A remake of the Audio Visual of the same name, The 5th Doctor must stop a deadly new range of children’s toys before they kill everyone on Earth.
A remake of the Audio Visual of the same name, The 5th Doctor must stop a deadly new range of children’s toys before they kill everyone on Earth.
“Give Cuddlesome a Cuddle”
A little history lesson. Back in the 80’s, a group of fans with creative aspirations, namely Gary Russell, Nick Briggs, Nigel Fairs and Jim Mortimore decided to form their own independent group, the Audio Visuals to do their own Doctor Who audio adventures. This was the early prototype precursor to Big Finish, and was made illegally back in a time when the BBC didn’t care enough about the show to come down on them with copyright laws. That came later when the BBC realised that the show meant big money. At that time, fandom probably could have done with the Audio Visuals as an alternative canon to the horrendous and twisted direction of the TV show. And one of the Audio Visual releases was a story called Cuddlesome.
Released as a freebie with Doctor Who Magazine, at roughly the point where the magazine became unreadable, this remake of Cuddlesome is pitched at a children’s audience and as such it’s one of the cosiest things Big Finish has ever produced. The kind of story you’d expect to feature in the Sarah Jane Adventures. Infact it bears remarkable similarity to Invasion of the Bane.
That was never true of the original version from the Audio Visual days which was a darker beast altogether, relentlessly, jaw-droppingly so- dark in a way that made it virtually a precursor to the superb Children of Earth. It was originally a story very much about the perversion of childhood innocence and the horror and death that always accompanies the Doctor wherever he goes. A story that reflected a time when rather sick minded people were putting glass into children’s sweets and when there was a real moral panic about child abductions, and the story drew a vivid picture of that nightmarish spiral of terror and grief for both parents and childen (a tip though, if you do seek it out, listen to Planet of Lies first so that you get nothing spoilered).
In many ways the original was a story suited for the McCoy era, being a dark, domestic story that included children in the cast. However the characterisation of the Doctor was very much in line with his Fifth incarnation, a Doctor who after suffering a blow of recent defeats comes to believe he’s simply bad luck and decides to retire from being a hero. But, just like Davison in Frontios, he can’t help breaking his own rule of strict non-interference when presented with a wounded innocent in need of his superior medical science, and thus from there he finds himself forced to finish what he started. It’s an appropriate metaphor for how bringing our medical science to a tribal society may save the life of a member of the tribe, but comes at the cost of destroying the sheltered innocence of that world forever.
Very few of the remakes of the Audio Visual stories have done the originals justice. The Audio Visuals were a Godsend back in the mid-80’s, and certainly some of us would rather have them in the canon instead of the JNT years. Not only did they possess the kind of involving enjoyment and dignity that the show at the time was completely devoid of, but at their best they were a reminder of when Doctor Who could be truly life-changing as opposed to soul destroying. And yet you’d never be able to tell from this modernised version. The same is certainly true of Sword of Orion but that wasn’t remade in the climate of populist sanitisation that this story is.
That’s not to say this is a bad story, but it’s certainly lacking the impact of the original. This is a Doctor Who story for the age of nostalgia and I love the 80’s talking heads shows. It’s about sanitised pop culture memory of day glo colours and toys and in that regard it is poles apart from the original’s more personal, painful, nightmarish memories of childhood. The Cuddlesome’s here are of course a blend of Care Bears meets the Gremlins, with the discovery of one lonely abandoned toy in the attic sounding like something from the Altered Images song ‘Dead Popstars’. And that’s centrally the problem. This nostalgia revisit is inherently forgettable and disposable, and the iconography of the Cuddlesomes here is a borrowed, cut and pasted one.
A good iconography that sticks in the collective consciousness is one that really connects with ideals, metaphors and relatable fears. The iconography of The Dalek Invasion of Earth works because it represents fascism tarnishing patriotism. The giant maggots in The Green Death represent the monstrosities of pollution and perverted nature. More importantly they represent bloated, uncontrollable greed and consumption. The image of Scaroth in City of Death represents both an incomplete, fractured man and the Paris art world. But come the 80’s, the show features far less memorable iconography as the times become more superficial and shallow. The few exceptions are politically edged stories like Vengeance on Varos, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks and the last dying cries of utilitarianism in Earthshock and Logopolis (in which the show’s biggest icon is killed). But generally the more iconic Doctor Who stories of the 80’s were underground, like the Audio Visuals. The point is, with the original Cuddlesome, there was a real sense of reality gone sour that mirrored the mood of a traumatised childhood (much like in Flight of the Navigator), and there was an insidious body horror factor at work in how stuffed toys and organic tissue became fused, and figures of fun became vessels for lethal poisons; something sharp and evil under a veneer of fluffy innocence. The fact that it was more meaningful and tapped into a real world horror made its iconography far more vivid and memorable. This version of Cuddlesome doesn’t have that loaded iconography or staying power, or haunting surrealism, because like so much of the ‘don’t bring me down’ false happiness of popular entertainment today (including New Who’s shipper-pleasing), it never has the courage to get its hands dirty.
But it’s a fun, entertaining way to spend 60 minutes (the most insidious thing about such stories is you can never really bring yourself to hate them). It’s got a gripping opening, and maintains the investigative intrigue throughout. The confrontation in the Cuddlesome factory is especially tense. Peter Davison is as engaging, inquisitive and frenetic an energised presence as ever. Roberta Taylor makes a charmingly sarky temporary companion with some genuinely funny lines and the endearing hints of romantic chemistry with the Doctor. Timothy West is very close to the original Ronald Turvey, and his reciting of adolescent memories of being bullied by the scum of the faculty of students are particularly moving and memorable and will speak to anyone who had the worst, most soul destroying experiences of University society’s snobbish elitism. As with Full Metal Jacket, the cliché of the villain being once a victim of bullying which caused him to eventually snap becomes far more plausible when they suffered this in an isolating living space, where this victimhood seems like an inescapeable, permanent aspect of their life. That is ultimately the most memorable aspect of this story.
But it’s still not a patch on the original. It still could have been so much more.
CUDDLESOME
While I’ve generally enjoyed the free Big Finish releases given waway with Doctor Who Magazine, I find myself wondering in the wake of “Cuddlesome” just what their purpose is supposed to be. Certainly these plays aren’t going to be earth-shattering, game-changing releases — but, nonetheless, they must be intended to attract new listeners to Big Finish. In light of the new series, is something quite so lightweight and pointless really the best way to accomplish this?
I gather that “Cuddlesome” is a remake of an Audio Visuals play from some time ago. None of these adaptations have been particularly good — “Sword of Orion” probably being the best — and “Cuddlesome” does nothing to reverse this trend. I’m struck by its essential sameness: there’s really nothing here to set it apart from countless other average Doctor Who stories, despite some unusual choices of villains. There’s a man whose emotional weaknesses and desire for revenge are being exploited by aliens for the purposes of conquest, there’s an attempt by those same aliens to introduce themselves into our culture through our consumerism, and the Doctor happens to wander into the middle of it. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with Doctor Who repeating itself — some great stories have done this — but there needs to be some sort of new take on the material to make it worthwhile. Here, there’s no depth whatsoever: we’re told that these toys have been abandoned since the 1980s, and they’re emerging now, but there’s no attempt at thematic resonance. This story is crying out for some acknowledgement and/or condemnation of our society’s love of “retro” — but all we get is silly repetition of ‘80s American catchphrases seemingly derived from old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes. It’s not cute, it’s annoying.
The acting, of course, is excellent — something which is practically de rigueur when it comes to Big Finish productions these days. Peter Davison clearly takes this more seriously than his fellows, and his deadpan approach to a story about rampaging alien stuffed animals provides its own amusement. The supporting cast is excellent — David Troughton especially has a whale of a time chewing the scenery as the Tinghus — but reading another recent review of “Cuddlesome” (at blog “The Medium Is Not Enough”) made me think about Big Finish’s casting policies. Since the 2007 “relaunch,” BF has been putting its guest cast front and center on its package art. While I’m not wholly ignorant of British film and television, I rarely have any idea who these highly-regarded actors are — and yeah, their performances are good, but is the focus starting to shift away from writing and towards casting? I hope not.
“Cuddlesome” is a bizarre mixture of straightforward Doctor Who storytelling, misplaced humor, and adaptation. It’s not particularly entertaining, and it certainly isn’t particularly interesting. “It’s got pink vampire hamsters.. AND PATHOS!” Great. Not sure who this is supposed to attract, but DWM readers definitely aren’t getting the best of Big Finish.
4/10