Having discovered the truth behind the office, The Doctor and Lucie face an old enemy.
2 Comments
Styre
on May 7, 2016 at 9:46 PM
HUMAN RESOURCES, PART TWO
I’ve noticed, over the years, that Big Finish’s approach to “arc” stories has stayed fairly constant: an introductory story will ask a lot of questions, and a few more questions will be seeded throughout a series, but ultimately all the answers are saved until the final episode. “Human Resources, Part Two” is no different, and has a nightmare brief for 60 minutes: explain Lucie’s backstory, explain the Time Lords’ interest in her, explain just what is going on at Hulbert Logistics, and involve the Cybermen. This is the sort of “kitchen sink” outline that has killed scripts, and yet Eddie Robson makes it all fit together in an impressive, logical fashion.
The Cybermen have always had one consistent thematic purpose in Doctor Who — to illustrate the horrors of conversion into an “emotionless” indistinguishable state. It’s interesting, then, that they turn up in this story, which features a ruthless mercenary brainwashing people into office drones. The comparison might be obvious, but shouldn’t go unmentioned — were there office blocks on Mondas? Did the Mondasian Ricky Gervais never come along? Curious, too, that Hulbert (Roy Marsden) opts for this mechanism to operate his war machines: we can presume from the story that he is successful and in demand, so has he determined that the dehumanizing office environment is actually incredibly efficient? After all, office life at a defense contractor isn’t much different from office life at a paper company — will the next World War be fought via phone calls to Frank from Accounting?
Hypotheticals aside, I must also take issue with the resolution to Lucie’s story. I liked the way in which Robson incorporated the Time Lords, though the suggestion of CIA-High Council infighting was perhaps too complex to be that removed from the story, and might have been improved if simplified. The quantum crystallizer is a brilliantly inventive device, perfectly suitable as a weapon for what we know of Gallifrey. Yes, it makes victory over the Cybermen easy, but theirs was never the central threat to begin with. The problem is with Lucie: the story slowly reveals that the CIA has manipulated her life to prevent her from becoming an oppressive right-wing dictator, and has been using the crystallizer to do so, and that she was therefore kept from Earth to prevent her from coming into contact with the device. This leads to some difficult soul-searching on Lucie’s part, and sets the Time Lords against the Doctor — the sort of thing that could help keep Lucie an interesting and dynamic character as the series continues. Revelation: actually, the High Council screwed up and gave the wrong person to the Doctor. Really? That’s it? I wasn’t expecting Lucie to suddenly reveal herself as Davros, or anything, but “whoops, clerical error” is incredibly underwhelming. That’d be like… I don’t know, revealing that Zagreus was just Paul McGann in the TARDIS talking to himself in a funny voice, or something.
Speaking of McGann, his performance in this final installment is probably his best in the BBC7 range. He gets confrontation scenes with all the major characters, Cybermen included, and dominates them all. Sheridan Smith continues to portray Lucie as headstrong yet vulnerable — this is twice where a loss of trust in the Doctor has almost sent her into hysterics. Marsden is the third star of this show, as he almost makes Hulbert seem more dangerous than the Cybermen themselves. Nickolas Grace provides the usual inactive Time Lord counterpart to the Doctor’s proactivity, while Nicholas Briggs’ Cyberman voices are reminiscent of both the early days of the classic series and the “Rise of the Cybermen” versions. And who knows if we’ll hear more of Louise Fullerton and Katarina Olsson, whose characters escaped together at the conclusion. The production values are high as ever, from Gareth Jenkins’ sound design to Andy Hardwick’s music, to Nicholas Briggs’ direction. The CD release contains additional interviews with Fullerton, Olsson, Smith, Owen Brenman, and Grace.
Overall, “Human Resources, Part Two” is an excellent conclusion both to Part One and to the first BBC7 season as a whole. Muddled sections with the Time Lords and an underwhelming resolution to Lucie’s story keep the story from reaching the highest of highs, but it’s still half of the best play in the BBC7 range and well worth a purchase along with its companion.
Lucie Miller has been kidnapped – twice! First of all she is taken out of her own time stream to be placed with the Doctor for ‘safekeeping.’ Then she is taken away from the Doctor and put back where she was initially meant to me; working as a data imputer in a corporation office block, that just happens to be a temporal black spot. The Doctor, with the help of a devious Time Lord called Straxus, is able to get into the aforementioned office block and rescue his companion. However he soon discovers that all is not as it seems.
Part One of the story has all the trade marks of an Eddie Robson story – we’re dropped straight into the mundane. Lucie finds herself with Karen, a colleague who tries to be charming but can’t really disguise the fact that she’s pretty false and a potential bitch to work with. Her boss Jerry Cooper is David Brent knocked down a notch or two, but still pretty obnoxious. He clearly has trouble putting across the corporate spin of ‘we’re all a happy hard working team,’ because it just isn’t in his nature. Does it remind anyone of a place they’ve worked in yet?
The Doctor unintentionally manages to fit in with the hierarchy, and finds himself with a plush office, a mobile phone, some swanky business cards and access to anywhere in the building. He’s able to track down Lucie, but quickly loses her again, before tracking down the Managing Director, Todd Hulbert, in an office, a dimensional walkway away via Human Resources. He discovers the dark secret at the heart of the businessman’s paradise – the company is clearing planets to make way for new owners be they previously habited or not. The office blocks in question are actually super sophisticated battle computers and the staff unaware that their calculations are actually battle strategies.
The Doctor, being the sneaky so and so that he is, alters the odds so that the life form currently being oppressed has a chance to penetrate the offices. Unfortunately for the Doctor the life form in question turns out to be the Cybermen! Cue a second episode that is full of hostage situations, revelations about regular characters, an obligatory ‘emotions vs. logic’ speech or two, and the explosive conclusion to the first series of McGann/Smith audios.
What can be said about Paul McGann that hasn’t been said before? The George Lazenby of the Time Lords; an incarnation that couldn’t even get past ground zero on screen finally getting his chance to shine on audio. Well shine McGann undoubtedly has, but by this stage he had had several ‘seasons’ of Big Finish audios under his belt and seemed to have reached a stage where the novelty had worn off. Unlike Colin Baker who regularly turns in enthusiastic portrayal after enthusiastic portrayal, Paul McGann sometimes comes across as a man who is just going through the motions. The audios with Sheridan Smith are supposed to showcase a wearier and antisocial version of the eighth Doctor, but McGann regularly sounds bored during these stories – Season Two in particular was a drag to get through.
However, Eddie Robson’s script plays right into his hands. This is played in the style of ‘another day at the office,’ and is full of weak jokes that people make to get themselves through the workday, before they can get back home to their loved ones. McGann’s performance is a triumph because of it, in comparison to lack lustre showings for the likes of Phobos, Dead London, Max Warp, and Immortal Beloved.
The other performances are all top notch. Sheridan Smith’s timing is absolutely spot on. I remember watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps a few years back and thinking she’d have been a natural for Rose, so it felt almost inevitable to me that she would become a companion in some form. On the flip side I also recall grimacing when this series was announced as a New Series inspired set of plays thinking they’d gone for a clone of Rose. But the similarities are superficial. Lucie is independent, feisty and isn’t going to be a victim to the Doctor, or anyone.
Roy Marsden is suitably charismatic, and quietly menacing as the head of the corporation, Todd Hulbert; Nikolas Grace plays the stuffy Time Lord Straxus like he was born to it, and Owen Brenman’s Jerry just channels Nick Swainey, his earnest well meaning character from One Foot in the Grave. Katarina Olsson delivers a no nonsense Head Hunter and Louise Fullerton shines as the shallow Karen. We know all these characters in one form or another from our daily lives and if we see ourselves in any of these characters then God help us!
All in all a good solid conclusion to a hit and miss series of plays.
HUMAN RESOURCES, PART TWO
I’ve noticed, over the years, that Big Finish’s approach to “arc” stories has stayed fairly constant: an introductory story will ask a lot of questions, and a few more questions will be seeded throughout a series, but ultimately all the answers are saved until the final episode. “Human Resources, Part Two” is no different, and has a nightmare brief for 60 minutes: explain Lucie’s backstory, explain the Time Lords’ interest in her, explain just what is going on at Hulbert Logistics, and involve the Cybermen. This is the sort of “kitchen sink” outline that has killed scripts, and yet Eddie Robson makes it all fit together in an impressive, logical fashion.
The Cybermen have always had one consistent thematic purpose in Doctor Who — to illustrate the horrors of conversion into an “emotionless” indistinguishable state. It’s interesting, then, that they turn up in this story, which features a ruthless mercenary brainwashing people into office drones. The comparison might be obvious, but shouldn’t go unmentioned — were there office blocks on Mondas? Did the Mondasian Ricky Gervais never come along? Curious, too, that Hulbert (Roy Marsden) opts for this mechanism to operate his war machines: we can presume from the story that he is successful and in demand, so has he determined that the dehumanizing office environment is actually incredibly efficient? After all, office life at a defense contractor isn’t much different from office life at a paper company — will the next World War be fought via phone calls to Frank from Accounting?
Hypotheticals aside, I must also take issue with the resolution to Lucie’s story. I liked the way in which Robson incorporated the Time Lords, though the suggestion of CIA-High Council infighting was perhaps too complex to be that removed from the story, and might have been improved if simplified. The quantum crystallizer is a brilliantly inventive device, perfectly suitable as a weapon for what we know of Gallifrey. Yes, it makes victory over the Cybermen easy, but theirs was never the central threat to begin with. The problem is with Lucie: the story slowly reveals that the CIA has manipulated her life to prevent her from becoming an oppressive right-wing dictator, and has been using the crystallizer to do so, and that she was therefore kept from Earth to prevent her from coming into contact with the device. This leads to some difficult soul-searching on Lucie’s part, and sets the Time Lords against the Doctor — the sort of thing that could help keep Lucie an interesting and dynamic character as the series continues. Revelation: actually, the High Council screwed up and gave the wrong person to the Doctor. Really? That’s it? I wasn’t expecting Lucie to suddenly reveal herself as Davros, or anything, but “whoops, clerical error” is incredibly underwhelming. That’d be like… I don’t know, revealing that Zagreus was just Paul McGann in the TARDIS talking to himself in a funny voice, or something.
Speaking of McGann, his performance in this final installment is probably his best in the BBC7 range. He gets confrontation scenes with all the major characters, Cybermen included, and dominates them all. Sheridan Smith continues to portray Lucie as headstrong yet vulnerable — this is twice where a loss of trust in the Doctor has almost sent her into hysterics. Marsden is the third star of this show, as he almost makes Hulbert seem more dangerous than the Cybermen themselves. Nickolas Grace provides the usual inactive Time Lord counterpart to the Doctor’s proactivity, while Nicholas Briggs’ Cyberman voices are reminiscent of both the early days of the classic series and the “Rise of the Cybermen” versions. And who knows if we’ll hear more of Louise Fullerton and Katarina Olsson, whose characters escaped together at the conclusion. The production values are high as ever, from Gareth Jenkins’ sound design to Andy Hardwick’s music, to Nicholas Briggs’ direction. The CD release contains additional interviews with Fullerton, Olsson, Smith, Owen Brenman, and Grace.
Overall, “Human Resources, Part Two” is an excellent conclusion both to Part One and to the first BBC7 season as a whole. Muddled sections with the Time Lords and an underwhelming resolution to Lucie’s story keep the story from reaching the highest of highs, but it’s still half of the best play in the BBC7 range and well worth a purchase along with its companion.
Highly recommended.
8/10
Average rating for the BBC7 season: 6.8
Another Day in the Office
Doctor Who – Human Resources
Written by Eddie Robson
Starring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith
Lucie Miller has been kidnapped – twice! First of all she is taken out of her own time stream to be placed with the Doctor for ‘safekeeping.’ Then she is taken away from the Doctor and put back where she was initially meant to me; working as a data imputer in a corporation office block, that just happens to be a temporal black spot. The Doctor, with the help of a devious Time Lord called Straxus, is able to get into the aforementioned office block and rescue his companion. However he soon discovers that all is not as it seems.
Part One of the story has all the trade marks of an Eddie Robson story – we’re dropped straight into the mundane. Lucie finds herself with Karen, a colleague who tries to be charming but can’t really disguise the fact that she’s pretty false and a potential bitch to work with. Her boss Jerry Cooper is David Brent knocked down a notch or two, but still pretty obnoxious. He clearly has trouble putting across the corporate spin of ‘we’re all a happy hard working team,’ because it just isn’t in his nature. Does it remind anyone of a place they’ve worked in yet?
The Doctor unintentionally manages to fit in with the hierarchy, and finds himself with a plush office, a mobile phone, some swanky business cards and access to anywhere in the building. He’s able to track down Lucie, but quickly loses her again, before tracking down the Managing Director, Todd Hulbert, in an office, a dimensional walkway away via Human Resources. He discovers the dark secret at the heart of the businessman’s paradise – the company is clearing planets to make way for new owners be they previously habited or not. The office blocks in question are actually super sophisticated battle computers and the staff unaware that their calculations are actually battle strategies.
The Doctor, being the sneaky so and so that he is, alters the odds so that the life form currently being oppressed has a chance to penetrate the offices. Unfortunately for the Doctor the life form in question turns out to be the Cybermen! Cue a second episode that is full of hostage situations, revelations about regular characters, an obligatory ‘emotions vs. logic’ speech or two, and the explosive conclusion to the first series of McGann/Smith audios.
What can be said about Paul McGann that hasn’t been said before? The George Lazenby of the Time Lords; an incarnation that couldn’t even get past ground zero on screen finally getting his chance to shine on audio. Well shine McGann undoubtedly has, but by this stage he had had several ‘seasons’ of Big Finish audios under his belt and seemed to have reached a stage where the novelty had worn off. Unlike Colin Baker who regularly turns in enthusiastic portrayal after enthusiastic portrayal, Paul McGann sometimes comes across as a man who is just going through the motions. The audios with Sheridan Smith are supposed to showcase a wearier and antisocial version of the eighth Doctor, but McGann regularly sounds bored during these stories – Season Two in particular was a drag to get through.
However, Eddie Robson’s script plays right into his hands. This is played in the style of ‘another day at the office,’ and is full of weak jokes that people make to get themselves through the workday, before they can get back home to their loved ones. McGann’s performance is a triumph because of it, in comparison to lack lustre showings for the likes of Phobos, Dead London, Max Warp, and Immortal Beloved.
The other performances are all top notch. Sheridan Smith’s timing is absolutely spot on. I remember watching Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps a few years back and thinking she’d have been a natural for Rose, so it felt almost inevitable to me that she would become a companion in some form. On the flip side I also recall grimacing when this series was announced as a New Series inspired set of plays thinking they’d gone for a clone of Rose. But the similarities are superficial. Lucie is independent, feisty and isn’t going to be a victim to the Doctor, or anyone.
Roy Marsden is suitably charismatic, and quietly menacing as the head of the corporation, Todd Hulbert; Nikolas Grace plays the stuffy Time Lord Straxus like he was born to it, and Owen Brenman’s Jerry just channels Nick Swainey, his earnest well meaning character from One Foot in the Grave. Katarina Olsson delivers a no nonsense Head Hunter and Louise Fullerton shines as the shallow Karen. We know all these characters in one form or another from our daily lives and if we see ourselves in any of these characters then God help us!
All in all a good solid conclusion to a hit and miss series of plays.
5/5