Jo Grant is shocked to find most of her colleagues are missing. Then she discovers that the Doctor has inexplicably changed.
But there’s no time to worry about it, as she and her misplaced Time Lord friend are whisked to the mysterious Delphin Isle on a matter of national security. There, they encounter a disturbingly odd form of local hospitality and learn of a highly classified incident that took place during the Cold War.
Why exactly have they been brought here? And what is the truth concerning the bodies in the harbour and the vast project being undertaken beneath a cloak of secrecy?
THE DEFECTORS
It’s the run-up to Big Finish’s 200th monthly Doctor Who release, and that means it’s time for a celebratory trilogy! The concept for this one – described as “Locum Doctors” – substitutes the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors into stories intended for the First, Second, and Third Doctors. The first of these, “The Defectors,” substitutes Sylvester McCoy for Jon Pertwee. That’s a fascinating idea, replacing the most upright and honor-bound Doctor with the one most likely to betray his morals in service of the greater good, and it’s fertile ground for whatever writer Big Finish assigned to… oh, it’s Nick Briggs? Never mind.
“The Defectors,” quite frankly, is a waste of time. It spreads one episode of material over four and ignores everything interesting at every turn. It drags interminably and never captures the attention. It almost completely wastes the substitute Doctor idea. In short, the Doctor and Jo are sent to a mysterious island where everyone is acting strangely and need to figure out what’s going on. You’d expect Pertwee to shake his captors at the earliest opportunity to go exploring, so McCoy’s decision to hide in plain sight might be interesting. Unfortunately, the best Briggs can come up with is the aliens eventually getting tired of putting up the pretense of being human and just telling the Doctor what’s going on. And it’s not like the Doctor uses his towering alien intellect in order to deceive them into revealing their secrets – it’s staggeringly obvious that something strange is going on, and all the Doctor does is point out all the flaws. This is supposed to be interesting? Meanwhile, Jo wanders around with Shedgerton (David Graham) and discovers that yes, aliens are indeed involved, while Briggs makes sure to capture the spirit of the Pertwee era as closely as possible by having her point out the obvious at every possible turn.
The thing is, the central idea of the story isn’t that bad. It’s hardly original, but it nicely avoids stereotypical Doctor Who plotting: the aliens aren’t evil, they’re defending themselves against unwarranted human aggression, and all they want to do is leave and find an empty planet to live on. This is undermined quite a bit by the decision to make them into comedy aliens with incomprehensible voice filters, but perhaps that was the fault of a novice director who… wait, it was Briggs again? Oh dear. Moving on, everything builds to a final decision by the Doctor: will he allow the aliens to escape, thus dooming the entranced humans they leave behind, or will he allow UNIT to arrive and gun down the defenseless aliens? This is a recipe for good drama, but it could have been even better had the previous three and a half episodes actually mattered in any meaningful sense. Instead, we’re left to reflect about how this Doctor’s thinking differs from his predecessor’s – indeed, as Jo says, “My Doctor wouldn’t do that!” All well and good, except I’m forced to wonder: wouldn’t he? I can’t really see Pertwee grabbing the radio from Jo and declaring “Come on in, Mike, and kill ‘em all!” If anything, I think the difference is that the Seventh Doctor is willing to make the choice in the first place, whereas most (if not all) of his other incarnations would have tried to find a third way and save everyone. That’s just my theory, though, as of course it’s not present in the script.
Even the production isn’t great. The performances are first-rate, especially McCoy’s, and that’s down to director Briggs, but we already discussed the decision to cloak the aliens in incomprehensible effects. And while the sound design from Joe Kramer (Kraemer?) is solid, the score is jarring and doesn’t really fit the piece. Overall, “The Defectors” involves a lot of pointless running around before finally getting slightly interesting right at the finish. It does nothing particularly useful with the “Locum Doctors” concept; it captures the Pertwee era only insofar as that era could be plodding and predictable; and it’s a return to the terrible form we’ve come to expect from the monthly range. Looks like we’re in for another wonderful Big Finish anniversary celebration.
Bad.
3/10