Jason Kane is going to Hell and back on an impossible quest to stop a man with the powers of a god.
1 Comment
Tom Swift
on May 9, 2016 at 3:45 AM
The End of the World
Or the last confession of Jason Kane.
I don’t know how shocking it was when this play was released that Jason Kane would leave the series. Perhaps it was known that the uniformly excellent Stephen Fewell wouldn’t be returning (this is my final chance to point out that the casting of him was just as inspired as the casting of Lisa Bowerman as Bernice) but it may not have been known that Jason would die, horrifically and brutally, at the hands of someone particularly special. Either way I won’t mince around the spoilers as the events here are pretty important to understand the direction the series takes a year later.
Jason Kane, as a character, is something of a conundrum for writers. He can play three potential roles; the loyal companion (something he quite definitely isn’t) with Bernice as the lead role, a fallible troublemaker whose mistakes will drive the story forwards or a separate lead who overtakes Bernice and disrupts everything going on around him. As he doesn’t fit naturally into the first role, writers have struggled to balance the other two and it rarely comes naturally. The last time it happened, in the Tartarus Gate, the story suffered almost impenetrably from this indistinction between the main characters, although there were admittedly some other serious issues.
However this, as evidenced by the cover, is the first time that the range has finally bitten the gun and embraced Jason’s independence fully. And it’s completely deserved…
This story is about the direction the range is taking, bringing some things that have been happening in the background to the fore, is about technology and waffle (some things Dave Stone are renowned for) but it’s also about a touching tale of horrific child abuse and self fulfilment. It’s about a man looking back at his past, trying to work out if he’ll be judged worthy or not, making peace with himself and going out with a bang.
To do this Dave Stone reintroduces us to Mira, a daunting character played with excellent panache by Caroline Lennon. You (I) may not know Mira of old but we get a good introduction to the character here, and she ably plays both an interesting foil to Jason’s self indulgence and secondly an important plot twist later on. Not to be outdone by Jason’s tale of self pity she has her own personal defences up, keen to deflect attention away from her own peculiarities and onto Jason.
And, yes, the surface story is fairly opaque, as is right to reflect Jason’s convoluted back-story. Dave Stone ambles and meanders, refusing to get directly to the point. At the start there is a fairly excellent discussion about the recording medium and how it alters the written product. Starting with an archaic word processor as an example he tells an amusing anecdote (deliberately bereft of any sort of punch line) that serves as an important comparison to this story. The method of telling it is everything, and we have the accept that things are missing, that no matter how hard you try to pierce the message we aren’t going to get the full picture.
Which is, of course, exactly what has been happening to the Bernice Summerfield range for the last four years. Something has been building in the background, slowly but surely, we’ve been heading for trouble. We thought that it had happened with the Crystal of Cantus, but that was only one step…
Don’t let anything distract you from the characters at the heart of the story. So far I have praised Simon Guerrier, at the helm at this point, for penning stories where the plot follows the characters not the other way around. Of course with a story like ‘The Summer of Love’ where the story is sex and politics that was almost inescapable. However here, deftly managing years of back-story, concepts like fractured time and changes to multiple timelines, reintroducing complex characters with years of backstory with a lightness of touch and no need for explanation, a douse of middle class child abuse and a generous heaping of self indulgence, everything is precisely down to the characters. Real characters.
You don’t need to understand absolutely everything to feel the menace Irving Braxiatel represents when he makes threats. You don’t need to have been following closely for the last years to understand why he’s making them. But it does help…
Throughout there is excellent acting, sound design, music, writing, palpable tension… All I can say here is that the ‘final’ confrontation between Jason Kane and Irving Braxiatel is one of the most morbid scenes Big Finish has ever done.
Be ready to have your heart broken.
The End of the World
Or the last confession of Jason Kane.
I don’t know how shocking it was when this play was released that Jason Kane would leave the series. Perhaps it was known that the uniformly excellent Stephen Fewell wouldn’t be returning (this is my final chance to point out that the casting of him was just as inspired as the casting of Lisa Bowerman as Bernice) but it may not have been known that Jason would die, horrifically and brutally, at the hands of someone particularly special. Either way I won’t mince around the spoilers as the events here are pretty important to understand the direction the series takes a year later.
Jason Kane, as a character, is something of a conundrum for writers. He can play three potential roles; the loyal companion (something he quite definitely isn’t) with Bernice as the lead role, a fallible troublemaker whose mistakes will drive the story forwards or a separate lead who overtakes Bernice and disrupts everything going on around him. As he doesn’t fit naturally into the first role, writers have struggled to balance the other two and it rarely comes naturally. The last time it happened, in the Tartarus Gate, the story suffered almost impenetrably from this indistinction between the main characters, although there were admittedly some other serious issues.
However this, as evidenced by the cover, is the first time that the range has finally bitten the gun and embraced Jason’s independence fully. And it’s completely deserved…
This story is about the direction the range is taking, bringing some things that have been happening in the background to the fore, is about technology and waffle (some things Dave Stone are renowned for) but it’s also about a touching tale of horrific child abuse and self fulfilment. It’s about a man looking back at his past, trying to work out if he’ll be judged worthy or not, making peace with himself and going out with a bang.
To do this Dave Stone reintroduces us to Mira, a daunting character played with excellent panache by Caroline Lennon. You (I) may not know Mira of old but we get a good introduction to the character here, and she ably plays both an interesting foil to Jason’s self indulgence and secondly an important plot twist later on. Not to be outdone by Jason’s tale of self pity she has her own personal defences up, keen to deflect attention away from her own peculiarities and onto Jason.
And, yes, the surface story is fairly opaque, as is right to reflect Jason’s convoluted back-story. Dave Stone ambles and meanders, refusing to get directly to the point. At the start there is a fairly excellent discussion about the recording medium and how it alters the written product. Starting with an archaic word processor as an example he tells an amusing anecdote (deliberately bereft of any sort of punch line) that serves as an important comparison to this story. The method of telling it is everything, and we have the accept that things are missing, that no matter how hard you try to pierce the message we aren’t going to get the full picture.
Which is, of course, exactly what has been happening to the Bernice Summerfield range for the last four years. Something has been building in the background, slowly but surely, we’ve been heading for trouble. We thought that it had happened with the Crystal of Cantus, but that was only one step…
Don’t let anything distract you from the characters at the heart of the story. So far I have praised Simon Guerrier, at the helm at this point, for penning stories where the plot follows the characters not the other way around. Of course with a story like ‘The Summer of Love’ where the story is sex and politics that was almost inescapable. However here, deftly managing years of back-story, concepts like fractured time and changes to multiple timelines, reintroducing complex characters with years of backstory with a lightness of touch and no need for explanation, a douse of middle class child abuse and a generous heaping of self indulgence, everything is precisely down to the characters. Real characters.
You don’t need to understand absolutely everything to feel the menace Irving Braxiatel represents when he makes threats. You don’t need to have been following closely for the last years to understand why he’s making them. But it does help…
Throughout there is excellent acting, sound design, music, writing, palpable tension… All I can say here is that the ‘final’ confrontation between Jason Kane and Irving Braxiatel is one of the most morbid scenes Big Finish has ever done.
Be ready to have your heart broken.
10 / 10