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1. Styre on May 10, 2016 at 1:19 AM

   THE SIXTH DOCTOR – THE LAST ADVENTURE

   THE END OF THE LINE

   Excluding the incumbent, Colin Baker is unique among the televised Doctors for a significant reason: he is the only one not to have the events leading up to his regeneration dramatized. Even Paul McGann and John Hurt were shown meeting their respective ends, but “Time and the Rani” starts with Sylvester McCoy on the floor in Baker’s costume and a blonde wig with the regeneration already in progress. The presumptive explanation is that the Rani’s tractor beam battered the inside of the TARDIS enough to severely injure the Doctor, but the utter lack of heroism on display – and the fact that it’s a stupid way to go – has led fans to think up alternative explanations. Two novels – Gary Russell’s “Spiral Scratch” and charity fan-fic “Time’s Champion” – provided different “final stories” for the Sixth Doctor, but both were unfortunately terrible. But now, almost thirty years after “The Trial of a Time Lord,” Big Finish is finally dramatizing the Sixth Doctor’s final moments in the aptly titled “The Sixth Doctor – The Last Adventure,” a box set of four linked stories.

   The first of these, “The End of the Line” from “Scarifyers” creators Simon Barnard and Paul Morris, is creepy and largely effective. This is overshadowed, however, by the introduction of new companion Constance Clarke (Miranda Raison), who is due to be introduced in upcoming story “Criss-Cross” but debuts here because Big Finish brought the release date forward. There’s not much to say about her – she was in WRNS, she worked at Bletchley Park – but she’s basically another middle-class 20th century woman. She sounds driven and a bit cold, but it’s hard to say, as she’s not the focus of the story. It’s like watching “Terror of the Vervoids” – there’s a new companion and you just have to get used to it.

   Fortunately, the story is very good, with Barnard and Morris expertly building suspense throughout. The Doctor and Constance land in a train station blanketed by fog, leading to a claustrophobic encounter with a marooned group of travelers, their conductor, and a mysterious train-spotter. It owes more than a little to “Midnight” – the setting, and the increasing mistrust of the Doctor by the passengers – but the story goes in a completely different direction as the Doctor realizes the fog is caused by the intersection of multiple parallel universes. By the end of the story, it has reverted to a more standard Doctor Who “stop the big machine” tale, but the first half is tense and gripping.

   The other significant part of the story is the surprise inclusion of the Master – and not just any Master, the Ainley Master acting through an avatar! Chris Finney effectively switches between the regional accent of Keith Potter and the Master’s pompous enunciations, and the Doctor’s eye-rolling exasperation with the lunacy of the Master’s plan is quite entertaining. It’s always fun to put the Doctor and the Master together in a room and listen to them bicker, and “The End of the Line” is no exception. I also enjoy how the Master threatens to kill Constance if anything goes wrong, and then when something does go wrong he just runs off without killing her. Lastly, the story reveals the presence of the Valeyard at the conclusion, but at this point there’s very little apparent clue about his eventual plan for the Doctor. I’m curious to see where this goes, because the Valeyard has so rarely been used effectively, but it seems like Big Finish is going all-out with this one.

   8/10

   THE RED HOUSE

   I’ll start by getting something off my chest: the correct word for “wolf-like” is “lupine,” not “wolverine!” Wolverines are weasels! They’re not even related to wolves! So in a story about reverse werewolves, who are absolutely related to actual wolves, calling them “wolverines” is annoying as hell. But then, “annoying as hell” is an accurate description of “The Red House,” Alan Barnes’ entry in the Sixth Doctor’s conclusion.

   As a general rule, if you find yourself writing a teenage character who says things like “cool,” “dude,” “man,” and so forth, you should probably stop and come up with a different idea. Such is the case with Ugo (Rory Keenan), leader of the “wolverine” teenage rebels, who’s just, like, trying to create a better place, man. It’s the sort of predictably irritating thing that makes you root for the bad guys. Anyway, the central concept of “The Red House” is an inversion of a traditional myth: what if, instead of humans turning into feral wolves when exposed to moonlight, humanoid, civilized wolves turned into feral humans when exposed to sunlight? You might be thinking that’s a simplistic and rather silly idea. If so, you’re right. You might also be thinking that there must be more to the idea, that simply presenting it in reverse isn’t imaginative and doesn’t have any deeper significance. You’re wrong about that one – instead, all we get is a barrage of consistently appalling dog noises and actors doing caveman voices when the sun comes out.

   The script isn’t much better. Alan Barnes has been script editing the monthly range for who knows how long and he still hasn’t figured out how to properly describe events on audio. This reaches its nadir when the Doctor gets scratched and actually yells out “Ouch! My face!” like something out of Scooby Doo. Perhaps, had there been a need to know precisely where the Doctor was scratched, a line like that would have been necessary, but it never came up again. Then of course there’s the return of Charley, and since she’s being written by Alan Barnes you know she’s going to be relentlessly cheery, totally unaffected by anything that happens, and so forth. But since it’s been a while, we need a few crushingly unsubtle lines at the beginning to remind us that she’s keeping a secret from the Doctor and that she’s… almost stereotypically upper class? I don’t remember that being a character trait, but it’s never mentioned again in the story, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.

   Another in the litany of issues is the plot, which seems to be setting up a conflict between rebels and officials, between heroic teenagers and the evil mad scientist trying to steal their individuality. But then it turns out it’s not about that at all, and the entire conflict is a misunderstanding. This is fine if it’s trying to make a point, but it isn’t – it just feels like the author running short on time. Most egregious is the ending, in which the misunderstanding leads to an incoming nuclear missile that is taken care of “off-screen” by the Valeyard. I understand that Barnes is trying to illustrate that the Valeyard isn’t just a mustache-twirling villain like the Master, and that he’s working to an agenda that isn’t just “kill the Doctor at all costs,” but presenting that in this way robs the story of drama. The best part of the story is the Valeyard’s meeting with Charley, but nothing really comes of it in the end.

   Overall, “The Red House” is a failure. It’s not very interesting, it’s not very well written, and it doesn’t seem to advance the arc plot in any meaningful way. At least it’s only the second episode – if the final installment grinds to a halt like this, I’m going to be more than slightly irritated.

   3/10

   STAGE FRIGHT

   It’s understandable, because Colin Baker really improved his position in the Doctor Who hierarchy with his audio performances, but this box set might as well be called “The Sixth Doctor – The Last Big Finish Adventure.” Three out of four companions are audio-only, and Matt Fitton’s “Stage Fright” throws in Jago and Litefoot for no particular reason. I know that the Sixth Doctor met them in their spinoff series and the two “Voyage” special releases, but they serve absolutely no purpose here other than to add some local color to an otherwise bizarre story. That’s not a serious complaint, as this is otherwise an entertaining story and a vast improvement on the second part, but it does show the box set creaking around the edges as it tries to support everything Big Finish can throw at it. And all of this happens with the sad knowledge that Evelyn can’t join the sendoff. Still, it’s not a bad thing to hear Benjamin and Baxter in another Doctor Who story – I just wish their characters had more to contribute to the plot.

   At least much of the story takes place in Jago’s theater, justifying his involvement. The Valeyard has rented it out for private exhibitions in which he dramatizes each of the Doctor’s regenerations, sapping the emotional energy from his actors each time and killing them in the process. This is a fantastic conceit that lets Michael Jayston have a great deal of fun, especially when he rephrases the Doctors’ final words into more formal tones. It’s also the sort of thing that would have been wonderfully creepy on television – dead bodies wearing fabrications of the old companions’ costumes – but unfortunately loses something when the characters have to describe it out loud. It also allows the Doctor to finally have a face-to-face confrontation with the Valeyard and actually defeat his scheme, rather than letting the drama fade into nothingness like it did in “The Red House.”

   Flip is the companion in this installment, and Lisa Greenwood returns to the part for the first time since being abruptly written out at the end of her last trilogy. Fitton tries very hard to make the character interesting: she’s dealing with a long-buried childhood trauma, the Valeyard reflects on her tendency to blunder into things, etc., but it doesn’t work. I keep coming back to this, but Flip just doesn’t seem smart. She’s reckless, yes, but she’s also oblivious to almost everything going on around her. I don’t mind the modern cultural references or the “working class” portrayal; I mind the presentation of a Doctor Who companion almost completely lacking intellectual curiosity. It’s like having the depressing Donna from “The End of Time” as full-time companion. And the stage fright detail falls completely flat, as does the scene where she “overcomes” it – she’s standing in an empty theater! Does she also have a crippling fear of rehearsals?

   “Stage Fright” isn’t bad, it’s just overfull. A great central idea is made overcomplicated by the inclusion of Jago and Litefoot and one of the weakest audio companions is back without even a hint of improvement. The imagery is enough to hold the attention, though, and as a penultimate episode it’s not bad.

   6/10

   THE BRINK OF DEATH

   This is it: the final story, the last adventure for Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor, the final battle between the Doctor and the Valeyard with his very life at stake. So how will we get to the first scene of “Time and the Rani?” This question is answered in “The Brink of Death,” which is written by Nicholas Briggs because of course it is.

   Admittedly, “The Brink of Death” isn’t stereotypical Briggs for the most part. Yes, there’s a regional stereotype featured prominently in the cast, and yes, he even has the Valeyard refer to the TARDIS as “old girl,” but the story largely stays away from the clichéd, unimaginative tropes that have dominated his Doctor Who work of late. The problem hanging over the entire story, though, is that it has to end with the Doctor regenerating on the TARDIS floor and Mel unconscious nearby with no idea what’s happening. There’s no opportunity for the Sixth Doctor to say goodbye to anyone, in other words, or even do anything heroic that his companion can see. This could be viewed as starting a trend – four of the next five Doctors would regenerate without companions by their sides – but in practice it leaves “The Brink of Death” feeling rather empty. It also doesn’t help that we just saw a similar solution to the plot of “Return to Telos” – so does the Doctor remember any of his final battle with the Valeyard or will he just look back and remember that time he didn’t check the instruments and flew straight into a beam of lethal radiation? Colin Baker, fittingly, gets a number of great speeches in this, battling the Valeyard with his trademark bombast and shifting emotions from anger to terror and back again. Briggs also gives him a moment to reflect on all his companions, much like McGann in “The Night of the Doctor,” and you can hear the emotion in Baker’s voice when he recalls Evelyn.

   The other big problem with “The Brink of Death” – and the box set in general – is the Valeyard himself. I’ve been building a suspicion over many years of Doctor Who fandom, and this box has finally confirmed it for me: the Valeyard is not an interesting character. He’s an interesting concept, certainly – an amalgamation of the Doctor’s dark thoughts sounds terrifying – but in practice it never works out. We’ve had a “dark Doctor” since 1971, and we call him the Master. We don’t need another one, and in an effort to make the Valeyard different from the Master, authors always turn to similar tropes: trying to undo the Doctor’s past adventures, or convoluted nonsense involving Gallifrey and the Matrix. It’s the latter that Briggs employs here: the Valeyard implants a race of telepathic creatures into the TARDIS’s symbiotic nuclei, and their feeding on the Doctor’s mind will enable the Valeyard to take over the minds of every Time Lord. What? That’s an incomprehensible threat without any relatable elements, and the elements cobbled together from the other three stories don’t really fit together in any meaningful way. But that’s what always happens with the Valeyard because authors don’t really know what to do with him. Similarly, please let this be the last story ever set on the Time Lord space station from “Trial.” The Doctor spends the first several minutes trying to get out of the Matrix, accomplishing nothing, something quite similar to the first few minutes of “Trial of the Valeyard.”

   Another element I disliked was the almost total absence of Bonnie Langford, something no Doctor Who fan would likely have said back in 1987. Mel is a useful, appealing character, and here she’s stuck on the sidelines, wandering around with the Valeyard and asking questions. Liz White turns up as Time Lord pseudo-companion Genesta – and seriously, a Time Lord with a Yorkshire accent taking Matrix engineering classes at night school? The demystification of Gallifrey continues apace – and dutifully follows the Doctor around asking questions. I generally liked the inclusion of Sylvester McCoy at the very end, but I’m not sure about the decision to have them share the final line – shouldn’t that be Baker’s alone?

   There’s a lot of technobabble, a lot of incomprehensible sound design… it’s a Big Finish epic in every way, good and bad, but the central performances from Baker and Jayston hold the entire thing together. In the end, though, what’s the lesson of “The Brink of Death” and the box set as a whole? It’s better than the two “last adventure” novels, but that’s hardly an achievement – really, if there’s a takeaway here, it’s that fans should leave well enough alone. It wasn’t dignified and it wasn’t meaningful, but can’t we just accept that the Sixth Doctor hit his head on the TARDIS console and be done with it? Do we have to keep trying to cram universe-spanning epics into the opening moments of “Time and the Rani?” This was supposed to be a mind-blowing epic; instead it lands with a dull thud.

   In a recent poll ranking the Doctor Who regeneration stories, “The Trial of a Time Lord” came last, probably because it isn’t a regeneration story in the first place, and Colin Baker was understandably upset. Well, now he has a regeneration story of his own, and guess what? It’s still the worst.

   5/10

   Box set average: 5.5