The 16th Century. Playwright Kit Marlowe is attempting to write Doctor Faustus when a darkness descends on his life, in the cadaverous form of a Spaniard called Velez. The monstrosity is in search of a stone blade that was brought from South America…
THE LOST STORIES: POINT OF ENTRY
For the sixth entry in the “Lost Stories” series, Big Finish turned to a pitch document from “Enlightenment” author Barbara Clegg: “Point of Entry,” a pseudo-historical featuring playwright Christopher Marlowe and a hefty dose of the supernatural. With Marc Platt chosen to flesh the pitch out into a full script, the adaptation to audio is perhaps the most natural yet in the series – and it’s a great story in its own right as well.
I’m surprised, to begin with, that it’s taken this long for Christopher Marlowe (Matt Addis) to feature in a Doctor Who story. As historical figures go, he’s pretty much perfect for the series: a complicated, conflicted individual, a master of his craft, and in his spare time possibly a spy for the English government. Oh, and then there’s his interest in the occult, which contributed to his “Doctor Faustus,” arguably his most famous work. Platt’s script involves all these elements of his character and more, bringing Marlowe to life as a fully developed three-dimensional individual rather than a series of clichés or as a dramatic cipher. Even his relationship with Tom (Tam Williams) is portrayed sensitively and carefully without dwelling on implied controversy. Addis’s portrayal completes the picture – this is a fascinating character, one who can inspire both sympathy and disgust in the same scene.
Platt also brings the supernatural to life with ease in the person of Velez (Luis Soto), a corpse-like Spaniard who seeks a lost Aztec blade. While the specifics of his plan – and its expected results – don’t make a great deal of sense, they don’t really have to: we know that reuniting the blade and the hilt will result in disaster and the main characters are rushing to stop this from occurring. Soto’s performance is suitably over the top, though he retains a subtle menace throughout. Indeed, this is one of Platt’s strongest supporting casts, from Velez’s servant Iguano (Sean Connolly) to gruff innkeeper Alys (Gemma Wardle) to the delightfully paranoid Sir Francis Walsingham (Ian Brooker).
To say that Colin Baker is on fine form is generally redundant at this point, though it’s still quite entertaining to hear how he would have handled a script that was actually proposed for television. His performance is mellower than the other Lost Stories; I suspect the early conversion of this story to audio meant it came out more like a traditional Big Finish Colin Baker story than a 1986 TV story. Nicola Bryant, however, is fantastic: Peri is heavily involved in the story, something that wasn’t always the case on television, and gets participation up to and including masquerading as Queen Elizabeth I herself in an amusing scene aboard an English ship. Perhaps her decision to dub the captain (Connolly) a knight was rash, but it’s still fun to hear this character as originally conceived and yet taking a proactive role in the story.
While the sound design for the other releases in this range has been strongly inspired by the Radiophonic Workshop scores of the period, Steve Foxon’s work for “Point of Entry” is much more in line with the normal Big Finish releases. This is not a criticism – it’s effective, skillful work – but it’s interesting to hear how much this production hews toward the Big Finish “standard” without a significant portion of the script to guide it. John Ainsworth’s direction is first-rate, meanwhile, and while the story is overlong in parts he only rarely allows the pace to flag. Overall, “Point of Entry” is a strong, well, entry to the Lost Stories range. It’s easily the most Big Finish-like of the first six, but after hundreds of these reviews I’m hardly going to consider that a bad thing!
Recommended.
8/10