The TARDIS takes the Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie to a flooded underground town on an alien world. The streets are empty. The houses are bare. Not a trace of life.
The miners working here are vanishing. And it isn’t long before the time-travellers are suspected of being responsible for the disappearances. But even the authorities haven’t fully realised the scale of the problem.
There’s something else on this world. Something dragging people away. And it won’t stop until it’s taken them all.
THE EARLY ADVENTURES: THE OUTLIERS
The second of this year’s Early Adventures comes from Simon Guerrier, which is always a good sign. “The Outliers” brings the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie to an underground mining town on an alien planet, and slowly builds the suspense into an interesting, if morally questionable finish.
I’ll start with the setting, which is fantastic. The TARDIS lands on a mining colony, which is so massive that it constructs housing in each excavated section to house additional workers and increase productivity. There’s no sky, just a massive rock ceiling far above, and everything exists in what must be a perpetual state of gloom. Deep in the colony, the streets of one of its towns are flooded, and the houses are empty. Naturally, there’s an alien creature abducting people, and just as naturally the Doctor and his companions are thought responsible for the disappearances. In this way, there’s very little that’s unexpected about the story – it’s much like “The Savages” or “The Sensorites,” where the humans turn out to be the bad guys and the alien outsiders turn out to be the victims.
There’s one particular twist that complicates matters, however. We discover that the alien creatures living in the water have been taking the human miners, and we also discover that they have been doing so because they feel threatened by the human intrusion onto their world. The mining technology, in fact, is quite capable of wiping them out entirely. But rather than capturing the humans and holding them captive, the aliens, in a desire to learn more about their “enemy,” have been dissecting (vivisecting?) them. The Doctor stumbles upon a room full of human body parts, organized into piles by type – and it’s implied that thousands of people have disappeared in this manner. Given that most of those that disappeared were, presumably, ordinary mine workers, it’s remarkably cold how quickly the story writes them off in the interests of sending everyone home happy. Neither the Doctor nor his companions seem particularly bothered by the slaughterhouse – I don’t mind stories where an evil villain gets his or her just desserts, but these are largely innocent victims. I don’t mind exploring this idea, either, but at least half of one episode should have given over to this moral debate if this was the direction they intended. Instead, it’s brushed aside as the story rushes through the denouement in typical Troughton-era fashion.
Of course, if there was a ton of incident in the story and there wasn’t room for such a debate, I’d understand – but this is one of the slowest-burning Big Finish stories in recent memory. And it works quite well: Toby Hrycek-Robinson’s sound design skillfully uses silence to enhance the creepy nature of the script, while the moments of action spring out effectively at the listener. Guerrier’s characters, while drawn from archetypes, are hardly one-dimensional; even the “villain,” Richard Tipple (Alistair Petrie), is operating from conflicting and interesting motivations. This isn’t surprising, given that Guerrier remains one of the best writers in the Big Finish stable, but it’s always nice to hear stories like this set in an era that didn’t like to focus too much on its characters.
The regular cast is fantastic as well. Frazer Hines plays the Doctor, of course, as well as Jamie, and his Troughton impression is simply effortless by this point. Anneke Wills handles the bulk of the narration, which plays to her strengths, and Elliot Chapman continues to acquit himself as a superior Ben Jackson. Add in Lisa Bowerman’s fine direction and you’re looking at a very strong story. As above, the ending raises questions that were perhaps unintended, but that’s the only flaw in an otherwise intriguing script and excellent production.
Highly recommended.
8/10