Ceres. A tiny, unforgiving ball of ice and rock hanging between Mars and Jupiter. It’s no place to live, and it takes a special kind of person to work there.
The crew of the Cobalt Corporation mining base know exactly how deadly the world outside their complex is, but the danger isn’t just outside anymore. The systems they rely on to keep them safe are failing and the planet is breaking in.
When the TARDIS strands Steven, Vicki and the Doctor on the base, they have to fight a foe they can barely comprehend to survive.
THE EARLY ADVENTURES: THE BOUNTY OF CERES
The Early Adventures, Big Finish’s follow-up to the Lost Stories range, appears to be tracing a path through the early days of Doctor Who. We started with Ian, Barbara, and Susan; we continued with Ian, Barbara, and Vicki; now, in Ian Potter’s “The Bounty of Ceres,” we have Vicki and Steven taking center stage with the Doctor. Unlike its predecessors, this story takes place in a very limited setting, capturing the studio-bound feeling of the era – but more importantly, it uses that setting in a claustrophobic, dramatic script with a surprisingly simple conclusion.
The premise is simple: a mining station on a dwarf planet, crewed by three people, is starting to come apart at the seams, endangering both mission and crew. The TARDIS crew land in the middle of this, of course, and immediately get involved. On the surface, the story should have been easy to predict; an isolated base where things keep inexplicably going wrong is obviously being sabotaged by one of the crew, right? But Potter structures his story to lead the listener toward a different conclusion: Ceres itself is alive and trying to drive away those who would mine its component parts. Despite the use of narration, the story is almost exclusively limited to the perspectives of the TARDIS crew, and from those perspectives the idea of a living planet is not only believable but also probable. It’s only when the Doctor draws a conclusion Steven and Vicki have not yet reached that the obvious flaws in the argument become apparent. It takes a skilled writer to lead an audience down the wrong path without being obvious about it and Potter executes this with aplomb. And that makes the conclusion all the more rewarding – we get to enjoy some interesting science fiction ideas, but the ultimate resolution is rooted in simple human flaws.
The script is certainly strong, but the performances are even better. Maureen O’Brien is predictably excellent, improving even on her “The Doctor’s Tale” performance, but Peter Purves is an absolute star, not just in his turn as Steven but also in his impression of William Hartnell. Purves may have surpassed even Frazer Hines in his skills – the voice is very close but the tone and inflections are note-perfect, to the point where I almost forgot I wasn’t listening to Hartnell himself. I also enjoyed that the script didn’t sideline the Doctor – the Lost Stories didn’t shy away from including the early Doctors and these stories shouldn’t either. Lastly, the supporting cast is strong, especially in the shifting roles of Moreland (Richard Hope) and Thorn (Peter Forbes).
The production is strong as ever. Lisa Bowerman typically gets great performances when she’s in the director’s chair, and the sound design from Toby Hrycek-Robinson expertly captures the era and the enclosed, “studio-bound” nature of the script. Overall, there’s not a great deal to say about “The Bounty of Ceres” other than it’s a well-written, well-acted Doctor Who story that entertains throughout. Hopefully the Early Adventures will eventually have its own “Farewell, Great Macedon,” but for now, stories like this won’t draw any complaint.
Recommended.
7/10