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

Audio Review 21: Robophobia, written by Nicholas Briggs (2011)

Released: July 2011

Cast:

The Doctor – Sylvester McCoy

Liv Chenka – Nicola Walker

Farel – Toby Hadoke

Bas Pellico – William Hazel

Selerat – Nicholas Pegg

Cravnet – Dan Starkey

Tal Karus – Matt Addis

Leebar/Computer Voice – John Dorney

Main Production Credits

Producer – David Richardson

Script Editor – Alan Barnes

Writer – Nicholas Briggs

Director – Nicholas Briggs

Incidental Music and Sound Design – Jamie Robertson

Recording –Toby Hrycek-Robinson at Moat Studios

Title Music – Ron Grainer, arranged by Keff McCulloch (Remixed by David Darlington)

TARDIS Sounds – Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Executive Producers – Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery

WARNING: All reviews contain SPOILERS!

Story Summary:

The Doctor finds himself on a Voc Robot supply ship heading for Ventalis, however before he can properly come to terms with his surroundings, he finds himself flung into a deadly murder mystery. Members of the crew are being picked off one by one, and Liv Chenka, the ship’s medical officer, has fears that history may be repeating itself. Many years ago re-programmed Voc Robots murdered the crew on a planetary Sandminer, but could it all be happening again?

The Doctor reveals that a human with robophobia, a psychological and debilitating fear of robots, is murdering the crew himself and is making the Voc Robots appear to be the culprits by setting up a fake disaster, so that human civilisation will do away with them for good. After drawing the real human perpetrator into the open, the Doctor discovers the murderer is Farel, the security chief. Farel though, has fixed the supply ship into a collision course with Ventalis, and tries to depart in the ship’s escape pod. The Doctor talks the security code out of Farel, which he fixed the ship’s directional control with, but also discovers that the source of Farel’s robophobia was the past death of his wife, which he blames the robots for. Although the spaceship is saved from a collision course with Ventalis, the controls are too damaged to land, so the Doctor and the robots set the ship for a collision course with the Sun, and help the humans evacuate to safety. The Doctor meanwhile asks the Voc Robots to relay the truth of events back to Ventalis to ensure that the robots place in future human civilisation is assured.

Story Placement

Between Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge (Big Finish Audio) and The Doomsday Quatrain (Big Finish Audio).

(Sadly, I cannot explain this as it would spoil the big twists at the heart of some of the 7th Doctor’s latest Big Finish audio releases, but suffice to say, the 7th Doctor’s personal audio chronology is a lot more complex and thought out than some may think.)

Favourite Lines

Farel – “We think we’ve found the culprit...a stowaway”.

The Doctor – “Ah, that old chestnut”.

The Doctor – “The real drama isn’t the Robots wiping out the Humans...it’s the Humans wiping out the Robots”.

The Doctor – “We’re all different. That’s one of the few certainties I’ve ever come across”.

Review:

The Robots of Death is rightfully seen as one of the all-time great Doctor Who television serials. A tightly plotted thriller, this classic 1978 adventure effortlessly mixes and pays homage to the story types and fictional writings of both Isaac Asimov and Agatha Christie. Although, like in many murder mysteries, the audience was always privy to the main culprit (the robots), in this case even before the opening titles had played out. The real mystery though, was identity of the controller of the robots, as well as how long it would take the rest of the characters to figure them out. In many ways, it’s one of the best examples of one of Doctor Who’s most common story types in itself, the ‘base under siege’ storyline.

So in light of how both popular and successful The Robots of Death was, Nicholas Briggs’ task of trying to create a sequel must have seemed daunting in the extreme, even terrifyingly so. Imagine my amazement then when Briggs comes up with a brilliant sequel that not only matches the quality of the original, but improves on it and surpasses it completely, without diminishing the value of its predecessor. In fact, Robophobia is such a fantastic story and audio release that it’s almost difficult to believe that this was written by the same person who came up with the clichéd and troubled mess that was Destination Nerva just a few months later. Then again, everyone has a bad day, so it’s easy to overlook it and forgive Nicholas Briggs for any innocent mistakes in light of such a hectic production schedule, particularly when he can come back and create works of genius like Robophobia.

Part of Nicholas Briggs’ genius is his skill here in being able to subvert our expectations. From the outset it appears to be another straight-forward retelling of The Robots of Death, where the Voc Robots have seemingly been programmed to start killing the crew of a Robot supply ship, the programming having been done by an unknown member of the said crew. However, Briggs springs a fantastic twist upon us, revealing that an unknown crew member is instead murdering the other humans disguised as a Voc Robot; their intention being to blame the crimes on the Robots and get them permanently decommissioned by the supply company, perhaps even removed from human civilisation altogether. The twist is all the more effective because both the plot and the dialogue are made to strongly suggest that the Robots are the real killers, a nice piece of calculated misdirection by Nicholas Briggs.

The following episode, part three, develops quite predictably after that twist, because the real culprit to the killings becomes obvious very quickly. However, the dramatic twist that I, and I’m sure many others weren’t prepared for was the late reveal in part four that the murderer’s Robophobia was brought on by the death of his Wife in a Sandminer accident, where the Robots tried to save her from being killed in the Scoop during a storm and failed. The cunningly more relaxed pace and plotting of parts three and four, meant that I was completely floored by the emotional sucker punch that Nicholas Briggs had up his sleeve, and I was genuinely moved to tears as the development was slowly told, building towards its powerfully tragic and sad climax. The episode, and most of the story in general is written quite subtly too, which makes Briggs’ emotional beats all that more believable and powerful as a result (New Series Doctor Who writers, take note).

Yet what I also love about Robophobia is that Nicholas Briggs ends the story on such a sublime and gloriously positive note. The Voc Robots sacrifice themselves to save the humans and aid their escape, but the Doctor makes sure that word of their good work, selfless natures and strong benefit to humanity are known and spread throughout the Planetary System so that their true worth can be appreciated by all. The final scene also acts as a subtle and uplifting reaffirmation of a simple truth that is as important now as it ever was - that one should always seek the truth, and work to overcome fear, superstition and ignorance in order to reach a better and brighter future. The conclusion is a perfect end to a magnificent story and a fantastic script by Briggs. This is the mark of a greatly talented writer, who has clearly perfected his craft, and knows exactly where to plot his twists and emotional beats with pin point accuracy (the other part of Nicholas Briggs’ genius in Robophobia).

Another reason why Briggs’ twists and emotional twists work so well is because he gives us more recognisably human and down-to-earth characters to begin with, their relatively mundane lives and natures well juxtaposed against the story’s extraordinary events and surprising reveals. This is especially true of Liv Chenka, who is set up as the audience’s window into the story, as well as someone to relate to; a sweet, shy, brave, clever and very likeable person with a brilliantly written and complex personality. Liv represents our conscience and guide to story events as they occur, as well as our mixed reactions to the clever interweaving plot strands as they unravel themselves into one big ingenious story arc. Liv Chenka also proves to be a great foil for the 7th Doctor, following his cryptic hints and suggestions; challenging him for answers to what takes place, as well as rebuking him for his clear manipulation of her throughout the story. However, the Doctor also has a more positive impact on Liv, encouraging her to question the events taking place around her and not take them for granted; as well as building up her strength of character so that Liv can challenge and face the problems and situations they face.

Of course this is as much about the Doctor manipulating Liv for his own ends as it is about helping her, probably more so, which is why this is also a fascinating take on the 7th Doctor. He uses Liv Chenka as an extra pair of eyes and ears, as well as a tool to poke about the affairs of the Robot supply ship and its crew, until a reaction is provoked that will tell him more about what is going on, or more to the point who is to blame. Considering where this seems to take place in the 7th Doctor’s personal chronology, this is a notable development in the colder and darker side of his nature, casually manipulating and deliberately accelerating events and people to find out the truth of the situation as quick as he can, albeit still for benevolent reasons here. Perhaps the latest 7th Doctor Big Finish audio trilogy (Protect and Survive, Black and White, Gods and Monsters) will set some more light on this development, as tonally the character moves ever closer to his darker extremes as shown in the Virgin New Adventures novels. In contrast, it’s also notable that while travelling alone, some of the 7th Doctor’s more wacky eccentricities have returned, which helps put a light spin on what is at times a fairly dark and earnest script, producing a neat range of emotions and reactions from the Time Lord, although this is as much to do with Sylvester McCoy’s quirky and delightfully mad performance as it is Nicholas Briggs’ characterisation. I like how the Doctor flits around the ship like a ghost, there one minute and gone the next. It’s also quite amusing how he creeps up on Liv Chenka and interrupts her reminisces about Tal Karus, telepathically following their train of thought.

For a character that has only a few fleeting appearances, Tal Karus is surprisingly well-sketched by Nicholas Briggs. His presence as an undercover investigator, as well as his murder at the start of the story, is a neat way of setting the darker tone of the narrative, and raising the dramatic stakes quickly in one fell swoop, so the plot can progress straight away without any lengthy exposition, or establishing scenes, and the listener is thrown straight into the heart of events. I also like the neat way Nicholas Briggs expands upon his character in flashback so he can structure in character development, story direction, mood and exposition at just the right moments. However, Tal Karus’ scenes are far more than just convenient narrative devices, as we see his cute first meeting with Liv Chenka and how they quickly create chemistry together in a believably shy and understated way. So even though this character departs the plot early on, we still get a real sense of who he is, which is masterful writing if ever I heard it.

Farel the Security Officer also gets an intricately layered and well-rounded character which is slowly peeled away as the story progresses us. The script cleverly fools us into thinking at first that Farel is a typical unimaginative security guard, a harmless and hopeless bumbling fool, who is tremendously insecure about his extreme incompetence in the role, leaps to conclusions, and seems to cowardly avoid taking any action whatsoever. However, the twist revealed at the end of part two also reveals Farel to be a clear candidate behind the mysterious deaths, even if the script refuses to confirm him as the real culprit until the end of part three. The twist about a conspiracy involving a human trying to discredit and destroy the Voc Robots for good, as does the sudden ‘takeover’ by the Robots that follows, shines a mirror onto Farel’s actions up to that point, and turns them on their head. Farel’s bumbling incompetence can actually now be understood as the Security Chief actively trying to stall and sabotage the investigation through hesitation, non-action and attempted misdirection, some of which the Doctor encourages Farel to enact prematurely, by revealing the apparent truth of events and forcing his hand. I also like the fact of his personal Robophobia being used by the script to make him initially appear innocent during part two, while at the same time actually being the source of his motivation for destroying the Robots and creating this conspiracy in the first place. The truth behind Farel’s Robophobia and the story behind it of his wife’s death, which although doesn’t absolve him from being a murderer, wonderfully rounds out his character and gives him a more human and multi-dimensional appearance that helps the audience to empathise with him. Have no doubt, Farel is still the villain of the piece, but he’s also a tragic figure, an emotional victim of an industrial accident that killed his wife; full of sorrow, wracked with guilt, and turned into an unstable wreck. It is such a breath of fresh air to encounter a villain who is not written in black and white, and it makes the final twist all that more meaningful and powerful, because most, if not all of us can relate to emotional trauma, even if we haven’t necessarily experienced it to the same level as others.

The other supporting characters, Cravnet and Selerat, while being entertaining foils for the more central characters, as well as the script’s jokes, add little extra depth or value to the story as a whole, except as useful plot devices to ask the right questions at the right moments, or offer misdirection to the audience when the script requires it. Cravnet though is particularly likeable and endearing as an innocent, sweet and bumbling security guard, who while not being the sharpest mind on board, often finds himself closer to the truth of events by the virtue of not having the arrogance and lack of humility as his superiors. Selerat on the other hand is merely the typical clueless fool in charge, and only succeeds in being the lesser light comic relief of the story.

However, none of the characters would be quite as enjoyable without the production’s stellar cast. Sylvester McCoy wonderfully plays on his Doctor’s more eccentric elements, while making sure they don’t dominate his performance. I would also say that Robophobia also features one of McCoy’s most assured and varied performances, ranging from mysterious and quiet pensive mumblings to subtle mischievous wit and wisecracks to weary deliveries of the Doctor’s age-old wisdom to occasional flashes of lunacy, and back again. Without a doubt, Sylvester McCoy is on top form, and this is definitely one of his best Big Finish audios to date.

Nicola Walker is one of those stellar British actors of modern times that I’ve been eager to see star in Doctor Who for a while now, so it’s great to hear her in as strong a production as this. Walker brings out the shy sweetness and vulnerability of Liv Chenka to the fore, while delivering the most naturalistic and believable performance of the cast, which really successfully encourages the audience to root for her in a way that makes you wish that the character would be a future companion. However, Nicola Walker makes sure that Liv is certainly no reluctant lightweight though, by neatly making sure that her vulnerability and the trauma Liv goes through emotionally makes her stronger, and more steely determined in her aim to find the truth and prevent any further deaths. The Doctor, through his manipulations also helps Liv to believe in herself and her own abilities, and Walker also deftly shows this braver and more assertive Liv growing throughout the story.

Toby Hadoke was the real surprise of the cast though. He’s cemented a successful reputation for himself as a comedian and an engaging and delightful presenter, as well as very genial and friendly Doctor Who fan in general. I had no doubt that he could act well, but I had no idea that he had the talent to pull off the huge dramatic and emotional denouement that was required of Farel’s character at the end of the story. In fact, Farel’s earlier persona and misdirection seemed explicitly written to show off Hadoke’s well known comedic talents, but his flawless depiction of Farel’s emotional breakdown was so well judged it helped to pull off that moving scene brilliantly. The rest of the cast also performed well, with Dan Starkey getting a rare opportunity away from portraying monsters to delve into a more comedic role for a change, and relishing it enormously; while Nicholas Pegg delivered another amusing variation on the bemused and hopeless spaceship captain stereotype.

Praise though also has to go to Nicholas Briggs again for direction, allowing Sylvester McCoy to have more fun with the role of the Doctor, while reigning in any potential excesses of eccentricity. At the same time, Briggs has also kept the cast performances as natural and believable as possible, and the results are superlative, and keep on giving on multiple listens, particularly on the twists and more emotional scenes. There was only one slip up I noticed, where Nicola Walker over emphasises Liv’s warning to Farel about the Robots in episode two, but I’m clearly nitpicking here, as everything else is so brilliantly done.

However, what is even more wonderfully done on Robophobia is the post-production. After listening to a production from over 12 years ago, one of the big things that blew me away on listening to this was, 11 years later, how far Big Finish has come in their overall sound production, something which has always been good from the start, but here in Robophobia was simply amazing. From the roaring engine of the supply spaceship to exciting stereo explosions to little things like the quiet rumble of the engine aboard the ship interior, the little bleeps and door sounds, and the change of EQ on the spaceship computer audio readouts.

The other big thing that blew me away from the start was the quality of the music soundtrack by Jamie Robertson. From the first plucked guitar strings I knew we were in for something special. Robertson is beautifully subtle and menacing when called for, but equally creates large and powerful orchestral themes just where the story needs it and never goes too far. I particularly enjoyed the little string section when Liv was reminiscing about Tal Karus, and the powerful section underscoring the reveal about Farel’s deceased wife, but I liked everything about the music. It was so good and professional I would easy rate it as being good enough to be used on a big worldwide feature film, and I say that as a passionate film soundtrack music lover. At times the score reminded me of The Matrix in scope, originality and tone. In fact it was such a joy to listen to that I took great enjoyment from listening to the small section of soundtrack put as a separate track on the end of Discs 1 & 2 (which as a great little CD extra I can’t recommend to Big Finish enough that they should keep doing for us music fans, so thank you for that). Plus I loved that great final big orchestral music statement at the end of Robophobia, which reinforced the story’s final positive note and left me feeling very happy indeed.

The Robots of Death may have been a brilliantly-produced and executed thriller, but Robophobia, its sequel, is so much more than that. Robophobia is a great examination of what it means to be human, in terms of both life and loss, but it’s also a great examination in how we should never take anything at face value and reminds us of an important teaching to always appreciate what we have, however common or mundane it appears to be. Furthermore, the audio is a completely first class production on all counts, and one that I’m sure I’ll revisit on multiple occasions in the future. Plus, to top it all off, Robophobia is a fantastic thriller in its own right.

Score: 10/10

Audio Review 20: Winter for the Adept, written by Andrew Cartmel (2000)

Released: July 2000

Cast:

The Doctor – Peter Davison

Nyssa – Sarah Sutton

Alison Speers – Liz Sutherland

Peril Bellamy – India Fisher

Lieutenant Peter Sandoz – Peter Jurasik

Miss Tremayne – Sally Faulkner

Mlle Maupassant – Hannah Dickinson

Harding Wellman – Christopher Webber

Commodore – Andy Coleman

Empress – Nicky Goldie

Main Production Credits

Producers – Gary Russell & Jason Haigh-Ellery

Writer – Andrew Cartmel

Director – Gary Russell

Incidental Music – Russell Stone

Recording and Editing – Alistair Lock

Sound Design and Post-Production – Andy Hardwick @ ERS

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

Story Summary (SPOILERS!):

Nyssa finds herself accidentally teleported to the Swiss Alps in 1963, after taking part in one of the Doctor’s experiments. The whole area caught in a midst of a snow storm, a local policeman, Lieutenant Peter Sandoz, takes Nyssa to shelter in a nearby girls’ finishing school, which seems to be haunted by a powerful poltergeist...

The Doctor tracks down Nyssa in the TARDIS, and becomes fascinated with the mystery of the ghost, and its origins. The sheltering locals however, including two attending pupils Alison and Peril, are more intent with trying to evacuate the area to safety. When escape becomes impossible, it remains up to the Doctor to help make the school safe by finding out the truth about the poltergeist. He later discovers that Alison and Peril both have powerful Psychic abilities, Alison been aggressively telepathic, and Peril passively telekinetic, who are also both unconsciously affected by the ghost of a dead hiker, Harding Wellman, who suffered with epileptic fits. They all act as a chain reaction, or gestalt entity, each one reacting to the other and influencing the next, creating the poltergeist phenomena, with Harding’s mental fits sending out surges of psychic power which accentuates it all the more.

However, these gathering of psychic minds were far from coincidence. The Doctor correctly works out that the girls’ school has been deliberately inviting and vetting pupils with such strong psychic abilities, at the behest of two agents of the Spillagers. The Spillagers are aliens from another dimension, who seek to invade this one, so they can consume it, destroy it and move on to the next. They have gathered these psychic girls here as their powers will enable the opening of a wormhole between dimensions, which will allow the Spillager invasion fleet to enter our reality. After the two Spillager agents are dealt with, the Doctor uses Alison, Nyssa and Harding to use their psychic abilities to close the wormhole, trapping and destroying the Spillager invasion fleet between dimensions. The Doctor treats the survivors to a trip home in the TARDIS.

Story Placement

Between The Land of the Dead (BIG Finish audio) and The Mutant Phase (BIG Finish audio).

Favourite Lines

Miss Tremayne – “...and his harlot”.

Nyssa – “What’s a harlot?”

Miss Tremayne – “Whore of Babylon!”

Nyssa – “No, I’m afraid I still don’t understand the reference”.

The Doctor – “But there’s a limit to scepticism, you know. You’ll end up cutting your throat with Occam’s razor”.

Review:

The appreciation of Andrew Cartmel as a Doctor Who writer has usually divided itself into two camps – those who love the 7th Doctor era on Television that he script edited most of, and those that don’t. That’s not to say that the people who don’t do not like any 7th Doctor television episodes at all, just that they disliked his view and creative vision for the show. His critics either rail against his youthful inexperience (usually pointing to Seasons 24 and 25), or they see the darker developments in the Doctor’s character, and more adult developments on Doctor Who in general as being at odds with the spirit of the programme. These criticisms particularly came to a head during the 1990s Virgin Doctor Who novels, The New Adventures, which followed this darker, much more adult direction, and took it as far as it could be naturally developed (although it could be argued that some novels took it to extreme levels), concluding with Lungbarrow. Some Doctor Who fans label this as the ‘Cartmel Masterplan’, although I’m still unsure as to how much authorship of this approach can solely be attributed to Andrew Cartmel, even now. However, my somewhat long point is this – scripts like Winter for the Adept, in my view, conclusively prove that Andrew Cartmel knows a lot more about how Doctor Who really works, than many have really given him credit for.

Why? Well, because Winter for the Adept is a reasonable break from the tone of Cartmel’s previous Who work for the 7th Doctor. Interestingly, it’s done for a very different version of the character – the 5th Doctor, which is fascinating precisely because of how different the two eras of the show are, both in the tone and type of stories they had on Television. Both eras were a period of transition, evolution and increasing variety; part of a decade of Doctor Who that was still trying to get away from the more traditional stories of the 1970s, which were often just about the Doctor defeating a malevolent evil menace. The key difference is the 5th Doctor era was only the beginning of that change, and a fairly gradual one at that. The tone of the show was still significantly lighter than the darker approach Andrew Cartmel instigated from 1988 onwards, even though the script editors after Douglas Adams (who left in 1980) were just as keen on introducing more drama too. So it’s a welcome surprise that Cartmel can still write well for a version of Doctor Who that is simpler, less adult, and much less dark than the one on which he cut his writer’s teeth on for ten years (1987-1997). Although listening to Winter for the Adept I sometimes can’t tell if Andrew Cartmel wrote his script as in interpretation of what Doctor Who was in 1982, or what he thought it should have been. I suspect the answer is a bit of both, creating a story that fits both the fresh variety of stories in 1982, while also keeping it fairly traditional, but also moving it a step towards the darker and more ambitious adventures of the late-1980s.

Considering how much gothic and Victorian horror fiction has influenced Doctor Who over the years, it is surprising just how few ghost or paranormal-themed stories there have been. For the most part, Winter for the Adept offers a beautifully simple atmospheric adventure about being trapped in a haunted girl’s school, with the Doctor trying to investigate the phenomena in order to make it safe. The added fact that the school is mostly evacuated, aside from cunningly keeping the story’s cast of characters small, adds to the chills of the story, creating a place of emptiness, where mysterious noises and creaks suddenly appear when and where they shouldn’t. All this build-up and maintaining of atmosphere helps to perpetuate the macabre tone of the story, which is just as well, considering that is mostly all it is about. For the first three episodes, Winter for the Adept is almost entirely atmosphere and mystery, with the occasional establishing and background scenes to help develop its guest characters a bit. Andrew Cartmel partly gets away with this due to how brilliantly he structures and establishes the story and its characters in the first episode. The Doctor is deliberately held back till the end of the episode to help slow or stagger the plot, but also to give Nyssa a welcome chance to shine, by leading the episode and confronting the mystery of the school face to face. Giving Nyssa the limelight for a while means not only that the character gets more to do, but also more meaningful things to say for a change, revealing more sides and dimensions to her character, as well as proving once and for all how intelligent, resourceful and proactive she is as a companion. Cartmel’s masterful first episode, just like the rest of the story is also structured so we don’t find out everything straight away, or have huge scenes of dull exposition. Each character is intelligently introduced individually and organically into events, before we actually get the full picture, or at least enough of it to work out what the story is about, which is the point the Doctor finally arrives. I also like Cartmel’s framing device for the story, of Alison reading back on events from her diary many years later. It’s a lovely way of making (or reinforcing the way) the Doctor’s adventures seem just as mythical and fantastical as the genre of storytelling which Winter for the Adept aspires to be part of. Once we reach the story’s climax, Andrew Cartmel also produces an explanation that is interesting, logical and completely convincing, while simultaneously being satisfying and very traditional in Doctor Who terms. The idea that aliens have been gathering up girls with psychic abilities, so they can form a powerful gestalt entity with an epileptic ghost, to help open a dimensional gateway, is certainly one of the most original and novel Doctor Who ideas I have ever heard to date!

Just when it looks to be a potential Doctor Who classic though, the story seems to fall apart in the last episode. Now, I don’t mean that the story itself doesn’t make sense, just that Andrew Cartmel takes one of the freshest and most enjoyable story ideas in years, and numbs it with one of the dullest, laziest and most disappointingly stereotypical endings he surely could ever have scripted for it. I honestly can’t tell whether while writing he just unintentionally backed himself into a corner, and struggled to think of a decent way out of it or just gave up in general, it’s that dreary and feeble. After going through the trouble of creating an intelligent explanation for the poltergeist, as well as a very skilful and subtle build-up for the Spillagers throughout the story in general, the Spillagers turn out to be yet another race of invading aliens who want to destroy everything, and not very interesting or original aliens at that. Added to that, after more running down corridors, the Doctor dispatches the Spillagers easily within minutes, and solves the problem of the invading fleet similarly glibly with a scene that takes place outside the audio altogether, of the psychic gestalt closing it at his encouragement. After building up to climax throughout the story with subtlety and care, and gradually raising the stakes along with it, the resolution is so throwaway and shallow; I was incredulous as to how amateurish it had suddenly turned into. However, as it was Gary Russell who advised the insertion of the wormhole resolution, maybe Andrew Cartmel just couldn’t enthusiastically get behind it. Cartmel’s script also has other flaws though.

Despite the brilliantly conceived first episode, the second and third instalments of the story consist mainly of scenes where characters are either running away from the effects of the poltergeist, or listening and discussing copious passages of exposition. As a result, a fair amount of padding creeps in. For instance, the moving and self-playing piano is amusing and creepy the first time round, but after the endless revisits throughout the story, it starts to become tired fairly quickly. It’s also apparent that Andrew Cartmel has still to get used to how to write for audio at this point, with some of his dialogue and scriptwriting being occasionally stilted and inexperienced. The reveal that the ghost of Harding Wellman has a very stereotypical posh British accent was also a joke that fell very flat for me.

The Spillagers aside though, Andrew Cartmel’s characterisation is much better executed overall. Nyssa in particular is well served by Cartmel, allowed the rare chance to show off her initiative, intelligence and character that had only been really hinted at during the TV series itself. Her sharp mind and strict scientific mind means that she isn’t afraid to question the mysticism that others (sometimes even the Doctor) seem to accept readily, even if it makes her a little too sceptical of less conventional life forms (in Nyssa’s case, ghosts). Winter for the Adept also shows that Nyssa has grown such during her time on the TARDIS that she can take charge of situations with ease if necessary, leading the others to safety when the poltergeist strikes during the first episode. Even from her very first TV appearance though, in The Keeper of Traken, Nyssa has always had some measure of courage and resourcefulness within her, so it’s great that Cartmel makes sure that that still comes through in his script. I also love that Cartmel remembers the fact that Nyssa is supposed to be an alien (as many writers don’t), and so she still isn’t quite used to all the human words or turns of phrases that are banded about around her, including even a direct insult that amusingly goes right over her head. However, I feel that Nyssa stays flippant and moody for perhaps a bit too long than I would like, have slight flashes of attitude that reflect the absent Tegan more than Nyssa.

Andrew Cartmel’s Fifth Doctor is also very good; even if he has the occasional Troughton-esque touch and quirk about him (I’m fairly sure Patrick Troughton is Cartmel’s favourite Doctor, maybe even more than Sylvester McCoy). His calm and assured manner never falters, well conveying that wise intelligence within his younger appearance. Even when the stakes are significantly higher, he faces both danger and his enemies with an equally calm and steely resolve, to ensure that he never underestimates them, or allows himself to make mistakes. Actually, it makes a welcome change for the 5^th Doctor to be fairly in control of the situation. As fascinating as a vulnerable Doctor is to experience or read about, it’s important that he never becomes completely impotent or ineffectual, because otherwise he would cease being the same character, and for all his flaws, by this point he is most certainly the brave hero we all love, who’ll never give up, and has been for some time. In Winter for the Adept he also shows flashes of his previous persona, relishing the adventure ahead of him, and finding out the secrets of this ghostly manifestation.

The supporting characters are also interestingly drawn by Cartmel. Alison is refreshingly open-minded and insatiably curious, but also sharp witted, and never misses a trick. In fact at times she feels like a prototype Doctor Who companion, such is her apparent love of adventure, and ability to take the extraordinary in her stride. Peril meanwhile is a cheeky, impetuous and impressionable girl who is even more of a romantic idealist than her friend Alison. Both are fun and amiable characters that play a key part in the story, but while Alison isn’t changed by her hidden psychic power, Peril is convinced that she is cursed, and is strongly affected by the poltergeist’s victims, upset that all the death and disaster is her fault. It’s another fascinating layer to Peril that prove that some of her jokes and reckless mischief is at least in part to distract her from the distressing effects of her own unconscious talent at telekinesis. Miss Tremayne is also a great character, strict, very pious, and devoutly religious, which Cartmel fortunately avoids overplaying before it gets to ridiculous and camp levels. Despite being so simple a character, as Miss Tremayne is so austere and puritanical that it would be hard to see what more you could write for such a character. While her startled outbursts are often for comedic effect, Miss Tremayne is also a very realistic and believable character. A lot of traditional people in previous centuries, even the twentieth, would have thought and acted like that, which is why the character type has often been used as a stereotype in fiction; although in the case of Winter for the Adept, the character is a natural one to find in such a place and time, and is far from cliché. Likewise, Lieutenant Sandoz is a likeable character, as well as much more down to earth than the rest, that is until his real identity is revealed. Cartmel’s intelligent writing of him as someone who is naturally sceptical and suspicious of strangers, means that while he is using the script to make the audience suspicious of his true motives, his natural and protective manner means that listeners can empathise with him enough to doubt whether he is the real person behind all the intrigue and disaster of the story. It’s almost disappointing that he is revealed to be a Spillager too, as the twist is entirely predictable and expected, so no real drama or thrill is gained from it, particularly given how Cartmel flippantly kills off the Sandoz Spillager mere moments later. Miss Maupassant is the only real disappointment among the guest characters, a bland French tutor, who often ends up as a cipher with an accent. Although this could equally be deliberate by Cartmel, which is why she is also a clear obvious candidate for being an undercover Spillager. In fact I would go so far as to say that Cartmel makes it too easy for us, with Maupassant being fascinated with the TARDIS one minute and then frantically scared of Ghosts the next, as well as staying very much in the background of events.

Speaking of the Spillagers, they have to be one of the poorest excuses for an alien race in Doctor Who yet. Sure, there are many generic Doctor Who alien villains out there that want to invade the Earth, but few feel quite as shallow, insubstantial, tedious and amateurish as the Spillagers, which is something I thought I would never say about any aspect of an Andrew Cartmel Doctor Who script. Even their dialogue is false and stilted, regardless of which Spillager it is. The worst example though are lines from the Maupassant Spillager, who when revealed, calls out terrible puns like bad pick up lines and double entendres that you might expect to hear in old porn films (I haven’t actually seen any, you understand, just the accepted clichés which comedy has made fun of for decades).

Not for the first time, the best performances of Winter for the Adept were by those who had the best lines and characters to work with. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton deliver the strongest performances of the production, totally assured, well-judged and convincing, full of conviction. Sally Faulkner’s Miss Tremayne is amusingly melodramatic, and beautifully plays up to the comic timing in the script, and successfully avoids a hammy performance. Liz Sutherland, India Fisher and Peter Jurasik also deliver decent and subtle performances, helping to make their respective characters believable and likeable. Sadly the lesser guest cast is something of a disaster. Hannah Dickinson’s Miss Maupassant is both bland and clichéd with her overpowering stereotypical French accent, which is anything but subtle and convincing; and her performance as the Spillager also leaves a lot to be desired, as do those of the other Spillager actors. However, this may be as much down to the director as the actors, as Gary Russell seems perfectly fine with the Spillagers all having hammy performances and pantomime-like stilted dialogue. It’s also bizarre that he seemed to be completely oblivious to the remaining problems with the last episode of Winter of the Adept, although considering he came up with the story resolution himself, maybe it’s not surprising he was ok with it.

Thankfully, the post-production of the audio helps to keep the good parts of the story stand out, by being rather exceptional. Andy Hardwick’s sound design for Winter for the Adept is as flawless and amazingly extensive as Big Finish has managed up to this point (2000). From something as small as light footsteps in the snow, to deafening gusts of wind, to even the wonderful subtle detuning of piano, every sound comes together to create a totally immersive audio experience that feels absolutely authentic and real to the listener. They also help to perpetuate the atmosphere that the script seeks to create. Russell Stone also produces another good incidental soundtrack, which also helps to make the script’s mysterious atmosphere more tangible. Stone will produce much greater work in the future, but for now sit back and enjoy that glorious linking piano theme of his which frames the story, its beautifully simple and I love it.

Despite having a lot of promise, Winter for the Adept proves to be something of a disappointment, and a missed opportunity, to create the definitive Doctor Who ghost story. Andrew Cartmel’s wonderful premise, interesting characters, intelligent setup and plot construction are partly spoilt by the most undramatic and amateurish resolution I’ve seen in a Doctor Who story for a long while; as well as the most pathetic, stilted and hammy alien characters that I can remember. All that exciting atmosphere and mystery that grabbed me at the start of the audio was wasted in less than 15 minutes. The post-production tries admirably to re-address the balance, but cannot fully overcome the flaws in the script, and maybe also the direction. To me it seems that Gary Russell is as much to blame for these as Andrew Cartmel, seemingly determined to impose his own ending on the story, although Cartmel inexperience with audio probably contributed to this. However, there are more than enough wonderful ideas, characters, performances and audio production to help savour the good parts of an audio that had the potential to be a fantastic Doctor Who twist on the ghost story. Personally though, I would recommend passing this over for Andrew Cartmel’s later Doctor Who novel Foreign Devils (featuring the Second Doctor), which deals with similar themes far more successfully and satisfyingly.

Score: 7/10