“A Doctor, curse his name, threw me down among the dead… but I endure. I am Eldrad… and I must live!”
A nuclear icebreaker, foundering in Arctic waters. Seabirds washed up in the fishing resort of Ambermouth, their wings encrusted with crystals. A shining artefact of uncertain provenance, up for sale on an auction site.
All of these things are linked, as the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough are about to discover. Linked to the rebirth of a genocidal tyrant, presumed dead many years ago…
For the sake of the planets Earth and Kastria alike… Eldrad must die!
ELDRAD MUST DIE!
After opening the anniversary year with the first Bonnie Langford stories in several years, Big Finish moved on to a new trilogy featuring the fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, and Nyssa, amidst rumors that this would be the final trilogy to feature this TARDIS crew. The first story in this trilogy, Marc Platt’s “Eldrad Must Die!” is somewhat uneven – it’s structured well, and serves as an entertaining homage to the original story, but is let down in the details.
While I understand it’s the 50th anniversary year, I’m raising my eyebrows more and more at Big Finish’s reuse of characters and villains from the classic series. I have no doubt that the stories reusing old villains sell more copies, but simply examining the Hinchcliffe era reveals that Big Finish has made significant use of the primary conflict in every story except “Planet of Evil,” “The Masque of Mandragora,” and “The Face of Evil” – and even “Mandragora” got name-checked in the Sarah Jane Smith series. “The Hand of Fear” had been on that list, but that obviously changes with “Eldrad Must Die!” with even its title explicitly referencing the previous story. With literally hundreds of releases, I suppose they’ll get around to every classic story eventually, but seeing the cover of this story, with Turlough’s arm covered in silicon crystals and Stephen Thorne glaring down from the top left, just made me think “Really? Do we really need this?”
Honestly, I’m not sure we do. Platt easily captures the flow of “The Hand of Fear” for this sequel: most of the story revolves around Earth and a search for a nuclear power source before relocating to the dead planet Kastria for the conclusion. This time, rather than Eldrad possessing one individual, an “infection” of silicon crystals rapidly spreads over a seaside village, first transforming wildlife and then shifting humans into servants of Mulkris (Nancy Carroll) or Eldrad (Thorne). Platt delights in this imagery: he describes, in loving detail, crystals covering dead birds, or human arms, or slowly transforming the sea into an ocean of quartz. Unfortunately, there’s no good way to portray this in audio, which means that it’s time for endless “Look! It’s got crystals growing all over it!” dialogue. Platt’s a better writer than most, so it’s not excruciating, but nobody can make dialogue like that natural.
That wouldn’t be a problem if it was in service of a greater whole, but it isn’t: Mulkris’s entire goal is to find Eldrad’s eye, but attempts this in a massively inefficient, senseless way – and Eldrad himself is able to gain a foothold in Charlie (Pip Torrens) with almost comical ease. It also seems as though everything here started with the title: “Eldrad must die” is initially interesting and begs the obvious question, but once people also start saying “Eldrad must live” and then repeating it to each other, you realize that Platt really isn’t going anywhere with the material. Indeed, by the time Eldrad is stomping around Kastria once more, even the ending isn’t much different from “The Hand of Fear” – it all feels strangely perfunctory, contributing to my sense that it wasn’t at all necessary to tell this story.
Despite that, it’s an enjoyable production. It never bogs down – Platt’s script is breezy and full of enough action to keep the attention – and it features some surprising characterization for Turlough. The reasons for his cowardice are sketched out in broad strokes that nonetheless make sense – he’s driven by a fear of failure more than almost anything else. You learn more about Turlough himself here than in all of “Kiss of Death,” pretty much, even though he spends most of the story possessed by various Kastrians and growing a gun for an arm. And that’s good, because you learn nothing about Nyssa or Tegan – Nyssa specifically gets almost nothing to do, except for a brief, unusual moment when she communicates with a beluga whale.
Peter Davison fits into the material without a hitch, leading to an amusing comment in the interviews that he’s been beating all of Tom Baker’s monsters for him. Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Mark Strickson once again recapture the easy chemistry that has marked their plays together. It’s also fantastic to hear Stephen Thorne return to the role of Eldrad, even though you don’t hear much of him until the fourth episode – but then, that was true of the original story, too. Ken Bentley directs well, and Wilfredo Acosta’s sound design is perhaps most interesting for a musical sting at the conclusion derived straight from the theme tune! Overall, “Eldrad Must Die!” is an entertaining enough piece of drama for what it is, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to its existence apart from giving the world a sequel to “The Hand of Fear.” Well, if that’s what you want…
Meh.
5/10