“Molly O’Sullivan? Hello you.”
In his quest for universal domination, the Master plans to exploit the terrifying Infinite Warriors of the mysterious Eminence. The Doctor’s friend, Molly, is key to that plan’s execution, and now, aided by corrupted genius Sally Armstrong, the Master is close to success.
Paranoid and perplexed after his recent experience, the Doctor skirts the fringes of the fifty-year conflict between humanity and the Infinite Armies. Wary of changing the course of history, he fears that to fight the Eminence would be to do the Daleks’ bidding. But when Time Lord CIA agent Narvin provides the impetus for the Doctor to act, Liv Chenka joins him in a desperate race to save their friend and stop the Master.
As the Doctor goes head to head with his oldest and deadliest rival, this war is about to get very personal indeed…
01 – The Death of Hope
02 – The Reviled
03 – Masterplan
04 – Rule of the Eminence
DARK EYES 3
I’m not sure what Big Finish is trying to accomplish with these “Dark Eyes” stories anymore. The first one was pretty obvious: it was intended to follow on from “To the Death” with a new, darker plot that pitted the Doctor and a new companion against the Daleks in a battle across time. No, it wasn’t very good, but at least you could tell where it was headed. But since then we’ve introduced the Eminence and the Master and the Viyrans and another companion and a bunch of technobabble about retrogenitor particles and I have no idea what it’s all in service of or where it’s heading. And while “Dark Eyes 3” brings everything under Matt Fitton’s creative control and achieves a consistency of tone as a result, it still doesn’t manage to go anywhere interesting.
As usual, the story is spread over four episode and five hours, the first of which is “The Death of Hope.” The title is a pun based on the plot – there’s a character named Hope, get it? – and that’s about as deep as it goes. Oddly, even though this is the first Paul McGann story in quite some time, he’s barely even in the first episode! Instead, we’re given a generic space Western starring the Master. To be fair, that sounds awesome, but unfortunately the description far outpaces the result. The entire purpose of the episode is to show us that the retrogenitor particles inhabiting Molly O’Sullivan’s body actually function as a cure for and a vaccine against Eminence possession – everything else is there purely for entertainment. Now, I’m all about stories that eschew plot for atmosphere, but this is genuinely boring: the Master giggles a lot, the colonists ask unanswered questions, and the Doctor occasionally interjects with a disgusted comment. There is no reason for this episode to exist: it is neither entertaining nor informative and it’s a real struggle to make it all the way through. Everything important could have been summed up in five minutes during one of the later installments.
Fortunately, things improve in the second episode, “The Reviled,” which features the Doctor trying desperately to quell a human rebellion on an alien planet before the Eminence arrive and kill everyone. This is the only segment of “Dark Eyes 3” with any sense of urgency, and Fitton fleshes out the conflict with ease: the indigenous race was once enslaved by humanity, but have risen up and retaken their planet, controlling their former masters in the process. But they’re not needlessly cruel – even though they would have every justification to treat humanity like a plague, they afford their prisoners some basic kindness, even if it does involve crowded accommodation and minimal food. Nonetheless, the humans want to rebel, and the Doctor ends up in the middle of things, trying to talk both sides down in turn before disaster strikes. This would have been a great story on its own and it fits convincingly into the arc plot, with McGann at his best.
From there, though, the story takes a downward turn. The Master’s plan comes to the fore, and while it has some interesting elements – let the Eminence take over the universe but seed something inside their slaves that allows him to take over in turn – the biggest problem is that it’s incredibly unthreatening. The first problem is with the Eminence itself, which still hasn’t become interesting despite multiple appearances over several Big Finish ranges. It speaks in the voice of a comic book villain, and while David Sibley’s performance is entertaining as hell, it’s not frightening in the slightest. Fitton tries to create drama from the Infinite Warriors as possessed members of other races, but it’s clichéd, unimaginative body horror stuff that Doctor Who has been doing since “The Ark in Space” and beyond. But I don’t blame Fitton for this because the Eminence has nothing to distinguish it. It possesses people and tries to take over the universe for no reason other than to follow its own purpose. At least with the Daleks they’re driven by their intense, paranoid hatred of all other races; the Eminence merely lives to conquer, with no other motives.
Secondly, the Master is a big problem in this story, and for similar reasons: he’s almost entirely unthreatening. I really like Alex Macqueen in the role, but there’s nothing dangerous about him or his performance in this story: he rolls through four episodes, giggling and joking, with only the briefest glimpses at the insanity underneath. It’s incredibly similar to “Last of the Time Lords,” with the Master conquering Earth and using the people to construct a space fleet with which to invade the rest of the universe, but while the Masters in both stories inject levity and silliness into their performances, only John Simm gets to play the character as a madman rather than as someone casually amusing himself. The scene with McGann and Macqueen locked in a room together should be incredibly intense and revealing, but it’s just boring – both characters sound disinterested, lobbing cod psychology at one another, and we learn nothing about either character in the process.
All of which begs the question from the beginning of my review: what’s the point of this supposed to be? Finally, we get some mention of the deaths of Lucie and Tamsin and Alex, but the Doctor gets one line in response and then it’s never mentioned again. Yes, the Doctor is upset, but nothing is done to push his character forward. Molly is in this, but so briefly that she hardly registers, and that’s a problem for arguably the most significant character in the story. I know this was due to actor availability but that doesn’t retroactively make the story better. Then there’s Liv, and while Nicola Walker wrings every possible drop of emotion from the character, she remains one-note and uninteresting – and then, just to top everything off, that one note is eliminated from her character! I’ve already discussed the Master and the Eminence – none of the recurring characters are at all interesting in “Dark Eyes 3,” so it’s certainly not a character drama. Oh, and Narvin from the Gallifrey series shows up, but he doesn’t distinguish himself in any way other than “amoral CIA operative,” so…
If this was an action story, at least I could approach it on those terms. I wasn’t a fan of “UNIT: Dominion” but I enjoyed the pace of the story and the action-driven sequences over its long running time. “Dark Eyes 3” is bleak and slow-paced with its action sequences largely kept off-screen. There’s no character drama to follow, there aren’t many exciting action sequences, and there aren’t many opportunities to laugh. So what is there? The production is solid as ever, both from director Ken Bentley and sound designer Wilfredo Acosta. But apart from that, “Dark Eyes 3” is a long, impenetrable grey mass in which nothing particularly interesting happens. 90 minutes of that would be bad enough, but 300?
Woof.
5/10