There’s something growing inside the Hothouse. Something that could turn back humanity’s tide. A voracious alien vegetable called the Krynoid.
There’s something growing inside the Hothouse. Something that could turn back humanity’s tide. A voracious alien vegetable called the Krynoid.
HOTHOUSE
The longer Doctor Who runs, and as more stories are created in an increasing variety of media, the more we’re going to see “homages” to earlier, popular stories. We’ve seen it in the new television series, and another example is found in Big Finish in Jonathan Morris’s “Hothouse,” a tribute to “The Seeds of Doom” in everything but name. Unfortunately, while “Hothouse” isn’t a poor audio, it fails to reach the impressive heights of its predecessor: rather, it is a curiously flat and uninvolving attempt to tell a modern-day Krynoid story.
It’s obvious from the start that this story aims to evoke the feeling of “Seeds:” there’s no TARDIS, the Doctor and Lucie (much like the fourth Doctor and Sarah) find themselves working for the World Ecology Bureau, and the story presents itself in the action-thriller vein. Morris apparently said he desired to give the story a “Spooks”-like feeling — not dissimilar from “Seeds,” which came from “The Avengers” and “Callan” writer Robert Banks Stewart. When “Hothouse” starts, it sounds like it could be something special: the pre-credits sequence is brilliant, asking a number of intriguing questions and compelling the listener to pay attention. Morris also attempts to make the story politically relevant: Alex Marlowe (Nigel Planer), the lead villain, isn’t a Harrison Chase-like psychopath, he’s just an over-enthusiastic environmentalist with crazy ideas about overpopulation. The script also changes the focus from the monster-in-the-shadows of Seeds to a body-horror approach, an idea which seems like it should keep the Krynoids fresh.
Sadly, the story doesn’t live up to the setup. Planer’s performance doesn’t give Marlowe nearly enough menace or charisma, leaving him an uninteresting villain. Harrison Chase may have been utterly one-dimensional, but Tony Beckley’s performance was so compelling that it outshined the script. And without a compelling central villain, one would naturally turn to the Krynoids themselves for threat, but Morris keeps them sidelined until the play’s final minutes. The result, as mentioned in the introduction, is an uninvolving production that never seems as dramatic as it should. Meanwhile, the politics on display could charitably be described as immature: Morris is clearly attempting to show us a near-future world where the environment has suffered more severe damage than what we see today, but the Doctor’s constant declarations that the human race has an amazing tendency toward self-destruction come across as patronizing rather than inspiring, while Marlowe is too crazy to be taken seriously in any way. Perhaps “Hothouse” was meant to satirize former rock stars who ignorantly take up causes beyond their brain capacities, but the script seems to take itself too seriously for that.
The body horror elements also don’t work as well as they should. While Lysette Anthony gives an exceptional, heartbreaking performance as the slowly-converted Hazel Bright, there’s nothing on display beyond the acting. It’s the sort of thing you’ll see in a million science fiction films and TV shows: the struggle to maintain one’s humanity as the conversion process continues, the painful loss of the memories of family members, etc. Again, it’s performed well, but it shares the uninspiring feeling of the rest of the script.
Fortunately, the production is first-rate. Paul McGann’s performance is surprisingly detached: it seems as though he’s working to regain his trust in humanity, and Lucie in particular, after centuries on Orbis. Sheridan Smith continues to appeal — the “enviro-mentalist” line really shouldn’t be as funny as she makes it. The only weak link in an otherwise-excellent cast is Adna Sablyich, whose performance as Ondrak is forced and flat. Martin Johnson’s sound design, meanwhile, is excellent: the sounds of the Krynoid are disturbingly effective. And Barnaby Edwards’s direction is effective, though the pace drags somewhat in the second part.
Despite the negative tone of this review, I didn’t dislike “Hothouse:” it’s solid, competently-made Doctor Who. It falls down in comparison to “The Seeds of Doom,” but so do most other Doctor Who stories. It also takes itself seriously, something which seems to be missing from other BF stories from the same period. Overall, then, “Hothouse” is worth hearing once — it’s just not the sort of story I plan to revisit.
6/10
I remember being really disappointed with Nigel Planer in this. Known in the UK for playing Neil in The Young Ones, he sounds like an older and more bored version of Neil in this. This strikes me as a complete waste of him as he is still associated with a character he played in the 80s. Whether he was asked to do this or whether he just played up to it, the result is the same. Unimaginative.
What makes it especially galling for me is that I have Planer reading the first 20 or so fully unabridged Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and he shows in those how versatile he is on audio. Capable of a number of different and very convincing voices and accents he is extremely articulate and I could listen to him read them again and again. But no, instead we get the hook for UK listeners of “Hey, we got Neil from the Young Ones, remember him?”
Sigh.