England 1912. A time of great social change. The Suffragette movement is lobbying for votes for women, and the skull of the so-called ‘missing link’ has been discovered in Piltdown. While Vicki falls victim to a strange influence, the Doctor and Steven investigate the fossilized remains. The Suffering has been unleashed. Can the travellers survive its rage?
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE SUFFERING
After breaking the mold in “The Criminal Code” with a companion never seen on television, the Companion Chronicles broke their own mold once again in Jacqueline Rayner’s “The Suffering,” the first entry in the series to feature two former companion actors and the first to be spread over two CDs. While half the story is humorous, the other engages with some of the most serious material to this point in the ranges – but unfortunately goes so far over the top that it’s difficult to take as seriously as it should be.
To begin with, the two-narrator format is incredibly successful, and it’s fantastic to hear Maureen O’Brien and Peter Purves performing together again. Rayner uses a frame similar to Andy Lane’s “The Mahogany Murderers,” with the two characters telling the story to one another and interjecting at appropriate moments. It’s not quite as elegant as Lane’s script – some of the interruptions feel forced – but when the two characters do interact, the camaraderie of their television relationship shines through to the fore. It’s also a nice way of spreading the story over multiple settings without requiring one narrator to be present in every single scene.
Steven’s half of the story is amusingly light-hearted, something that covers for the slight nature of the plot. He and the Doctor bumble their way around England, Steven engaging in madcap escapes from the police while stuffing an entire human skeleton into a carrier bag, the Doctor donning cap, scarf and goggles to recklessly pilot a motorcar on and off the road. It’s fairly generic period comedy, though fortunately Rayner’s flair for images makes the material funnier than it perhaps should be. But while the two certainly get into scrapes, not much else happens, and this is where the extra length of the story is entirely unnecessary – it’s dreadfully slow, something that shouldn’t happen in a range that uses brevity to its advantage.
But then we hit Vicki’s part of the story, a much more serious tale that uses the suffragette movement as a springboard for a parable about gender equality. Unfortunately, “crushingly unsubtle” is a charitable way of describing it. Rayner juxtaposes male attitudes of the time about women against an alien society’s similar attitudes about men to make the point that judging people by their sex is wrong in both cases. Her portrayal of the events on Earth is disturbingly accurate, depicting brutal treatment of female protestors by male police, and placing Vicki in the middle of it to bring the injustice home to the listener. These scenes are the best in the play, and rightfully so. That said, presenting the villain as a deluded psychopath does nothing to support the theme. For all their obvious flaws, those who opposed universal suffrage were not lunatics, frothing at the mouth demanding the serial executions of all women – so why is the villain written this way? Why, in a story that should really be about feminism, is the conflict resolved by a man lecturing a woman? Why is any deeper exploration of a difficult, important historical period subsumed in a tide that declares, obviously, “Discrimination is bad?”
I’m not even a huge fan of the production here. Lisa Bowerman’s direction is as good as always, but the sound design from Toby Hrycek-Robinson is lacking – I understand that it’s difficult to believably depict crowd noise on audio, but it’s jarringly unconvincing in this story despite taking up much of the second part. Overall, “The Suffering” goes from a lighthearted first half with nothing to say to a heavy second half that should really be smarter than it is. It’s a disappointment, in other words, and that shouldn’t happen in your first epic double-length story.
Not so great.
5/10