The planet Dashrah is a world of exceptional beauty. Historical ruins; colourful skies; swirling sunsets…
Unsurprisingly, it’s a major tourist trap. So if you want to visit Dashrah, first you’ll have to visit Parking, the artificial planetoid that Galactic Heritage built next door. Parking, as its name implies, is a spaceship park. A huge spaceship park. A huge, enormous spaceship park.
When the TARDIS materialises in Parking’s Northern Hemisphere, the Doctor, Ace and Mel envisage a quick teleport trip to the surface of Dashrah. But they’ve reckoned without the superzealous Wardens, and their robotic servitors… the sect of the Free Parkers, who wage war against the Wardens… the spontaneously combusting spaceships… and the terrifying secret that lies at the lowest of Parking’s lower levels.
THE HIGH PRICE OF PARKING
After playing around with the format for three releases, we’re back to the normal routine, with a seventh Doctor, Ace, and Mel trilogy starting here with John Dorney’s “The High Price of Parking.” It’s conceptually interesting, but falls down significantly in the execution – it would fit in quite well in season 24, for better or for worse.
I didn’t listen to the extras, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dorney was inspired to write this story by seeing a “Free Parking” sign and envisioning it as a call to action rather than a statement of fact. It’s set on the planet Parking, so named because it serves as a moon-sized spaceship parking structure for a historically preserved planet. From here, Dorney builds a fairly standard sci-fi society: the Wardens are the ones in charge, the “natives,” who became separated from their ships and now live in the underground parts of the planetoid, and the Free Parkers, the extremists who want to overthrow the Wardens and declare Parking a free state. Naturally, the Doctor and his companions become separated, each ending up with a different faction. It’s the sort of story built on misunderstandings: the Wardens are just trying to get by with scarce resources and little support from home, while the Free Parkers are actually in favor of a nonviolent resolution to the conflict, even though each sees the other as a dangerous threat. And the central theme of the story is advocating nonviolence as a solution: one of the climactic moments is a speech by Ace, of all people, decrying the use of violence to achieve political ends.
The tone of the story fascinates me. As I stated above, this production sounds like it was lifted wholesale from season 24. It’s lighthearted, with a satirical tone, but never quite takes the next step into outright comedy. The villain is so far over the top in her villainy that it feels like the story is telling a joke, but we never get the punch line. And while the Doctor doesn’t go back to using malapropisms, he’s still bumbling around in search of answers instead of executing a manipulative scheme. The problem, of course, is that season 24 isn’t good. It feels like a show flailing around while trying to find its feet, and that feeling is on full display in “The High Price of Parking.” Is it supposed to be satirical? Is it supposed to be heartfelt? It veers back and forth between humor and earnest moralizing without any serious attempt to blend the two.
Thankfully, Sophie Aldred isn’t playing Ace like she just walked on board the TARDIS immediately before this story – but that still means her characterization is wildly inconsistent from story to story. I like Mel in this: she’s smart, capable, and easily able to take charge of complicated situations. She’s a good match for Cowley (Gabrielle Glaister), the head Warden, and their pairing is easily the most entertaining in the story. Ken Bentley directs, doing a good job for the most part, but yet again the story falls down when attempting crowd scenes. At least this time they recorded some crowd reaction noises, but it still sounds unnatural when the room containing that crowd is eerily silent while the main characters are talking. It’s very easy to forget that there are a bunch of Wardens in their HQ, because they only make noise when Cowley addresses them directly.
Overall, “The High Price of Parking” is a letdown. It tries to be about something, yes, but the message is obvious and trite, and the story never manages to find a consistent or even understandable tone. Everyone is entitled to an off day, of course, but it’s still disappointing to get a result like this from one of the best writers currently on the Big Finish staff.
5/10