If an attack with nuclear weapons is expected, you will hear the air attack warning. If you are not at home, but can get there within two minutes, do so. If you are in the open, take cover in the nearest building. If you cannot reach a building, lie flat on the ground and cover your head and your hands.
Arriving in the North of England in the late 1980s, Ace and Hex seek refuge at the home of Albert and Peggy Marsden… in the last few hours before the outbreak of World War Three.
Meanwhile, the Doctor is missing. Will there be anyone left for him to rescue, when the bombs begin to fall?
PROTECT AND SURVIVE
Despite what seemed to be a “finale”-type story across the brilliant “Project: Destiny” and “A Death in the Family,” and a relatively standalone trilogy in 2011, the Big Finish series of Sylvester McCoy stories still has multiple loose ends. Various prophecies of doom still hang over the characters, while the Doctor has been seen journeying in both a black and a white TARDIS. Things seem to be coming to a head as this trilogy kicks off with Jonathan Morris’s “Protect and Survive,” a surprisingly minimal, oppressive story that strikes almost every note of greatness.
“Protect and Survive” was a public information campaign devised by the British government at the height of the Cold War as a series of instructions about surviving a nuclear attack. Nuclear war is thus the focal point of Morris’s script, and indeed the first episode deals almost exclusively with the concept. Ace and Hex escape a malfunctioning TARDIS into what appears to be an alternate 1989, one in which Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko was replaced not by reformer Mikhail Gorbachev but by a much more militant alternative, Vladimir Khrushgov. The United States has already launched a tactical nuclear strike on Soviet forces amassed at Helmstedt, and the world now stands on the brink of nuclear war. Apart from the obvious alternate history setting, there’s no science fiction here: we listen as Ace and Hex aid an old couple, Albert (Ian Hogg) and Peggy (Elizabeth Bennett), in final preparations and then flee to the fallout shelter as the bombs fall. This is stunningly bleak material from Big Finish, arguably the most intense the company has ever done: Hex is blinded by the light of the explosion while Albert and Peggy slowly decline and die as a result of fatal radiation poisoning, and all the while the radio (Peter Egan) calmly narrates increasingly useless survival instructions. It’s incredibly reminiscent of real-world apocalyptic fiction like “Threads” or “When the Wind Blows” or “The Day After” – and while not quite as bleak as those predecessors, it deserves mention in the same breath, which is quite an endorsement of the production.
Of course, this is Doctor Who, and we can’t just abandon the companions to a context-free, miserable death from nuclear fallout. So it is that we learn the alternate timeline is actually a prison constructed by the Doctor to contain two Elder Gods and make them understand what it’s like to live as humans. Morris reveals this brilliantly, allowing Ace to discover the Doctor’s voice as a secret message underlying the standard Protect and Survive radio messages. Hex spends the play suspecting the Doctor has abandoned them, and while he’s not entirely correct, he’s absolutely right to doubt the Doctor’s motives. Here he’s using his powers to trap literal gods and teach them lessons about mortal life – can he back this up or is this a textbook example of hubris? Morris certainly doesn’t shy away from questionable parallels – while the choices offered by Moloch (Egan again, with voice filter) and the Doctor have fundamentally different answers, the fact that both characters can offer life-saving choices establishes them as equals.
Speaking of Moloch, he represents perhaps the only moments in which the story goes off the rails. The third episode, an ahistorical digression showing the Doctor attempting to avert nuclear war at various points in the alternate timeline, is uncompromising in its depiction of the buildup to a nuclear holocaust. But the cliffhanger, in which Albert and Peggy declare that their master has arrived with a glorious recitation of his name, doesn’t spur a reaction of fear or excitement. Rather, the listener is left to think, “Who the hell’s Moloch?” – and lest you think I’m merely projecting my own response, Ace and Hex react precisely that way as episode 4 opens. Indeed, we never get a straight answer about what Moloch actually is, though I’m sure that’ll be explained going forward. I’m guessing it’s not supposed to be one of Milton’s fallen angels. The cliffhanger ending to episode 4 also asks quite a lot of the audience – either buy the related Companion Chronicle or remember one character from 2011 and one from 2010 by voice alone, or have no idea what’s going on.
This is very much a “Doctor-lite” story, with Sylvester McCoy mostly absent from recording due to filming “The Hobbit” in New Zealand. As such, Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier carry the story, and are generally on fantastic form, though they’re asked to yell and scream a bit too much. Hogg and Bennett are similarly excellent, turning the play into quite an effective four-hander. And Peter Egan eerily recaptures the narrative tone from the real-world “Protect and Survive” productions, excusing his hilariously over the top turn as Moloch. Wilfredo Acosta’s sound design and score are equally brilliant, especially in how he portrays the many stages of a nuclear blast. And Ken Bentley’s direction is first-rate, especially in the first two episodes where he lets his actors carry the day so effectively. Overall, “Protect and Survive” is a triumph. It goes off the rails a bit too much in the final episode to keep it from achieving a perfect score, but this is yet another brilliant seventh Doctor story from Big Finish and an excellent start to the trilogy.
Highly recommended.
9/10