The TARDIS lands on Phobos where there’s there’s something lurking in the shadows, something infinitely old and infinitely dangerous.
The TARDIS lands on Phobos where there’s there’s something lurking in the shadows, something infinitely old and infinitely dangerous.
PHOBOS
I was looking forward to this one. The quality of the BBC7 range appeared to be on a steady upswing, especially after “Immortal Beloved,” and Eddie Robson, author of the superior “Memory Lane” and several short stories I had enjoyed, was responsible for the script. Naturally, my new-found optimism was crushed as I listened to “Phobos,” which just isn’t very good at all.
I have no doubt, to begin with, that the extreme sports enthusiasts portrayed in the play are intended to be annoying. I’ve known people like Hayden (John Schwab), and I’ve wanted to fling them all off the nearest mountaintop. Problem is, when listening to a play like this, I don’t find myself thinking, “Now that’s an accurate portrayal of an annoying type of person,” I find myself thinking, “Wow, this is annoying, where’s the off button?” It doesn’t help that they spout self-consciously “cool” and “futuristic” dialogue that sounds totally unnatural. Fortunately, this isn’t a major complaint, because we don’t spend much time with Hayden (and even less time with the doubly-annoying Scott (Ben Silverstone) and Chrissie (Katarina Olsson)).
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the climax of the play, which demonstrates serious faults. It’s fairly obvious from the beginning that Kai (Timothy West), who doesn’t particularly like the “drennies” (adrenaline junkies), and who tells unprovable stories about monstrous Phobians, is involved in some way with the deaths. Sure enough, we find out that he’s been rigging up maintenance robots to kill people, and disguising the robots as monsters. This is a fairly standard Doctor Who plot, which leads to the traditional final confrontation between the Doctor and Kai, and naturally Kai is defeated with the help of the drennies he was trying to drive off in the first place. Not the most groundbreaking story in the world, but a solid one — right up until the twist ending. Turns out that there’s a fear god from another universe living in a portal under a mountain — Phobos was the Greek god of fear, get it? — living off the exhilarated fear of the drennies. But, for whatever reason, this god is poisoned by “true,” terror-stricken fear, which is why Kai became a murderer: to scare people away.
Two serious problems: first, the Doctor defeats the enemy by poisoning it with his own fears. This sounds like a good idea in principle — the dark secrets of the Doctor, coming to the fore and terrifying even a god. Scarier than the monsters, indeed — but what we actually hear is Paul McGann essentially yelling “If you thought that was scary, how about THIS!” over and over again, followed by silence, followed by horrified noises from Nerys Hughes. The execution is laughable, and the material comes across as little more than bad melodrama. Second, and most egregious, nobody seems the least bit upset with Kai for programming killer robots to butcher people! He claims at the end that he “lost perspective” — and the Doctor takes this at face value. We’re supposed to think that the Doctor feels guilty about this because his own lifestyle resembles an extreme sport and thus fed the monster even more than the drennies… so he wishes a man guilty of multiple homicide the best of luck and leaves? The first killing happened before the Doctor even arrived!
The cast isn’t very good either. McGann and Sheridan Smith are on good form, of course, and the Doctor/Lucie relationship continues to grow in equal parts friendly and argumentative. West gives a fine performance as well, and Hughes is impressive as both Eris and her possessed counterpart. It stops there, though — Schwab was bad in “Dalek” and he’s worse here, Ben Silverstone is unmemorable as Drew, and Tim Sutton and Olsson (again) fail to impress as an unnecessary pair of lovers-on-the-run who also appear in a needless vignette about racism.
The Gareth Jenkins/Andy Hardwick production is impressive as always, the sound design in particular capturing a wide range of futuristic actions and making them sound believable. And despite my misgivings about the cast, Barnaby Edwards’ direction fits the faster style of these BBC7 productions. The disc also includes interviews with West, Hughes, and Silverstone.
Overall, I was disappointed with “Phobos.” While it doesn’t reach the lowest depths of the worst Big Finish productions — it is let down almost entirely by the end, after a reasonable if unmemorable Doctor Who plot — it certainly doesn’t qualify as “rewarding” by any stretch of the imagination. And while Big Finish, as with every other Doctor Who outlet, is certainly entitled to produce a clunker from time to time, I find it disappointing that they let one through to BBC7.
Not recommended.
4/10