‘Hello! Doctor, it’s me. Lucie. Lucie Miller…’
Lucie Miller needs the Doctor’s help. The whole planet Earth needs his help. But he is nowhere to be seen.
While Lucie struggles to survive a terrible sickness, an even greater threat to the human race is about to be unleashed.
And this will be the second Dalek invasion of Earth the Doctor’s granddaughter has had to endure.
‘You must accept the reality of your situation. You have been defeated.’
LUCIE MILLER
After four seasons of Big Finish’s Eighth Doctor Adventures, the range begins its epic conclusion here, in writer-director Nicholas Briggs’ “Lucie Miller.” It sees every regular character from the fourth season reunited – plus, naturally, the Daleks – to confront an invasion in a clear sequel to “The Dalek Invasion of Earth.” And, of course, it’s largely setup for the conclusion – but unfortunately it is the amount of setup necessary that proves to be this play’s weak point.
Rapid advancements through time are tricky dramatic devices to pull off. To my mind, they’re most necessary to eliminate unnecessary details of progression. To use a Doctor Who example, the final scenes of “The Sound of Drums” establish each character’s new role in the post-apocalyptic world; when “Last of the Time Lords” starts, we see those same characters in the same roles one year later. “Lucie Miller” doesn’t do this: the story opens with Lucie’s narration, and she walks us through every event of the Dalek invasion. When last we saw her, she was fully healthy; now, we listen as she describes contracting the Dalek plague, losing full use of her legs and the sight in her right eye, being confined first to a wheelchair and then to leg braces, helping lead a rebellion, losing her faith in the Doctor and then getting it back, and so forth. This is far too much information to convey through narration. I understand that Briggs attempts to mitigate against this by interspersing brief dramatic scenes, but there’s nothing for a listener to grab onto. Had a prior episode ended with Lucie contracting the plague, and had this one opened with Lucie using the leg braces, that would have been more effective: we don’t actually need to see her suffer to understand it. But here we’re expected to process years’ worth of unexpected plot developments in mere minutes, and this can be only an intellectual exercise. Briggs avoided this problem by recasting narration as myth in the brilliant final episode of “Dalek War,” but sadly no such attempts can be made here.
Despite this major flaw, however, there is quite a bit to admire in “Lucie Miller.” Sheridan Smith is asked to play an incredibly wide range and succeeds effortlessly; her whispered communications with Susan barely sound like the same character, so tortured does she sound. Briggs wisely elects not to focus on the invasion itself: with a cast consisting largely of regulars and no visual component, that would have been a serious mistake. Instead, he focuses almost entirely on the invasion’s effect on the characters. Through Susan, we see the perspective of someone who lived through the first invasion and her combined feelings both of hopelessness and blind faith in the Doctor coming to the rescue. Through Alex, we see a young man born well after the first invasion who is forced to mature and become a hero by the second. And through Lucie, we see the perspective of an outsider who nonetheless knows the invaders and what is destined to happen. The effects of war have long fascinated Briggs and this is one of his best scripts on the matter.
Once the Doctor turns up, “Lucie Miller” changes completely, shifting away from narration and toward the Doctor encountering the Monk, Tamsin, and the Daleks. I’m entirely unclear about how Tamsin has managed to get this far without understanding that the Daleks are actually a bit evil – again, she’s absentminded, not stupid – but her loss of faith in the Monk provides for a great scene. Graeme Garden plays the character perfectly: he has a plan, but he’s in completely over his head with the Daleks, forced now to try to find a way out of his mistakes. He can’t quite explain it away to Tamsin, and she knows it. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the conclusion.
Briggs directs his own script, and much like his Dalek Empire work, it is suitably epic and well-paced. Andy Hardwick’s sound design is expert; his score adds to the epic feel of the production as well. I discussed it briefly above, but the work of the cast is generally excellent, especially Sheridan Smith and Carole Ann Ford. Jake McGann improves yet again from his “Relative Dimensions” performance: he’s genuinely good here in a way he hasn’t been in his previous appearances. I anticipate we’ll hear more of Graeme Garden and Niky Wardley in the conclusion as well, though their performances here were naturally on fine form.
Overall, “Lucie Miller” is an incredibly ambitious production. It tries to do far too much for its running time, and thus the first half, while full of great performances and memorable vignettes, is less effective than it should be. But things pick back up in the second half with the introduction of the Doctor and the Monk, and the pieces appear to be in place for a stunning conclusion.
Recommended.
7/10