A bizarre manifestation in the Control Room forces the TARDIS onto the Plutonian shores of the irradiated world Nevermore, whose sole inhabitant is the war criminal Morella Wendigo – a prisoner of this devastated planet. But the Doctor and his new companion aren’t Morella’s only visitors. Senior Prosecutor Uglosi fears the arrival of an assassin, after the blood of his prize prisoner. An assassin with claws.
NEVERMORE
“Oh no,” I thought, “they’re not seriously going to center a cliffhanger around the sound of a house cat meowing, are they?” Yes they are, and that accurately represents the whole of Alan Barnes’ nonsensical “Nevermore,” a paean to Edgar Allan Poe that neglects to be especially dramatic or about anything in particular.
I complained about this way back in my “Zagreus” review, but it holds true here: it is insufficient to pay homage to something through references alone. Multiple minutes of this script are devoted to long, direct quotations from Poe’s writing, and yet the relevance of these quotes is entirely literal. References to “The Mask of the Red Death?” There’s a plague literally called the Red Death. The Doctor needs to recite multiple stanzas of “The Raven?” Done to force a group of robotic guard ravens – who chant “Nevermore!” over and over – to stand down. How about a literal recreation of “The Pit and the Pendulum?” I could go on, but the point is clear: this is the sort of self-consciously literary script that seems in large part intended to demonstrate the author’s familiarity with the source material. This is borne out in the bonus material: the desire was apparently to pay homage to the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era by visiting a “Poe planet.” Crucially, nobody says why this is a good idea, and the actors discuss the Poe homage by saying they noticed characters saying “Nevermore” a lot. But they all have American accents, because Poe was American! Even Hinchcliffe’s pastiches were more subtle than this, guys: had Barnes written “The Brain of Morbius,” I suspect we would have learned about the ancient, evil Time Lord President Frankenstein.
This is also the first opportunity we have to spend time with new companion Tamsin, as she spent most of “Situation Vacant” playing a part. Naturally, she’s largely wasted, spending much of the action sidelined, but we do learn a couple of things: first, she’s apparently fantastically stupid, running after a cat into a dangerous alien base like a horror movie heroine; second, she’s impossible to rattle. This is her first TARDIS trip, after all, and even though she’s nearly killed by poison gas, deceived into thinking she’s been buried alive and nearly dying as a result, and confronted with a man brutally mauled by a murderous animal, she rebounds in subsequent scenes as though nothing happened. She does point out that “today’s not been a laugh a minute” at the end, though – you don’t say! When Barnes did this same thing with Charley, her smugness made it profoundly irritating; here, at least, it’s merely inexplicable.
I’m an admitted sucker for atmosphere, and that’s one thing “Nevermore” has in spades, thanks in large part to the sound design from Matthew Cochrane and score from Jamie Robertson. The Poe-themed hallucination sequences are effectively creepy, and I regretted the Doctor so rapidly defusing them. The setting is a prison planet containing a terrible war criminal, one whose name the Doctor can barely speak. The limited music accompanying her appearances is quite effective, and Fenella Woolgar does her best to imbue the character with an underplayed menace. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convey a sense of threat through vocal performance alone, and the script does nothing to help. It’s difficult to share in the Doctor’s disgust when all we see is a woman who seems rather bored, and his immediate decision to let her go at the conclusion makes you wonder if she’s really even that bad. Nicholas Briggs’ direction plays the atmosphere to the hilt, but this approach combined with the script borders on self-parody.
Lastly, there are more hints toward the season arc – there’s definitely a rogue Time Lord about, and it’s still a bit unusual after six years of the new TV series to hear about direct, recent Time Lord involvement in planetary affairs. I’m still interested to hear where this is going, but missteps like “Nevermore” just shouldn’t be happening at this point in the game.
Not recommended.
4/10