the book (which sort of shows you how padded some of the book’s first half was), it holds a real meaningful threat that pervades the story from then on, gradually building until at one point near the book’s climax it appears unstoppable, which is a textbook Doctor Who writing technique. Then there’s the twist that actually the virus is an organic digital intelligence that merely wants to learn, and then also become the supreme logical intelligence in the Universe, much like Drathro in The Trial of a Time Lord. It’s only from that point on that we realise how mundane a villain it was all along, and indeed the Doctor overcomes it a lot easier than first envisioned, however it’s still a fascinating variation on an age-old Sci-fi classic, the robot with delusions of grandeur.

There’s also Steve Lyons’ final brilliant, but bleak twist, where the survivors of the TV Space Station disaster are transported to Torrok, only to find themselves having to fight for their lives against the local dropouts, the Watchers. Once again we’re treated to violence, but this time it feels a lot more justified and proactive, rather than gratuitous. In fact, the only two comforting moments of the whole book is firstly the fact that the survivors managed to rescue Torrok from its dystopia and look forward to better future; and secondly the Doctor finally accepting  who he is as a person, and starts towards a better life himself.

The final layer I’ve yet to mention is perhaps the obvious satire of the Television industry. There’s a vain and precious newsreader, a drunken has-been actor; a selfish, shallow, cheating and promiscuous retired actress; enthusiastic obsessive fans of an axed Sci-fi show called Timeriders (you can guess what that satirises); a proud, self-serving executive secretary, weak and pedantic bureaucrats; a domineering TV producer; and even a mock Mary Whitehouse-like TV standards critic. However, while many of these caricatures have a grain of truth in them, Steve Lyons’ satire, unlike that of 1980s Doctor Who writer Philip Martin, who Lyons is clearly trying to emulate, is misjudged and misdirected. Just as Eric Saward’s Doctor Who seemed to feature a cruel and harsh universe, where even the good guys had strong character flaws and moral ambiguities, so too does Steve Lyons’. However, Lyons’ satire is so cynical and negative that it could even be construed as a direct criticism upon the Television industry and its perceived future evolution. Everyone involved with it is so self-absorbed or has some other big moral vacancy that it seems to be portrayed as completely corrupt and self-destructive, with various conspiracies and power struggles abound purely for personal gain or short-term success, and everything that TV touches is turned into a soulless and lifeless wasteland where its viewers are unquestioning reclusive vegetables who know no better.

Philip Martin’s Vengeance on Varos attempted a similar kind of satire, where he imagined a future of a population endlessly fed on a TV diet of the violence, manipulation and torture of others for entertainment, predicting the future prominence and popularity of ‘reality television’. However, his satire showed a more balanced, complex and morally ambiguous population, one controlled at the behest of both selfish corporations and a few power mad individuals; however, most importantly had varying degrees of conscience and with the Doctor’s influence moved on to become better people. Lyons tries to achieve a similar kind of satire with Time of Your Life, but his attempt is so heavy handed and off-target to be taken seriously.

To interpret then, to an extent Steve Lyons seems to be saying that Television has, or will eventually evolve into a state where it promotes a society with no morals, feeds its audience with a seemingly endless supply of visual junk food, while simultaneously endlessly pushing the boundaries of good taste and violence to extremes; is operated and worked by people who care for nothing except their own personal wealth and success, and will seek it any cost; and ultimately destroys both itself and society in the end. Now of course, most satires have an element of exaggeration to their depictions, but the satire is so one-sided, unambiguous and devastating that it’s hard not to see it as anything other than reactionary. Of course, hindsight has shown that Television did indeed during the 1980s find the lines in taste that it would not cross, and has mostly settled comfortably within them, and in some cases even retreating back from it in the cases of prime time programmes; leaving it for the most part to cinema to try to challenge and redefine what those lines should continue to be. Irritatingly, since the turn of the century, and maybe a little before, a lot of television has been made that could successively be argued to be merely visual junk food, but on the whole this has been down to cost cutting to protect more worthy programming rather than a general disregard for quality Television. Of course there are many vain, self-obsessed and self-important actors, directors and other high ranking media officials; however society, other media, and more importantly democracy and free speech have helped keep their egos in check. There have also been corrupt media officials revealed too, but in an age where we demand more of our leaders, government and high society figures, the truth of wrongdoing will eventually be revealed and the perpetrators disgraced, even if not prosecuted, and once again reality and the common good will reassert itself.

However, what shows up Lyons are two things. Firstly, the fact that it was written in the mid-1990s, and not the 1980s, in a time when British TV had already started to retreat from its established 1980s boundaries in taste and violence; and despite the BBC taking nearly another decade before it recovered from its funding and identity crises, quality was still an important value in programme making, with the outbreak of popularity for reality television still a few years away, although daytime and family-friendly viewing was probably an exception, just as it still occasionally is now. The second point that shows up Lyons are the obvious comparisons with the fictional Timeriders programme and Doctor Who; not just that it was axed, seemingly for good, but also that there are hints of a conspiracy by some of high ranking TV staff to get rid of it, as well as shedding a negative light on the programme’s fans, also partly blaming them for Doctor Who’s TV demise in the late 1980s. So in this context, a significant part of Steve Lyons’ satire could conceivably be a reactionary lash out against the cancellation of Doctor Who, the people who tried to bring it about, and even the BBC itself, as part of a paranoid view of the makers of 1990s British Television as cultural vandals, now dominated by shallow capitalist ethics, endlessly dumbing down in the search of the next ratings hit.

For myself, I think the cancellation of Doctor Who in 1989 was down to a multitude of factors. Firstly the decline in the quality of the show in the mid-1980s due to the inexperience of Eric Saward, and both his and John Nathan-Turner’s somewhat narrow definition of what the TV programme should be, perhaps slightly accentuated later on by the added inexperience of Pip & Jane Baker also, which slowly damaged the programme’s popularity and artistic integrity. Secondly, the unimaginative and clueless BBC bosses who completely misunderstood what the programme really was, what made it work, and what its appeal was; compounding any possible recovery for the show by shunting it into difficult timeslots, not to mention the cold and dismissive attitude towards John Nathan-Turner and Colin Baker. Some of those said executives even had a strong dislike for the show itself. Thirdly, to a lesser extent, the obsessive and narrow-minded possessiveness of some fans during that time, who ignored Doctor Who’s previous state as a show for a mass audience, and publically rejected any attempts by John Nathan-Turner (or anyone else for that matter) to change and rejuvenate Doctor Who until it was far too late, creating unnecessary negative press which helped excuse the BBC, particularly Michael Grade and Jonathan Powell, from their poor treatment towards the series at the time. So I have some sympathy for Steve Lyons’ view, but not much particularly considering how cynical and delusional it is. Sure the BBC was in trouble during the 1990s, playing it relatively safe with programming, and started to outsource its production to much smaller independent TV and film companies to cut costs, while ITV stole the limelight with a flurry of ground-breaking and popular dramas, but the BBC always strived for quality. The main difference was that it decided to concentrate more on sitcoms, entertainment shows, wildlife documentaries and the occasional period drama. There really was no conspiracy in Doctor Who’s demise as a TV show in 1989. Peter Cregeen merely misunderstood how the show worked, and why it really was working at the time. Even in 1985, when it wasn’t working, it was Michael Grade and Jonathan Powell’s dislike for the programme that encouraged them to attempt to cancel it.

Now getting back to Time of Your Life, if Steve Lyons had chosen to instead satirise the Video Games industry, or even ‘video nasties’ instead then his criticisms would appear to be much more on target. The level of violence, gore and immorality is something that has consistently escalated in video games for at least a decade now. Sure the games in which this does happen are meant to be entirely fictional, just like Doctor Who, but unlike it, these games frequently aim to entertain and satisfy its audiences in an increasingly basest form, particularly as the level of detail and graphics possible to achieve become gradually more advanced, so too does the audience demand for future games to break through those boundaries of taste and gore, and for them to offer a more shocking experience. Sure a lot of these games are adult-rated, but will any lines ever be drawn to prevent an eventuality where a game goes too far, or will they still remain fairly independent to do carte blanche as long as they have an adult certification? The level of sex, violence and gore are frequently ahead of anything broadcast on TV, even if not always the cinema, only made more palatable by the fact that video games look far less real, but this is changing at a fair rate; and most extremely violent and gory films were often banned from having cinema releases at the time they were first distributed. As long as users can still differentiate between the fictional immoral world of their games and the real one then there’s theoretically no problem, but there’s good reason to be afraid that in the future that might not always be the case. As the TV experience of the Meson Broadcasting Service is as much virtual as it is physical then it wouldn’t have taken much rewriting to achieve this, but the fact that the satire concentrates on TV, merely underlines how reactionary it is.

Anyway, finally dragging myself away from my soapbox, despite the padding and misguided satire making Time of Your Life a very challenging read in places, it is certainly made more palatable by some of its characters. Sadly again, a lot of these are unrelatable and immoral characters with positions on the TV station, who while are very well developed, are ultimately just ciphers for his TV satire, and cannon fodder for Steve Lyons to play with over the last few chapters. However, there are some notable exceptions, the main one being Angela, the lonely and depressed girl that yearns for travel and adventure. After seeing the Doctor on Torrok, Angela follows and meets him from time to time, fascinated by this unusual stranger to her world. After a while she begs to go with him in the TARDIS, but is brutally killed on their first destination, just minutes after the Doctor leaves her to investigate the Meson Broadcasting Space Station. Angela is very easy to like and warm to at once, and it’s refreshing to see a complex portrayal of loneliness and depression, and further more as part of a relatable and immensely likeable character. So often I’ve seen depressed and lonely people written off in a negative way in fiction, so it’s good to find a progressive character where it isn’t, even if Angela isn’t around for very long. As sad as it is for Angela to go, it’s a neat twist by Lyons that helps develop the character arc the Doctor goes on, and how he eventually begins to accept who he is again.

Grant, the computer programmer who eventually becomes the Doctor’s companion in the story, is a likeable character too, albeit somewhat bland. Think of Adric, without the whinging or arrogance and you’ll be mostly there. I for one, will be curious to see if Grant develops into a much more interesting character during his subsequent novel adventure, Killing Ground. The other character which I really took to was Miriam Walker, the TV Standards critic. Sure, Miriam started out as a transparent and painfully obvious satire of Mary Whitehouse, enthusiastically pursuing a ban on any and every Television programme that she can find. However, in later appearances, her steely facade slowly crumbles to reveal a much warmer, vulnerable and delightful persona underneath. After reading about so many hateful people, it’s great to see Steve Lyons at least give a couple of his satirical characters a more enjoyable and fleshed out human side. He even gives Miriam Walker a few wonderful jokes too.

So on balance Time of Your Life  is a fascinating read, albeit an occasionally challenging one. There’s too much padding with irrelevant characters which slows down the plot significantly for a time, and his very negative, obvious and misjudged satire, as well as some excessive gore and violence sometimes leaves a fairly bad taste in the mouth. However, the major point and aspect of the book is also its saving grace. Steve Lyons gives a brilliant and thought-provoking character arc for the Sixth Doctor that encourages him and us to re-assess his past, and seek to find out and consider who he’ll be in the future; a future that we have never got to see before 1995. In fact this is probably the first time this particular Doctor has ever received anything like a proper character arc before, and for that reason alone it is an interesting read, as writers try to explore where this Doctor’s character could have gone for the first time, beyond the obvious gaps in the TV show’s continuity. Steve Lyons’ attempt at that exploration is one that tries to reconcile the character’s previous persona while trying to gently push him towards a more traditional and amiable persona in possible future adventures. Lyons importantly also sets about showing the character the positive elements of his old ways that still needs to be continued, that he still needs to be the hero he tried to be before, and that by completely rejecting his past self leads to terrible effects and consequences on future innocents. The Sixth Doctor starts off the story in a very bad and dark place, but by the end, there’s a hint of hope for him in the air, that maybe his future is not inevitable. Time of Your Life, far from being the end of the Sixth Doctor, is gently pointing us in the hopeful direction of his future new beginning.

Score: 8/10