A warning from a dying alien leads the Doctor and Bernice to Earth. However Earth in this time period is not a good place to be.
The murder rate is rising, but the killers seem to be acting without motive. The TARDIS crew’s investigations lead them to a military training planet, a prison inside a star, and a terrifying old foe.
And all the time they are being pursued – by two dogged Adjudicators who’ve stumbled onto a terrifying conspiracy. Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester.
Things will never be the same again.
ORIGINAL SIN
The tenth Big Finish novel adaptation is once again taken from the ranks of the New Adventures: Andy Lane’s “Original Sin,” adapted by John Dorney. It’s probably the least accessible release in this range to people who weren’t into the books – it’s not written by a famous TV author, it doesn’t feature any TV companions, etc. – but Dorney does his best to make it work in this format. Unfortunately, one problem is too big to overcome.
Original Sin is one of the longest New Adventures, clocking in at over 300 pages, and not with the print in the new series novels you can see from outer space, either. It’s absolutely stuffed with continuity references and world building, as it simultaneously tries to tell the story of the end of the Earth Empire, introduce two new companions, and bring back a 1960s villain. It’s one of the better books in the range, but even so it feels overcrowded. John Dorney is tasked with taking this expansive work and condensing it into two one-hour episodes – and while he does a surprisingly effective job, the story still winds up feeling seriously disjointed. Details from the book seem to arise at random times: in the novel, for example, Roz is constantly irritated with new partner Chris, as he’s relentlessly optimistic and cheerful while she’s miserable and cynical. In the audio, this doesn’t come across at all: Roz is certainly troubled and working to overcome the death of her partner, and Chris plays the part of the inexperienced junior officer, but you don’t hear the cheerful/cynical divide. Yet, late in the story, when Chris says something cheerful, Roz incredulously replies with something like “Don’t you ever stop?” It jars; it sounds like a line from the book that was inserted into the script without considering if it actually worked.
The other issue is that the audio script never has enough time to spend on any one event. The Doctor’s discussion of morality with Pryce is a centerpiece of the novel; here, it’s over in a few minutes, though at least Dorney keeps most of the key dialogue intact. The novel uses its length to carefully build the future Earth; here, you don’t get much of a sense of the city except from what is delivered in info-dumps and news reports. The villain is the preserved consciousness of Tobias Vaughn (Philip Voss, excellent) from “The Invasion,” but presumably due to rights issues the adaptation never names him. In this version, Roz and Chris meet the Doctor for about thirty seconds total, enough for him to invite them aboard at the end. To keep the cast size reasonable, Jot Davies plays about 75 different roles, and one of the consequences is that his portrayal of Pryce isn’t nearly frightening enough. In fact, the story seems oddly neutered – I understand they need to keep the gruesome stuff to a minimum, but why take out the part where the Doctor decapitates Vaughn’s robot body? It’s tied directly back to the earlier discussion of morality, and without it things feel curiously unfinished.
Fortunately, Dorney does an excellent job presenting the characters. Much of the story is from the perspective of the two Adjudicators, and he effortlessly introduces us to them and their backstories without making any of it seem gimmicky. In the monthly range, we’d have to wait for a year or two and sit through a bunch of unrelated stories to find out what happened to Roz’s partner; here, we find out by the end of the story and it’s wrapped into the themes to boot. The Doctor is fantastic – he’s improvising, not scheming, but he develops and executes plans with shocking effectiveness. And I love how much he trusts Bernice: she investigates and resolves fully half of the plot without the Doctor around because he knows she’ll get it right.
Despite this being their introductory story, we’ve already heard Yasmin Bannerman and Travis Oliver in the “Damaged Goods” adaptation. Unlike that story, Chris and Roz take center stage here, and prove the casting decisions were good ones. Sylvester McCoy is on top form as well, something that has been consistent throughout his novel adaptations. The production is great, too: Ken Bentley directs, the sound design from Russell McGee is convincing, and the score from Crispin Merrell and Gordon Young is satisfyingly different from Big Finish’s usual Doctor Who fare. Overall, “Original Sin” is a mixed bag. When it works, it works incredibly well, but it can’t overcome the problem that a novel of that size simply can’t be effectively condensed into a two-hour audio drama. Still, the surplus of ideas, the great characterization, and the thematic aspirations all add up to something worth hearing – it’s just not a patch on the original.
But at least they got rid of the endless continuity references.
7/10