Moscow 1967. The Doctor and Ace have arrived behind the Iron Curtain, and the Soviet Union is seeking a new weapon that will give it mastery in the Cold War.
What is the secret of the Martian relics? As the legendary War Lord Sezhyr returns to life, the Doctor is faced with some of his oldest and deadliest enemies.
The fate of Earth – and the future of Ace – are now intertwined…
THE LOST STORIES: THIN ICE
With the success of remounting the “lost” season 23 from the Colin Baker era, it was only natural that Big Finish would tackle something similar as they continued their second series of Lost Stories audios. As such, they brought in Andrew Cartmel, Marc Platt, and Ben Aaronovitch to recreate the lost season 27 on audio. Since this season only existed as a series of outlines and concepts, the three authors were able to write it essentially from scratch, and Big Finish filled in the production gaps in their usual effective style.
The first story, Platt’s “Thin Ice,” brings the Ice Warriors back for what would have been their first appearance since “The Monster of Peladon” and addresses the Doctor’s ongoing relationship with his companion Ace. When researching this story, I discovered a fan controversy: apparently this story was originally thought to write Ace out by sending her to Gallifrey to study at the Time Lord Academy. Of course, this isn’t written anywhere or based on anything, and the original author and producer are actually the ones making it, but the decision to keep Ace around was met with wailing, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth. Quite why so many felt that a story that never existed needed to live up to a plot point that also never existed is well beyond me, but then I try to judge the material itself, not my own preconceptions of it.
And when I do judge the material itself, I find I quite like it. The feeling of the story is very much of its time – it feels like something that could easily have aired the season after “Survival.” Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred pitch their performances back to their TV versions, opting against their more mature, practiced Big Finish roles, and it works incredibly well. Ace is still emotionally fragile, and she doesn’t deal well with the revelation that the Doctor is testing her, but she’s still much more advanced than she was on television – this is how the character would have developed had she continued, something not often seen in classic Doctor Who. I also sympathized with the Doctor’s frustrations with the Time Lords, and enjoyed how Platt used them – Vitali the Adjudicator (Nigel Lambert) is mysterious despite his officious exterior, and it’s interesting to see an attempt to restore interest to the Time Lords along with the Doctor.
The story also takes place in 1967 Moscow, one of the heights of the Cold War, and the script reflects Soviet perceptions of the time. It’s a bit forthright and obvious in its politics, but that, too, is a feature of the Cartmel era of the program, and as a result contributes to the verisimilitude of the piece. The return of the Ice Warriors is also quite effective. I’ve never been a fan of the Ice Warriors – I’ve mentioned in other reviews that their culture tends to bore me – but the way they are presented here, as a group of old warriors trying to recover cultural relics, is much more interesting than their usual honor-bound portrayal. Hhessh (Nicholas Briggs) is a complex, sympathetic character, and Platt juxtaposes him well against the more one-dimensional Sezhyr (Beth Chalmers), the true relic of the script. Many listeners complain about Briggs’ Ice Warrior voices, but honestly I don’t see the problem – they’re certainly no better or no worse than any others we’ve heard.
If I have one complaint about “Thin Ice,” it’s with the production. There’s a lot going on here, with a number of characters with multiple relationships, and yet director Ken Bentley doesn’t maintain any sort of pace to the action. Furthermore, while Simon Robinson’s sound design is certainly good, his score is rather minimal and generic. It’s not a poor effort by any means, but it doesn’t fit an era that generally featured memorable music for one reason or another. Overall, “Thin Ice” is a successful release. While the pacing may be slightly off, and thematic subtlety nonexistent, it’s still an entertaining piece of drama that sounds like it should have been on television. And while I don’t normally salute Doctor Who stories for aping a particular TV era, in this case it’s an absolute positive.
Thumbs up.
7/10