It’s been a year since Philippa ‘Flip’ Jackson found herself transported by Tube train to battle robot mosquitoes on a bizarre alien planet in the company of a Time Lord known only as ‘the Doctor’.
Lightning never strikes twice, they say. Only now there’s a flying saucer whooshing over the top of the night bus taking her home. Inside: the Doctor, with another extraterrestrial menace on his tail – the Daleks, and their twisted creator Davros!
But while Flip and the fugitive Doctor struggle to beat back the Daleks’ incursion into 21st century London, Davros’s real plan is taking shape nearly 200 years in the past, on the other side of the English Channel. At the battle of Waterloo…
THE CURSE OF DAVROS
With the advent of the 2012 release year came a new Big Finish Doctor Who main range trilogy, this one featuring Colin Baker and a new companion for the sixth Doctor. Jonathan Morris’s “The Curse of Davros” is in part a sequel to Morris’s own “The Crimes of Thomas Brewster,” in part a revisitation of the relationship between the Doctor and Davros, and in part a type of story Doctor Who has rarely, if ever tackled. Unfortunately, it’s also, in large part, terrible.
“Hey, the Doctor’s acting awfully strange!” I said five minutes into the first episode. “I bet he swapped bodies with Davros!” On the one hand, this device is so overdone in science fiction I was rolling my eyes before my suspicions were even confirmed; on the other, Doctor Who rarely does it, so it could have been worse. Morris does absolutely nothing to disguise the twist, making the Doctor’s actions more and more bizarre until the final revelation doesn’t even come as a surprise. Pointing out halfway there that the Daleks have invented a mind-swap machine eliminates any sense of drama. Figuring it out didn’t do anything to enhance my enjoyment, either – it was two episodes of killing time until the revelation finally came. Once it’s out of the way, Morris rescues it somewhat with his character work: the way the Doctor describes what it’s like to be in Davros’s body is quite affecting, as is Davros’s description of how his constant agony strengthens his resolve. More of this would have been beneficial, but instead their interplay mostly contains increasingly-implausible reasons why neither one orders the other’s death.
When introducing a new companion, can’t Big Finish do better than a thoroughly unmemorable character from a previous play? I didn’t even bother to mention her in my review of “Crimes,” but here’s Flip Jackson, ably if unimpressively portrayed by Lisa Greenwood, joining the TARDIS crew. I understand the desire to incorporate a more working-class companion into the sixth Doctor’s stable, but my problem with Flip is more fundamental than her background: she’s either incredibly stupid or willfully ignorant, one of the two, and neither is understandable in a companion character. Okay, at least she knows who Napoleon is, but only knowing that he lost because she heard it in an ABBA song? Furthermore, how can an actual human being be this callous? All of her coworkers are ruthlessly exterminated by the Daleks, she’s dropped into the middle of a bloody battlefield surrounded by corpses, she’s repeatedly captured and imprisoned by multiple factions, and there’s not a hint of a realistic or believable reaction to any of this, just a series of increasingly implausible quips. Oh, I get it! She’s named Flip, so she’s flippant! Was that the whole of the bio?
This leads me to another major problem: the jarring, irreconcilable tones of the piece. Morris loves to pepper his scripts with comedy, but here the only jokes come from Flip and her boyfriend Jared (Ashley Kumar). The script veers from silly fish-out-of-water sequences to grim, brutal executions at the drop of a hat, and there’s no attempt to bridge or connect the two. The humor isn’t knowing in the face of tragedy; the brutality isn’t lightened at all. They’re just shoved next to each other and presented without irony. It’s shockingly poor construction, especially so coming from a writer as reliable as Morris.
And then there’s the Dalek plan, which is quite possibly the silliest in their history. Davros aims to change the course of the battle of Waterloo, which will result in Napoleon becoming the autocratic ruler of all of Earth, which will in turn cause humanity to develop on a purely rational path and eventually ally themselves with the Daleks. Meanwhile, Napoleon’s brain will also be installed into Dalek battle computers, because he’s apparently a greater military genius than anyone in the history of a race of aliens that have conquered large portions of the damn universe. I understand it’s something of a low blow to complain about Dalek plans being nonsensical, but as an attempt to crowbar Napoleon into a Doctor Who story it’s poor at best. Jonathan Owen’s great, though.
I’m not sure if the mismatched tone is primarily down to the script or Nicholas Briggs’ direction, though Briggs otherwise does impressive work. Wilfredo Acosta debuts in the main range as sound designer, providing believable sound and a memorable, ‘80s-inspired score. Overall, “The Curse of Davros” is a mess, with a plot that is either boring or senseless, a new companion that doesn’t appeal, and it’s probably the worst Colin Baker story Big Finish has ever done in the main range.
Stay away.
3/10
It’s not just Flip who is flippant. Her boyfriend is just as bad. If I was thrown into a battle I would not be standing there going hey isn’t this cool, it’s just like Warcraft.