The Eighth Doctor finds himself aboard the ill-fated R101 airship and meets Edwardian adventuress, Charley Pollard.
The Eighth Doctor finds himself aboard the ill-fated R101 airship and meets Edwardian adventuress, Charley Pollard.
STORM WARNING
After getting their feet wet with fifteen audio plays featuring past Doctors Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy, Big Finish unveiled their greatest coup: contracting Paul McGann to perform in a series of original eighth Doctor plays. While the past Doctor plays were inherently limited due to the known fates of the regular characters, these new plays would carry no such restrictions. Furthermore, they would serve as a forum for McGann to demonstrate why he was cast in the role in the first place — fans would finally have more than ninety minutes of eighth Doctor to enjoy. Because of these factors, it is not unreasonable to call Storm Warning the single most important Doctor Who story between the TV movie and new series premiere episode Rose — and much like BF premiere offering The Sirens of Time, Storm Warning is a complete failure in almost every measurable dimension.
The pre-credits sequence, featuring the Doctor standing at the TARDIS console and yelling a lot, may be the worst scene in the entire history of Doctor Who. It’s utter trash, McGann waffling on about events the listener is entirely incapable of perceiving in their mind’s eye. When I first listened to Storm Warning, I almost switched it off, and my reaction this time around was no different. Alan Barnes has absolutely no idea how to write for audio — which shouldn’t surprise anyone given his background in writing the Doctor Who comic strip and the statement in Inside Story that he “thinks in terms of images” — and this is apparent throughout the play. Whenever anything important happens, the characters don’t simply react, they stand around telling each other about it first. Sure, there are intriguing little set pieces, such as the scenes with the “mysterious passenger” — but these are completely undercut with the absolutely woeful dialogue.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the alien Triskele are some of the most boring aliens ever seen in Doctor Who. Sure, the everything-in-threes idea is interesting, and the subversion of the alien warriors is somewhat amusing, but what brings them down along with everything else? Every time we see them, they’re standing around telling the other characters things! How are the Uncreators defeated? By being roared at! This, of course, prompts cliched, embarrassing scenes of people who wouldn’t otherwise roar being convinced to overcome their fear/embarrassment. Episode three is especially poor, seeming to last about six hours and being filled with Star Trek-caliber material — and not even good Star Trek material — wherein we explore and learn to respect an alien race.
Yet despite the ludicrous mountain of factors working against him, Paul McGann somehow manages to turn in an excellent performance as the Doctor. After hearing this performance, using the term “breathless enthusiasm” no longer works for the fifth Doctor, as this is exactly how McGann’s Doctor is played. He’s enjoying every minute of his adventure, pausing to express delight at beautiful sights and sounds, and it’s a delight to hear. Seeing this performance on television would have been wonderful, but it’s still great to have McGann back in the role. Even in the diabolical opening scene he’s incredibly Doctorish — this is an incredibly skilled actor who slips back into the role as though he’d been playing it on television for years.
On the other side of the coin, we have India Fisher’s Charley Pollard, who managed to irritate me after about only ten seconds of screen time. I grant that this is a personal preference, and that Fisher may in fact be playing the role exactly as scripted, but I absolutely cannot stand overly enthusiastic, overemotional people, and Charley’s constant, insufferable smug cheeriness just makes me want to slap her. This is much easier to take in other audios written by talented authors, but here she’s just as annoying as everything around her.
The supporting cast are, at least, fleshed out in surprising fashion, as Barnes’ script develops them as clichés but then subverts those same clichés by allowing them unusual in-character behavior. Gareth Thomas is particularly good as Tamworth, while Barnaby Edwards is sufficiently menacing as Rathbone. Helen Goldwyn, though, just annoys as the Triskele, but that’s hardly her fault, given the quality of the character.
Discussion of the production must begin with David Arnold’s new theme arrangement, and it is rather impressive — though in McGann’s first season of plays, it’s a bit too muddy and effects-ridden. Episode one is a bit disconcerting as well — when I first heard the play, I thought the five-second theme “sting” at the very start was the entire thing! The production of Storm Warning specifically is, as always, excellent, with Alistair Lock’s sound design lending an epic, big-budget feel to proceedings. His score is a particular delight, arguably the best of the releases thus far. Gary Russell’s direction does what it can with the material, but one would suggest that Russell’s failure came when he commissioned the script in the first place.
After falling flat on their collective faces with The Sirens of Time, Big Finish recovered to release a number of impressive plays in its first fifteen releases. The advent of the first McGann season, though, demonstrated that BF hadn’t learned a thing from its initial mistakes, causing the first McGann play to take its place as the worst thing the company had released to that point. Almost totally irredeemable, and made worse by the fact that one must possess it if one is to understand the McGann arc, I cannot in good conscience recommend Storm Warning to anyone for any reason save the performance of McGann himself.
Then again, the cover is nice.
2/10