1.1 The Destination Wars by Matt Fitton
The TARDIS arrives in a gleaming utopia in the Space Year 2003. Has the Doctor truly brought Ian and Barbara home, to glimpse their future?
The world owes much to its legendary Inventor, and Susan finds herself face to face with the great benefactor. But soon, the time travellers are in a world at war and the Doctor must confront his past.
1.2 The Great White Hurricane by Guy Adams
Rival gangs turn streets into battlegrounds, and the Doctor and his friends are caught in the crossfire. They find themselves separated, and lost in the cold.
As the hunt for a fugitive turns ever more desperate, a blizzard descends. The snow keeps falling. And soon it will prove as deadly as any weapon…
THE FIRST DOCTOR ADVENTURES: THE DESTINATION WARS
The inexorable progression of time inevitably means that fewer and fewer actors from the classic series of Doctor Who will be available to record new material for Big Finish, and that has left the company in a dilemma over the years: how do they continue to tell stories from those eras? First came the Companion Chronicles, which circumvented the absence of the first three Doctors by having their companions tell stories of adventures to the audience. Next, Big Finish turned to impressions, first through original actors like Peter Purves and Frazer Hines and later through new actors like Elliot Chapman and Tim Treloar. Finally, with the release of “The First Doctor Adventures,” they’ve crossed the final boundary: recasting old roles with new interpretations, not impressions.
I’ll talk about this a bit more in my review of the second story, but rather than conducting their own casting search, Big Finish hired the four actors who played the original cast in “An Adventure in Space and Time:” David Bradley as the Doctor, Claudia Grant as Susan, Jemma Powell as Barbara, and Jamie Glover as Ian. It’s an interesting decision, given that the companion actors barely appear in that film and that they weren’t cast for their abilities to play the companion characters – but at least David Bradley has since become the third actor to portray the first Doctor on television. Generally, though, the casting is successful, especially Bradley and Glover. If I have one complaint about Bradley it’s that he makes the Richard Hurndall mistake of assuming Hartnell was grumpy and irritable all the time and losing the first Doctor’s endearing sense of humor – but nonetheless it’s a good take on the character.
I’ll also come back to this in the next review, but there’s a conscious decision here to recreate 1960s television as closely as possible and I don’t like it. There’s no reason for every episode to be 25 minutes long and end in a cliffhanger, there’s no reason for everyone to use perfect received pronunciation, and there’s no reason to deliver the stories at the theatrical, often glacial pace of their predecessors. If you’re going to recast the roles to this extent, blow the whole thing up, don’t force a square peg into a round hole.
Fortunately, Matt Fitton’s script for “The Destination Wars” is very good, and papers over some of the difficulties inherent in the format. I love little details like Ian and Barbara hearing that it’s “Space Year 2003” and just assuming they’re 40 years in their own future while the Doctor and Susan look on with amusement. I love that they’re unafraid to use the Master in a story set in this era, and to drop more hints about his relationship with the Doctor back on Gallifrey, and indeed make suggestions about why he took the title of Master in the first place. I love James Dreyfus in the role, classically villainous in the Roger Delgado sense, with a deep, eerily soothing voice. I love the simplicity of his plan: seed the ideas for new technology, then time travel into the future and reap the benefits, and repeat until he can fix his TARDIS. I also love how that plan allows us to see the people of Destination at different points in their lives, like a spin on the central plot device of “The Ark.” It’s one of the better scripts Fitton has produced, and it’s a strong debut for this range. The production, with director Nicholas Briggs and sound designer Howard Carter, is also quite strong. Overall, “The Destination Wars” overcomes some self-inflicted limitations by asking some interesting questions and showing us brand new sides of beloved characters. If everything in this range was like “The Destination Wars,” I’d be thrilled even in spite of my concerns.
Highly recommended.
8/10
THE FIRST DOCTOR ADVENTURES: THE GREAT WHITE HURRICANE
While I enjoyed “The Destination Wars,” the first story in this box set, I recognized some potential problems that could cause issues with less sophisticated scripts. Unfortunately, such a script is here, “The Great White Hurricane” by Guy Adams, which leaps from the heights of its predecessor and crashes in a massive pile of burning wreckage.
I do not understand the desire to adhere so closely to the stylistic choices of the early 1960s in this set. While it worked in the first story, largely due to interesting inclusions like the Master and some high-concept science fiction, here the new range leaps head-first into the historical genre. There hasn’t been a “pure historical” in the TV series since 1982, despite countless stories set in the past since then, and producer after producer has explained why: it’s just more interesting to add science fiction elements. Big Finish has carried the historical torch, however, and they’ve often been successful. But their best historicals usually involve famous historical figures or challenging, dramatic parts of history; here, in “The Great White Hurricane,” the threat is… a snowstorm. A terrible snowstorm, to be sure, and one that led to hundreds of deaths of people trapped by the snowfall, but still a simple weather event. Lest you think I’m underplaying it, basically every character spends the final two episodes outside in the storm and nobody apart from Susan suffers any ill effects. Heck, Ian suffers a “severe concussion” at the start of the story, and then wanders around in the snowstorm with only an occasional bout of nausea to hold him back. In other words, the only serious source of drama in the story isn’t taken at all seriously by the story itself, and that’s a problem.
The performances are another significant problem. The story is set in New York, which means it’s time for Big Finish American accents. I have no idea how many of the performers are American, but they are once again working from the idea that everyone that lives in New York talks like they just got off the set of Newsies. There is one immigrant, Rosalita (Carolina Valdes), who is probably Puerto Rican or Dominican based on the historical period, but everyone else speaks in broad “New Yawk” tones. This was a heavy period of immigration, especially in New York, and we should be hearing Irish or German or Italian accents, not just hearing occasional last names reminiscent of those countries. Instead, it’s a caricature of reality. And then there’s the main cast: while Jamie Glover gets away with it, even though he sounds just like Tim Treloar’s Jon Pertwee impression, Jemma Powell and Claudia Grant spend so much effort trying to speak with perfect diction that they fail to make their characters sympathetic or even listenable. Barbara comes across as a know-it-all while Susan sounds like a breathy caricature of royalty.
Even the various plot strands are wholly uninteresting. Susan is captured at the beginning by a dangerous gang member – except he’s really a relatively innocent young person, on the run from a crime he didn’t commit. The Doctor teams up with the kid’s older brother to find him. The scenes between the Doctor and the brother are the best in the story, underplayed beautifully by David Bradley, but they are few and far between. By the end, the Doctor has convinced the rival gangs – brutal and murderous in real life – to put their differences aside and work for the betterment of their society, with all the subtlety of a grade school morality play. Worst of all is the plot involving Ian and Barbara. While Ian recovers from his concussion, they meet Rosalita in the hospital, and she makes references to her alcoholic ex-husband and her young child. When they leave, gasp! The ex has taken her son away, and is fleeing on a train! But the train is bogged down in the snow and is stuck on the elevated tracks! However will the people get down? Oh look, a man with a ladder! But he’s a jerk who demands payment up front! Then Ian shames him into cooperating with his words, and then Rosalita shames her husband into giving her son back with her words. If the Doctor’s material was grade school level, this is barely out of kindergarten.
So, what did I like about “The Great White Hurricane?” Well, the production, once again from director Nicholas Briggs and sound designer Howard Carter, is fine. David Bradley and Jamie Glover are great, and the Doctor gets some wonderful little scenes. But apart from that, there’s nothing here to appreciate. The story is so fixated on slavishly recreating early 1960s television that it forgets to be entertaining, the actors are more concerned with nailing their accents than actually performing, the accents themselves are largely silly and distracting, and the story is so boring and childish it stands as a very good argument against doing historical stories in the future. This is one of my least favorite Big Finish releases in quite some time; it’s a shocking waste of the opportunities afforded by this new concept and it’s almost completely devoid of entertainment value.
Stay far, far away.
2/10