It’s been many years since Victoria Waterfield travelled through time and space fighting monsters and dictators. Now she’s back on Earth fighting for the future of the planet. But are her environmental campaigns so far removed from those former adventures in the vortex?
As trucks carrying nuclear waste start to vanish into the air, her friends are kidnapped by a dangerous alien police force and a nuclear power plant runs dangerously close to meltdown… Victoria spies a familiar blue box.
The Doctor. After all this time, the Doctor has come back.
And now… Victoria Waterfield is going to kill him..
THE LOST STORIES: POWER PLAY
The longest of the Lost Stories “seasons” enters its second half with “Power Play,” a Colin Baker story from Gary Hopkins, a writer who would go on to work for Big Finish in the future. It’s a very 1980s story in many respects: it has a heavy-handed message, it features the return of an old character, etc. But it’s also a dreadfully unsuccessful piece of drama, and while that might also make it fit in with several 1980s stories, it doesn’t mean it was worthwhile to produce.
The title “Power Play” largely derives from the story’s environmental message, though even that’s difficult to divine. We witness a group of protestors dug in around a nuclear power station, disputing the use of what they believe to be a new, more dangerous radioactive isotope. Peri is shown to be a vocal opponent of nuclear power, citing disasters at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, yet later in the story the Doctor realizes she’s brainwashed when she demonstrates an understanding of how nuclear power works. The protestors are adamantly against whatever the station is actually doing, but when questioned, Marion (Victoria Alcock) seems perfectly okay with the general idea. This would be fine if it was intended as a critique of the protestors themselves, but really it sounds like the script needs an excuse to gather characters around a nuclear plant, hence the decision to make them into protestors. I’m not asking for “The Green Death” or anything, but when the message boils down to “don’t be reckless” it’s not really saying anything at all.
And that would be fine if the story itself was about anything, but it isn’t either. You’ve got the protestors, you’ve got the actions of the nuclear plant operators, you’ve got the aliens pursuing the Doctor, and you’ve got the other aliens planning to destroy the earth, and none of these plot strands come together in anything approximating a meaningful fashion. Much of the story feels as though it’s building to a confrontation that never comes, leading to a jumbled, confusing final episode that attempts to smash everything together in hopes of an understandable conclusion.
So we turn to the main selling point of the story: the return of Deborah Watling to full-cast Doctor Who in the role of Victoria Waterfield. Victoria was notorious on television for poor development: apart from “she’s from the 19th century” and “she screams a lot” there’s really nothing there, so discovering that she’s an active nuclear protestor is something of a surprise. Naturally, lest we learn anything interesting about the character, Hopkins reduces her to a victim of possession or mind-altering drugs for the majority of the story. Still, a great performance from Watling could save this – but it pains me to say that she’s absolutely dreadful, slurring and wheezing her way through the performance as though she was recording it from a hospital bed. I know there’s not much here to work with, but this is hands down the worst returning companion performance I’ve heard in Doctor Who – even her scenes with Colin Baker that are meant to be touching fall flat. Baker himself is fine, though the writing is flat, and Nicola Bryant gets to be spunky and intelligent – but we can’t have that, so Peri is pushed to the sidelines for most of the second half.
Even the production suffers. Ken Bentley’s direction is solid, and Simon Robinson’s sound design is effective enough, but what on earth is going on with the score? “Discordant” is the best word here, and not in some brilliantly artistic manner either. What’s with the repeated Doctor Who theme tune stings? Anyway, there’s not much more to say about “Power Play.” It isn’t written particularly well, it features an unfortunately dreadful guest performance, and the production doesn’t back it up very effectively. This one probably should have stayed lost.
Oh, and the Terrible Zodin? **** off!
3/10