What is the truth behind the Edvard Munch’s Scream and what has it to do with the planet Duchamp 331? The Seventh Doctor and Ace investigate.
What is the truth behind the Edvard Munch’s Scream and what has it to do with the planet Duchamp 331? The Seventh Doctor and Ace investigate.
DUST BREEDING
Possibly the best-kept secret in the history of Big Finish came with their twenty-first release, Mike Tucker’s Dust Breeding. Unfortunately, the reputation of the play has been unfairly built around this surprise revelation, masking the many other flaws of the production. Not that this is particularly surprising, given the identity of the author, but this marks yet another misstep.
On a conceptual level, this story isn’t particularly bad, but it’s obvious that there are simply too many elements competing for attention. Between the Warp Core inhabiting The Scream, the various activities of the art dealers, the nature of the dust on Duchamp 331, the Master, and the Krill, there’s far too much going on, and Tucker can’t keep it all under control. Honestly, there’s no reason at all to feature The Scream, as its connection to the plot is spurious at best and it simply serves as an additional distraction, as well as an excuse for Sophie Aldred to scream a lot.
Furthermore, we’ve got the return of the Krill to look forward to. Of course, the reaction of most listeners will invariably be “what the hell are the Krill,” since most of them won’t have read Storm Harvest. So why did they appear? Well, according to The Inside Story, because they wanted to distract from the return of the Master and because Mike Tucker had built a Krill mask in his spare time. Is there any explanation for the Krill, save the most basic sort of info-dumping? Of course not. Is it possible at all to visualize them without the aid of the pictures in the liner notes? Of course not, because all they do is growl and snarl. Do they present a credible threat? No, because, while they do scare the hell out of the characters, they’re also scared away themselves by handfuls of dust.
Sylvester McCoy’s performance in Dust Breeding is best described as “perfunctory.” It sounds as though he hasn’t read the script before coming in, and he masks his confusion with the lines by overenunciating everything, rolling his “r”s, and varying the pitch of his voice to a ridiculous degree. Of course, Tucker generally writes a fairly terrible seventh Doctor, so it’d be stunning if McCoy was even *capable* of getting something good out of this, but his effort certainly doesn’t help.
Then, of course, there’s Sophie Aldred, who butchers the play with her ridiculous overacting. Tucker gives her nothing but annoying lines — her exclamation at discovering the Munch painting is risible — and she overplays them to a senseless degree. Even as she was screaming her head off at the conclusion of episode one, I was busy attempting to find a knitting needle to plunge into my eardrums to block out the pain. This is certainly not the finest hour for regular characters in Doctor Who.
Of course, the big secret of the play is the return of the Master, played as he was in The Keeper of Traken by Geoffrey Beevers. His portrayal of the character on television was wonderfully melodramatic, and it is no different here, as his character is almost 100% pure, malevolent evil. Yes, he’s got another ridiculous scheme to take control of the universe, but it’s somewhat believable given the way he plays it. Beevers’ confrontation with McCoy is somewhat let down by the Doctor, but Beevers’ performance is excellent throughout. Additionally, the part 2 cliffhanger is stunning — you’ll never see it coming if you haven’t heard it before. Granted, if you haven’t heard it before, and you’ve read this review, then you know, but… yeah.
As for the supporting cast, they’re mostly unnoticeable, though Caroline John adopts an absolutely ridiculous accent as Madam Salvadori. That being said, the accent didn’t bother me — she sounds like she actually possesses the accent, whatever it may be, and therefore her lines sounded convincing. Johnson Willis, though, is abysmal as Damien Pierson, a terribly-written lunatic that Willis decides to play as ridiculously effeminate. Quite why he made that choice, I may never know, but the listeners certainly regret it.
On the production side of things, Dust Breeding features yet another marvelous Russell Stone score. His compositions are continually excellent, and the score at the play’s conclusion is more of the same. Gary Russell does about as well as can be expected with the direction — one gets the impression he was unwilling to put his foot down over the actors’ decisions on how to portray their characters, for example. There’s nothing particularly distinctive about Gareth Jenkins’s sound design, as this is another “wall of sound”-type production. Still, the company should be saluted for its work on concealing the presence of the Master, and Clayton Hickman offers yet another exceptional cover.
Overall, Dust Breeding is a major misstep for Big Finish that has its flaws covered up by one of the most celebrated cliffhangers in Doctor Who history. Geoffrey Beevers’ performance notwithstanding, this simply isn’t very good — but that’s to be expected from Mike Tucker, who hasn’t produced anything good since Illegal Alien.
3/10