The legend dates back to Roman times, at least: a great White Worm, as wide as a man, slithers out of the rocks of the Dark Peak Gap to take animals, sometimes even children, for its food.
When the Doctor and Leela arrive in the wilds of Derbyshire, only to get caught up in the hunt for a missing girl, they soon discover that the legend of the Worm is very much alive – even now, in 1979.
Worse still, it seems that the Doctor isn’t the only renegade Time Lord on the trail of this deadly and mysterious Worm…
TRAIL OF THE WHITE WORM
Nostalgia is certainly not in short supply in the first series of Big Finish’s Fourth Doctor Adventures: in the first four releases, we saw a return to Nerva and a Dalek story, and now, in Alan Barnes’ “Trail of the White Worm,” Geoffrey Beevers’ Master returns to audio. The story, like its predecessors, is another attempt to walk into teatime 1977 – but its reliance upon obvious, unconvincing cliché proves to be its sad undoing.
This is already the third time that we’ve seen a mysterious manor house with an unusual inhabitant in this series, but this time Barnes and director Ken Bentley add a twist by including… simple-minded regional caricatures! I understand it adds variety to the supporting characters, but really, this story is supposed to be set in the 1970s and yet the townspeople talk like they’re medieval peasants. But that leads me to my larger problem with “Trail of the White Worm:” I’m not sure if Barnes is trying to be funny. Colonel Spindleton (Michael Cochrane) is the ultimate cliché, the old British warhorse longing for the glory days of the Empire and lamenting the state of modern youth. His desire to see the Empire return leads him to join up with the Master. But he also has a remote control, full-sized tank that he drives around his grounds to murder intruders. He yells bizarre things without any obvious provocation. And he’s also a complete idiot. Barnes tried to do humor like this in “Castle of Fear” and fell flat on his face – here, I can’t even tell if he’s trying to be funny, but in either case he’s ended up unconvincing and bad.
Some of the other usual Barnes problems, like overly descriptive dialogue, are on display here as well. But what surprised me was his portrayal of the fourth Doctor – Barnes writes his lines better than anyone else has in this series. He secures the character appropriately between seriousness and flippancy, allowing Tom Baker to take center stage with a commanding performance. Hearing the fourth Doctor exchanging verbal barbs with the Master is a delight, especially since they didn’t get many face-to-face confrontations in either “The Deadly Assassin” or “The Keeper of Traken.” Leela does less well, unfortunately – again, I’m not sure how much of this is attempted comedy or failed characterization but her “as long as four men” repetition sounds like the ranting of an idiot. Also, I understand that she’s a savage, and we have a stereotyped British colonel, but do we really need to hear Leela swing through the trees bellowing a Tarzan yell?
I’m also not a huge fan of the Master’s portrayal here. This is the first time in several years that Geoffrey Beevers has returned to the role for Big Finish, and Barnes chooses to cast him as a cackling old madman in a basement. His plan is ludicrously overwrought, he partners with an idiot mostly to have someone to mock, and he doesn’t seem especially threatening. This sounds like the Master at the depths of the Ainley era, not the Pratt/Beevers variations with actual goals that actually seemed threatening. And that’s okay in a comedy story, but that brings us back to the question of the story’s tone. The sound design by Andy Hardwick seems to play things straight and epic, as do most of the cast members, but the script itself seems to have humorous intent. Much of Tom Baker’s era was like that – serious ideas leavened by humor, especially from the lead – but this production fails to appropriately capture that feeling.
Of course, “Trail of the White Worm” is the first of a two-part story, but given that its titular villain is introduced and eliminated by the conclusion, it’s more of a “Utopia” / “The Sound of Drums” than parts 1 and 2 of a 4 part serial. And it’s entertaining enough, and Tom Baker is great, and we finally get to hear Geoffrey Beevers’ Master again. But the tone is unsure, the material is nothing we haven’t seen before, and the ideas are largely uninspiring.
Not terrible, but disappointing.
5/10