The TARDIS crew have unknowingly become embroiled in a web of deceit. A trap has been laid across time and they have no possible means of escape. Destiny has ensnared them.
The Doctor is finally getting the chance to see the Conglomerate’s work at first hand. Romana is working to save the alien Laan once and for all. K9 is returning to Ancient Britain in search of an unusual power source.
The Doctor, Romana and K9.
Today one of them will die.
CASUALTIES OF TIME
The odds that I would actually enjoy “Casualties of Time,” the final story in the fifth series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, were incredibly low, and those odds came through, because I hated it. That wasn’t surprising – but honestly, is it too much to ask for one complete Nick Briggs story in this range to be good?
“Casualties of Time” is clearly intended to be a large-scale season finale, the sort of thing that brings together a number of disparate plot threads into a final, conclusive whole. It draws on Briggs’ own mythology: the central concept of the plot is that the Conglomerate is such a large and influential corporation that it is inextricably linked to the health of the timelines. When the Doctor discovers that Cuthbert is a paradoxical construct, and that the Conglomerate’s time engines are maintaining the paradox that keeps the company existing, he has to keep those engines running. If he doesn’t, the Conglomerate will cease to exist, and the stability of history will collapse. This is all great if you care at all about the Conglomerate, but the problem here is that we haven’t seen the Conglomerate for three years and we’ve never been given a good sense of the extent of their powers. From what I know of the Audio Visuals plays, the Conglomerate was seeded throughout the run as recurring villains. Here, they’re represented almost entirely by Cuthbert and his assistant Dorrick (Toby Hadoke), and the characters have to tell us how important they are.
Remember that recurring element with the parrot in the TARDIS? No? I don’t blame you, because I’d forgotten it existed before I heard these stories again. Anyway, it saves the Doctor’s life at the end when all hope seems lost. But rather than feeling like the rewarding solution to an ongoing puzzle, it comes almost completely out of nowhere. Oh, the parrot has learned everything in the Doctor’s mind? How convenient! It sure would have been nice if this had been mentioned at any point in any of the preceding stories. I know some fans weren’t too thrilled with the Russell T. Davies strategy of seeding particular words like “Bad Wolf” or “Mr. Saxon” through a season, but those worked so much better than this the comparison is hardly fair.
Oh, and the Black Guardian is in this. He might as well not be, as he makes almost no difference to the plot, but he’s there, ranting and raving about chaos and how the universe will soon be his. Here is an actual Black Guardian quote that I transcribed from a second listen because I hate myself: “Bravo, Doctor, bravo! My work here is done! You have stopped Cuthbert! The spaceship will never crash! The tritonium will never be found by the Victorians! Cuthbert will never be able to irradiate it and create the tritonium AIs that will make the Conglomerate into an intergalactic corporation!” That is laughably, staggeringly bad writing. David Troughton can barely get the words out in a comprehensible manner. And it’s entirely representative of the quality of the script.
The performances aren’t that great, either. Tom Baker sounds drunk, which is at the very least entertaining, while Lalla Ward goes over the top to a noticeable, uncharacteristic extent. The sheer number of times she is forced to gasp out things like “Doctor! What have we done?!” is embarrassing enough, and sadly her performance doesn’t help matters. David Warner and Toby Hadoke are great until the end, when Cuthbert is transformed, Scrooge-like, into a generous, kind man – and now Cuthbert is boring and Dorrick is a stammering idiot. Well played!
This story is awful. It goes nowhere, it has nothing to say, it starts badly and it ends terribly. The script is poor, the performances aren’t up to snuff, and the production isn’t anything special. I’d say it’s a disappointing end to its arc, except a) what arc? and b) you can’t be disappointed by this any longer. At this point, if you’re buying Fourth Doctor Adventures with “by Nicholas Briggs” on the cover, you have only yourself to blame – and I include myself in that advice. The best part of this story is the knowledge that there won’t be any more until 2017.
Atrocious.
2/10