The TARDIS travellers arrive in a bizarre landscape seemingly immune to the physical laws governing the rest of the universe. Ace, Hex, Sally and Lysandra battle to rescue the Doctor from the trap he’s walked into… soon realising that the odds are stacked against them.
Because the Doctor is playing an old adversary again: Fenric, shatterer of worlds. But the gods and monsters who inhabit this strange realm loaded the dice against them long ago, in the dim and distant past – and defeat’s their only option.
GODS AND MONSTERS
Despite the epic, arc-concluding masterpieces “Project: Destiny” and “A Death in the Family” in 2010, Big Finish ramped their Sylvester McCoy stories back into high gear with this trilogy, building the stories of the black and white TARDISes to a massive conclusion. And while I loved “Death” as much as any other great Doctor Who story, Big Finish’s traditional struggles with epic finales were never far from my mind. Sadly, that tradition is back with a vengeance in Mike Maddox and Alan Barnes’s “Gods and Monsters,” a release so stunningly poor I’m struggling to know how to react.
“Gods and Monsters,” among other things, is a sequel to the TV serial “The Curse of Fenric,” one of my personal favorites from the classic series. “Fenric” is drenched in atmosphere, with an ominous sense of foreboding that builds from the opening moments and continues until the revelation of Fenric himself. It’s full of odd set pieces, threatening monsters, and clear, honest themes about faith and betrayal. Maddox and Barnes clearly try to recapture the essence of the TV story, but unfortunately the authors of “Legend of the Cybermen” and “Zagreus” embrace the worst trends from their own past scripts, adopting a storytelling strategy of overfilling the story and hoping the seams don’t burst. Much of the story seems preoccupied with Norse imagery, something that sits awkwardly with “Black and White” coming immediately beforehand yet having no obvious connections. And this imagery is far too visual: a desolate landscape dotted only with a lone smith’s forge is a fine image, but it loses its effectiveness when you describe it through characters saying, “How desolate this landscape is! Look! Is that a blacksmith?” The world ending in a massive waterfall? Great! “It’s not a waterfall, it’s the end of the world! If you come over here you can see it better?” No! Barnes does this sort of thing all the time, so I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it’s still not effective, nor will it ever be.
Since it’s a Fenric tribute, there have to be Haemovores. What’s that? They don’t make any sense for audio because they don’t talk, so all you can do to represent them is have someone groan into the microphone? You’re right! Didn’t stop them, of course. Fenric (John Standing) even insists upon conjuring up an Ancient One (Tim Treloar) to serve him – which is odd, because the story goes to great pains to state that this isn’t the same Ancient One from “Fenric.” This seemed deeply silly to me – what, there are multiple Ancient Ones? – but those tricky authors were one step ahead of me, as they had the characters themselves remark upon the absurdity! Oh ho, the irony! I’ve belabored this point time and again, but just because the characters recognize that a plot point is idiotic doesn’t retcon it into being sensible. There’s an attempt at adding depth here, as the Ancient One is revealed to be the lost father of a wandering Prince of Persia (Blake Ritson), but as the character adds nothing to the story but a magic hammer, it’s quite a challenge to care about his personal journey.
Speaking of retconning, “Gods and Monsters” operates on a massive scale unlike anything seen in Doctor Who outside of “War of the Daleks” – and that’s a comparison you don’t want to draw. There are the expected references to the Elder Gods in “Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge” and “House of Blue Fire” and “Protect and Survive,” and it’s understandable that they were part of this arc, but that’s where my generosity ends. Hex was shot in “The Angel of Scutari?” Saved by Weyland! Chess set in “The Magic Mousetrap?” Placed there by Fenric! Blacksmith in Perivale? Weyland! Creator of the Forge? Weyland! Ray from “Delta and the Bannermen?” Backup Wolf of Fenric! This isn’t a brilliant use of established continuity; it’s an insulting bulldozer through the history of Doctor Who for no reason whatsoever. As much as fans loved to criticize the excesses of Russell T. Davies, I don’t remember the scene in “Journey’s End” where Dalek Caan revealed he was secretly the Plasmatons on Xeraphas all along. Why does everything have to be part of a secret, universe-spanning plan? Are Maddox and Barnes that insecure about their own company’s mythology?
Furthermore, why is this story so focused on Hex’s relationship with the Doctor? Among the many brilliant plot threads in “A Death in the Family” was Hex’s mental rehabilitation on Pelachan, after which he decides to rejoin the Doctor of his own free will. Throughout this trilogy, he’s right back to questioning the Doctor’s every move, as if nothing had changed, and here we see that Hex’s only true faith is in his dead mother, whose true story the Doctor concealed from him. This would all be effective if we hadn’t already seen it in 2010. Sure, Hex gets an emotional death scene, one in which he accepts his fate and achieves a sort of catharsis, but when I’m watching something for the second time, it’s hard to generate the same sort of reaction.
At least Hex’s treatment is merely confusing. Ace’s is appalling. This is a character that Big Finish has spent over a decade maturing – they’re even dropping oblique hints in the stories that she’s in her late 20s by this point. So why on earth is she suddenly back to acting like the uncontrollable, destructive teenager we saw on television? Some of the character beats are just stupid – her abiding faith is in the explosive power of Nitro-9? Idiotic – but others are bizarrely misplaced. Still others reduce her to fits of screaming, and while Sophie Aldred has done great work with the more mature Ace, she’s desperately unconvincing as the angry teenager. Her reaction to Hex’s death should be raw, primal – but instead it’s just awkward, more childish than anything.
It’s not like the Doctor does any better. After being largely absent from the last two stories, Sylvester McCoy returns… and is consciously sidelined for much of the action. He opens the story in a state of delirium over a chessboard. Why, you ask? Who knows – he rapidly gets better, then it’s never mentioned again! The Doctor spends most of the story moving his “chess pieces” against Fenric’s, consciously setting up a final showdown. But when that showdown comes, we learn that it’s Weyland, not the Doctor, who’s really playing against Fenric, and that the Doctor is just another piece on Weyland’s board. Perhaps other authors could have made this twist work, but Maddox and Barnes casually shove the Doctor to the side and give us a climax that features Weyland and Fenric yelling at each other! Whose side should we be on? Who knows! Wait, Hex is here! He’s going to use the shield to defeat Fenric! Hooray! But wait! He’s actually using it to defeat Weyland! Hooray! Wait, which outcome is better? Why does any of this matter? Where’s my investment in this story, or in the characters? Am I expected to relate to abstract threats to all of reality? Am I supposed to be intimidated by an impossibly powerful Elder God whose only description in the entire script is that his mustache looks like Freddie Mercury’s?
I haven’t even mentioned Lysandra and Sally, but since the script doesn’t know what to do with them, it’s not a surprise. Fenric wraps them in a time storm and sends them into the future, showing them an alternate reality where they bring about the destruction of Earth. Does this accomplish much of anything? Obviously not, apart from a terribly labored explanation of chess-related clues – we learn that Sally just happened to be in the chess club in school, just in time for her to declare that every “chess geek” has apparently memorized the entire Byrne-Fischer “Game of the Century” in algebraic notation. It’s a good thing Nimrod didn’t program the famous move as “B-K3” or they’d have been screwed.
I suppose the performances are generally good. Standing is great as Fenric, or at least as great as he can be when laden with nonsense. It’s also nice to hear Elizabeth Bennett return as Peggy, because at least one can think of “Protect and Survive” at the many low points. I’ll also salute Howard Carter’s sound design and especially his score, which is far more epic and atmospheric than the script deserves. Hard to fault director Ken Bentley for the limp, flat pace of the affair – Spielberg couldn’t make this exciting. Overall, “Gods and Monsters” is a complete disaster. The script is nonsensical at best and appalling at worst, the characterization is all over the map, and the attempts at constructing a “arc” master plan out of thin air fall terribly flat. I’ve listened to hundreds of Big Finish productions over the years, and while there have been some poor efforts in that time, most of those missteps were nothing more than subpar episodes in a long running series – they’ll happen from time to time, so just pick yourself up and move on. Only twice before, however, have I felt my intelligence insulted by a Big Finish story – well, step forward, “Gods and Monsters,” you’re number 3.
Disgraceful.
0/10