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1. Styre on May 7, 2016 at 11:27 PM

   NEVERLAND

   After the complete waste of time that was the first Paul McGann season from Big Finish, one could be forgiven for thinking that the opportunity to tell new, unrestrained Doctor Who stories had been well and truly wasted. However, with a run of three exceptional plays to start season 2 followed by two slightly less capable — but still highly enjoyable — offerings, all of those bad feelings were wiped away. But season 2 set itself as a story arc, meaning that the season finale, Alan Barnes’ Neverland, needed to be the best of the lot (or close to it) to fulfill the promise of its early episodes.

   Unfortunately, it was the worst offering since the first season.

   It’s obvious from the first minute that Barnes is in love with Gallifrey and its mythology, as the opening hook of the story features a voice in the Matrix recounting historical events getting things wrong before degenerating into madness. Effective though this may be to the informed, for those who don’t recognize the Matrix background effects and have no idea what the voice is talking about (and that has to be the majority of the audience), I can’t see where this opening is anything but incomprehensible. Not since The Sirens of Time has a story been opened in such inaccessible fashion.

   Sadly, things don’t get better. Here’s the plot of Neverland in a nutshell: the Time Lords have been erasing criminals from time, causing them to appear in a universe of anti-time. These criminals want revenge, so they trick the Time Lords into thinking that Rassilon is trapped in the anti-time universe. After capturing the Doctor and Charley, Romana and Vansell (and other various Gallifreyans) use Charley’s anomalous relationship with time to journey into the anti-time universe to find Rassilon. The anti-time people give them what they say is Rassilon but is in fact, essentially, a bomb. Just before it blows up Gallifrey, the Doctor saves the day. That sounds to me like a solid four-part Doctor Who story — here, it’s a needlessly-long six parter that was apparently edited down from an eight- or ten-part length. And there’s absolutely no drama involved — while Barnes has some great concepts in mind, everything is resolved by ridiculously long, drawn-out scenes of characters explaining the plot to one another. The threats are impossible to understand in real-world terms, leading to distancing instances of technobabble. And the scripting is the worst since Storm Warning, as everyone feels the need to describe their surroundings to one another. Barnes simply is not a good author for audio, and this script again demonstrates why.

   Paul McGann, for his part, does a fine job as the Doctor. He has to run the gamut of emotions from apprehension to horror to heroism to love, and he performs the role with his usual skill. However, Barnes falls into the trap of self-referential dialogue: why is it that the eighth Doctor has to be the one to say things like “I’m the Doctor, I never give up”? It’s just annoying, makes the character a parody of itself, and adds nothing to the drama. This is a shame, because Barnes writes a pretty good Doctor otherwise, especially with his heated threats to Vansell and the anti-time people regarding Charley’s safety.

   Speaking of Charley, India Fisher’s performance is of the same strong caliber that has been seen throughout this second season. The character is pushed to the emotional limit — indeed, she decides to sacrifice her life at one point — and Fisher acts it well, rarely slipping into melodrama or overacting. However, another flaw in the script rears its head here: the Doctor/Charley exchanges as she prepares to sacrifice herself. The “I love you” stuff is fine in theory, but here it just comes across as bad soap writing, and the fact that the Doctor apparently won’t sacrifice his friends for any reason, no matter how dire the situation, simply emasculates the character.

   Lalla Ward returns to the role of Romana for the second time in the Big Finish range, and her performance is once again admirable. She captures the same combination of aloofness and warmth seen in the television series, and portrays the alt-universe Imperiatrix with suitable menace. There’s a point where she shifts back into the companion role with McGann and it works very well — this was a great omen for the upcoming Shada play. Anthony Keetch turns in a fine final performance as Vansell, lending the traitorous character a suitable level of disguised heroism. And Don Warrington is wonderful as Rassilon, despite the fact that the entire portrayal of the character is torn up and thrown away in Zagreus. The rest of the cast is utterly forgettable, both in performance and in scripting.

   What most disappoints about plays such as this is the relationship of the script to the quality of the production: such an amazing design job should not be let down by the script, but unfortunately it is. Alistair Lock’s sound design is excellent as always — he captures the anti-time universe, giving it a unique sound, while Nicholas Briggs adds his usual type of score: subtle, never overwhelming, yet very effective. And thank God that Gary Russell was able to direct this play and cut it down from what I’m sure was a five-hour script to begin with.

   Overall, Neverland is a crushing disappointment. Despite some great ideas, and an imaginative and unique way to resolve the Charley paradox, it falls flat on its face thanks to dull, uninspired scripting. It doesn’t matter how good the performances are or the production is when they’re coming together to say something completely devoid of interest. Is it actively bad, like Storm Warning or Minuet in Hell? No, but it’s a crushing bore, and with Doctor Who that’s almost as bad.

   Necessary to hear, but I still can’t recommend it.

   4/10

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