Lucie Miller’s been headhunted to join the staff of Hulbert Logistics, a respectable blue-chip firm in Telford. The Doctor is also hired, as a consultant, and discovers it is no ordinary office.
Lucie Miller’s been headhunted to join the staff of Hulbert Logistics, a respectable blue-chip firm in Telford. The Doctor is also hired, as a consultant, and discovers it is no ordinary office.
HUMAN RESOURCES, PART ONE
With the first “season” of Paul McGann plays (produced for BBC7 by Big Finish) coming to a close, the finale was presented much like the open: a two-part play featuring an old enemy. While I found Eddie Robson’s previous offering, “Phobos,” disappointing, and I can’t yet comment on the quality of the second part of the finale, “Human Resources, Part One” is by far the best production of the first seven.
One of the strengths of Doctor Who has always been its ability to conflate the bizarre with the mundane, and Robson’s script demonstrates an excellent grasp of this concept. Hulbert Logistics is, by all appearances, a perfectly normal office: there’s an HR department that produces trainees, everyone works in a standard office pool with cubicles and computers, there’s a break room, self-important management types roam the floor giving impromptu and unhelpful motivational speakers, there are meetings where meaningless corporate terminology is exchanged and nothing gets done, etc., etc. Robson lays enough clues that something is amiss — the sealed exits, the grunting security guards, and the planning meetings about military strikes — but the office appears to be normal until Lucie gets fired. Then comes the brilliant revelation that the office is actually controlling the operation of a giant walking war machine. This is an audacious, wonderful Doctor Who concept, with the added advantage of no visual effects budget to drain.
It’s also a standard “part one of two,” very comparable to the new series. Look at this story in relationship to any of the new series two-parters, especially “Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel:” much of the first part is spent introducing the new world and its rules, and slowly seeding threats into the environment. The first part usually concludes with the revelation of the true villains of the piece, and the second part is then much more action-oriented as the Doctor and companion(s) take on their foe. We also get the age-old Cyberman reveal: the Doctor sees them approach, exclaims something on the order of “Oh no, not them!” then the Cybermen are revealed to the listener/viewer and the Doctor responds either with “Cybermen!” or, in this case, something like “I think I may have miscalculated.” It’s the same blend of old and new that the new series does so well, and if this story seems a bit derivative of “Rise,” it’s not — it was written before “Rise” aired — but it certainly knows what works.
The cast is excellent, impressively so given that most of them are actively portraying clichéd characters. Paul McGann is having a lot of fun as the Doctor, and he makes the character fit right into the mind-numbing office environment, quietly mocking it as he does so. Sheridan Smith’s performance is genuinely disturbing at times: to hear the headstrong, forthright Lucie Miller reduced to giggling inanely at stupid jokes in the break room is unsettling. Louise Fullerton is endearing as Lucie’s coworker Karen, and Owen Brenman is amusingly slimy as their boss Jerry. Both Roy Marsden and Nickolas Grace play very well against McGann, the first as the boss Hulbert and the second as the officious Time Lord Straxus. And while it’s an entertaining twist that the Headhunter (Katarina Olsson) was trying to bring Lucie in as an employee, her reaction when Lucie gets fired after five hours is even better.
Thumbs up to Gareth Jenkins and Andy Hardwick for the usual high standard of sound design and music, while Nicholas Briggs’ — not Barnaby Edwards’, as printed on the CD jacket — direction keeps the story on pace and intriguing right up through the cliffhanger. The disc also contains bonus interviews with seven different cast members: Fullerton, Andy Wisher, Olsson, Brenman, Marsden, Grace, and Smith.
Overall, this is easily the best of the BBC7 plays thus far. As it’s a part one, it’s necessarily unfulfilling, and could easily be let down by part two — but as opening segments go, this is pretty much exactly what you want to do.
Highly recommended.
9/10