The Doctor and Lucie are then thrown into a war in deep space in Wirrn Dawn, which sees the return of the parasitic insect monsters from The Ark in Space.
The Doctor and Lucie are then thrown into a war in deep space in Wirrn Dawn, which sees the return of the parasitic insect monsters from The Ark in Space.
WIRRN DAWN
When the third season of Paul McGann/Sheridan Smith audios began with “Orbis,” I was intrigued: the dynamic between the Doctor and Lucie was changed, the Doctor’s personality was subtly different, and the story ended on a surprising, downbeat twist that departed significantly from the two previous seasons. Three stories later, however, and that promise is seemingly unfulfilled: after a Krynoid story and an arrow-straight Hinchcliffe homage, we come to “Wirrn Dawn,” a story from Nicholas Briggs that attempts to resurrect yet another part of the Tom Baker era. Credit Briggs for trying to make his script mean something, especially after the substance-free “The Beast of Orlok” — but unfortunately, the revelations are uneasy and the story is almost completely free of incident.
Don’t get me wrong, the “lack of incident” complaint certainly doesn’t apply to the first ten minutes. The TARDIS lands on a ship in the middle of a bloody space battle, the Wirrn quite literally eating the ship from the outside and tearing it to pieces. In the great Doctor Who tradition, the Doctor and Lucie are thrown into the middle of an impossible situation, separated from their ship, and forced to improvise just to survive — and it’s very entertaining, lots of desperate soldiers, explosions, etc. Finally, as the ship is about to lose atmosphere, our heroes are able to strap themselves into spacesuits just as they are blown into space.
This is where the play stops.
Not literally, of course, but the pace grinds to a complete halt for no apparent reason. We’re treated to an endless scene of Lucie floating in space, trying to communicate with the Doctor, using her jet pack to escape the exploding ship — something which carries little sound design and thus lacks excitement — and then having to search her spacesuit for the button that will activate her helmet communicator! I’m not sure if these scenes are intended to be intense, humorous, or both — but they’re neither.
The second part, fortunately, picks up a bit by introducing an actual theme: we’re presented with Delong (SJA’s Daniel Anthony, very good), an “indig” (-enous — did you figure that out when you saw it? The Doctor didn’t) colonial soldier ostracized from his unit due to accident of birth. We’re also introduced to the Wirrn Queen (Beth Chalmers, and eventually Liz Sutherland), and Briggs explores an element of “The Ark in Space” that was mentioned only in passing: the Wirrn take on the characteristics of their host bodies, meaning that a human-hosted Wirrn will be capable of subtleties of emotion lacking in a horse-hosted Wirrn. Sure enough, the new queen is growing in a helpless soldier, leaving the Doctor with a dilemma: stop the transformative process, or allow the human to be sacrificed such that the newly-grown Wirrn queen will not continue to prosecute the destruction of humanity. The way in which Briggs resolves this is unusual for Doctor Who: the Doctor appeals to the law of nature, of all things, in arguing that the Wirrn should be allowed to take the humans they need to achieve peace. Perhaps this is an example of the Doctor’s changed personality post-”Orbis” — I hope it is, because it’s bizarrely out of character for the Doctor to allow the innocent to perish without at least making an attempt to stop it.
And while all this is reasonably thought-provoking, and explores a side of the Wirrn previously unseen, it’s not insightful enough to stand on its own. Yes, the question of how much sacrifice is too much is a good one, but the characters quite literally spend most of part 2 sitting in a room and talking about it. This makes the space-action motif of the first part unfortunate, because the script hasn’t earned enough trust in its characters to justify an extended scene like this. Nonetheless, Briggs should be applauded for trying — this story may not, on balance, be as good as the empty “Orlok,” but ambition in Doctor Who should never be faulted.
Briggs directs his own script with his usual ease, but gives way to Jamie Robertson for the music and sound design. The result is a reasonably effective, if unmemorable, soundscape. I don’t often mention cover art, but Simon Holub’s design is absolutely gorgeous.
Overall, “Wirrn Dawn” is a solid midseason entry. It struggles to find its dramatic and thematic feet, but succeeds enough to justify its existence. If this season of McGann stories is Big Finish’s attempt to take the place of the absent TV series, then this is “The Lazarus Experiment.” Not great, but not bad; rather, 60 minutes of entertaining drama.
6/10