The universe is in grave danger. The Doctor and Lucie may have to sacrifice everything to save it.
1 Comment
Styre
on May 7, 2016 at 9:56 PM
VENGEANCE OF MORBIUS
After a weak start to the second “season” of McGann audios, Big Finish seemed to hit its stride: strong release after strong release followed, and while none of them seemed particularly significant, all were well-written and well-produced. Finally, in the penultimate release “Sisters of the Flame,” Nicholas Briggs offered a dramatic end to the season: the impending resurrection of Morbius, one of Doctor Who’s greatest villains. The conclusion, “Vengeance of Morbius,” wraps up the season — but in sadly predictable fashion, it’s utterly disappointing.
“Vengeance of Morbius” is a tale of two halves. The first half, continuing the story from “Sisters of the Flame” up until the resurrection of Morbius, is decent enough — while it treads water somewhat, including an interminable sequence with the Doctor and Lucie inside a dispersal chamber, there’s still an adequate sense of impending doom. We’re told that the Time Lords are terrified of what might happen if Morbius is resurrected, and as his resurrection seems inevitable, it’s a matter of waiting to see just how bad things can get. The scenes between Zarodnix (Kenneth Colley) and Straxus (Nickolas Grace) are suitably dramatic, and the Sisters Haspira (Nicola Weeks) and Orthena (Katarina Olsson) are clearly desperate to see it stop.
Unfortunately, this tension doesn’t extend to the regulars. Lucie has no idea what’s going on, and the Doctor doesn’t seem concerned at all that Morbius could be resurrected. Indeed, once the evil Time Lord (Samuel West) is brought back, his initial conversation with the Doctor is completely tension-free: the Doctor mocks him incessantly, quoting from Tom Baker and proclaiming that Morbius doesn’t have the ability to go off conquering worlds. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this as a listener: as I’m pulling for the Doctor to win, if he’s not intimidated all, why then should I be? Briggs puts a major foot wrong by making the Doctor so blasé about the situation — but then things get even worse.
West gives a good performance, but the Doctor’s criticisms seem well-founded at the beginning: there’s no apparent reason to think Morbius is a threat, since he never actually does anything other than stalk around and announce his impending glory. So Briggs has the Doctor and Lucie take an unexpected trip a decade into the future, where, inexplicably, Morbius is now once again a galactic emperor, who has been conquering star systems at will with his unstoppable army of Trell. There’s no cause given for this, no sense of scale, just the writer’s word that the bad guy is now a major threat, based on nothing but his reputation. We see no scenes of Morbius as a leader, no reason to understand why people are intimidated by him, nothing.
Nonetheless, we’re presented with this character as a threat, and now there has to be a means of stopping him. What does Briggs come up with? Why, if we can deactivate the stellar manipulator that is the source of Morbius’s power, we’ll unlock his temporal protection and enable the Time Lords to undo the past ten years! At this point, I was wondering if Briggs was attempting to write his own version “Last of the Time Lords” — minus the drama and thematic resonance. Sure enough, the Doctor has a fistfight with Morbius — punctuated by absolutely horrible descriptive dialogue from the characters watching — and the day is saved, and the Time Lords undo everything that happened.
Except, of course, that the Doctor and Morbius fall from a convenient platform to their apparent deaths. Shades of Holmes and Moriarty, I guess, but again, nothing given in the drama to make this thematically appropriate. Sheridan Smith provides the one resonant moment in the play, as she beautifully plays Lucie’s distraught reaction to the Doctor’s “death” — but this lasts barely a couple of minutes. And yes, there’s a cliffhanger after the credits, but by that time I could honestly say I didn’t care what happened next. We know the Doctor’s not dead, we know Lucie’s not dead — it would be fantastically stupid if she was killed — so where’s the hook? Is there any reason to expect this will be picked up and put to surprisingly good use whenever the third season rolls around? I think not.
At least the cast is competent. Despite the wrong-footed tone, I enjoyed listening to the back-and-forth between McGann and West, and Smith gives one of her best performances in the series. Alexander Siddig is completely wasted: his character, such an important and entertaining part of “Sisters of the Flame,” is reduced to a hollow shell in a scene that wants to be poignant but, much like the script around it, falls flat. Grace gives an excellent performance — Straxus is possibly the only character that evolves naturally through all the events of the play. The sound design and music from ERS are decent but unmemorable, and Briggs’ own direction keeps the pace up, at least.
Every time Big Finish screws up a landmark release or fails to properly close a plot or series, I complain about it, and list their past failures. That list is getting too long to repeat, but you can certainly add “Vengeance of Morbius” to it. It’s undramatic to the point of being boring, it completely wastes the return of a memorable classic series villain, and its attempts to shock merely annoy.
VENGEANCE OF MORBIUS
After a weak start to the second “season” of McGann audios, Big Finish seemed to hit its stride: strong release after strong release followed, and while none of them seemed particularly significant, all were well-written and well-produced. Finally, in the penultimate release “Sisters of the Flame,” Nicholas Briggs offered a dramatic end to the season: the impending resurrection of Morbius, one of Doctor Who’s greatest villains. The conclusion, “Vengeance of Morbius,” wraps up the season — but in sadly predictable fashion, it’s utterly disappointing.
“Vengeance of Morbius” is a tale of two halves. The first half, continuing the story from “Sisters of the Flame” up until the resurrection of Morbius, is decent enough — while it treads water somewhat, including an interminable sequence with the Doctor and Lucie inside a dispersal chamber, there’s still an adequate sense of impending doom. We’re told that the Time Lords are terrified of what might happen if Morbius is resurrected, and as his resurrection seems inevitable, it’s a matter of waiting to see just how bad things can get. The scenes between Zarodnix (Kenneth Colley) and Straxus (Nickolas Grace) are suitably dramatic, and the Sisters Haspira (Nicola Weeks) and Orthena (Katarina Olsson) are clearly desperate to see it stop.
Unfortunately, this tension doesn’t extend to the regulars. Lucie has no idea what’s going on, and the Doctor doesn’t seem concerned at all that Morbius could be resurrected. Indeed, once the evil Time Lord (Samuel West) is brought back, his initial conversation with the Doctor is completely tension-free: the Doctor mocks him incessantly, quoting from Tom Baker and proclaiming that Morbius doesn’t have the ability to go off conquering worlds. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this as a listener: as I’m pulling for the Doctor to win, if he’s not intimidated all, why then should I be? Briggs puts a major foot wrong by making the Doctor so blasé about the situation — but then things get even worse.
West gives a good performance, but the Doctor’s criticisms seem well-founded at the beginning: there’s no apparent reason to think Morbius is a threat, since he never actually does anything other than stalk around and announce his impending glory. So Briggs has the Doctor and Lucie take an unexpected trip a decade into the future, where, inexplicably, Morbius is now once again a galactic emperor, who has been conquering star systems at will with his unstoppable army of Trell. There’s no cause given for this, no sense of scale, just the writer’s word that the bad guy is now a major threat, based on nothing but his reputation. We see no scenes of Morbius as a leader, no reason to understand why people are intimidated by him, nothing.
Nonetheless, we’re presented with this character as a threat, and now there has to be a means of stopping him. What does Briggs come up with? Why, if we can deactivate the stellar manipulator that is the source of Morbius’s power, we’ll unlock his temporal protection and enable the Time Lords to undo the past ten years! At this point, I was wondering if Briggs was attempting to write his own version “Last of the Time Lords” — minus the drama and thematic resonance. Sure enough, the Doctor has a fistfight with Morbius — punctuated by absolutely horrible descriptive dialogue from the characters watching — and the day is saved, and the Time Lords undo everything that happened.
Except, of course, that the Doctor and Morbius fall from a convenient platform to their apparent deaths. Shades of Holmes and Moriarty, I guess, but again, nothing given in the drama to make this thematically appropriate. Sheridan Smith provides the one resonant moment in the play, as she beautifully plays Lucie’s distraught reaction to the Doctor’s “death” — but this lasts barely a couple of minutes. And yes, there’s a cliffhanger after the credits, but by that time I could honestly say I didn’t care what happened next. We know the Doctor’s not dead, we know Lucie’s not dead — it would be fantastically stupid if she was killed — so where’s the hook? Is there any reason to expect this will be picked up and put to surprisingly good use whenever the third season rolls around? I think not.
At least the cast is competent. Despite the wrong-footed tone, I enjoyed listening to the back-and-forth between McGann and West, and Smith gives one of her best performances in the series. Alexander Siddig is completely wasted: his character, such an important and entertaining part of “Sisters of the Flame,” is reduced to a hollow shell in a scene that wants to be poignant but, much like the script around it, falls flat. Grace gives an excellent performance — Straxus is possibly the only character that evolves naturally through all the events of the play. The sound design and music from ERS are decent but unmemorable, and Briggs’ own direction keeps the pace up, at least.
Every time Big Finish screws up a landmark release or fails to properly close a plot or series, I complain about it, and list their past failures. That list is getting too long to repeat, but you can certainly add “Vengeance of Morbius” to it. It’s undramatic to the point of being boring, it completely wastes the return of a memorable classic series villain, and its attempts to shock merely annoy.
A waste of time.
3/10