The Doctor and Mel arrive on the planet Puxatornee in the year 3060 and discover that something strange has happened to history.
The Doctor and Mel arrive on the planet Puxatornee in the year 3060 and discover that something strange has happened to history.
FLIP-FLOP
Written based upon the Black-White listening order.
After experimenting with a variety of narrative styles, Big Finish took their innovative year a step further: they produced a story whose innovation related partially to the plot itself and partially to the physical nature of the CDs upon which it was released. Jonathan Morris’ Flip-Flop is unique: neither CD comes first, as it can be listened to in either order. The packaging is constructed in support of this idea: instead of the standard jewel case, Flip-Flop comes in a cardboard sleeve containing two separate jewel cases, neither of which is labeled in any way to give the impression of coming first. But is the play any good? Yes, somewhat — though perhaps it’s indicative of the problems of attempting to push boundaries with every single release.
Flip-Flop contains some of the most detailed plotting ever seen in Big Finish thanks to the central time-travel and alternate-reality conceits which Morris has also explored in his BBC books. Though listening to one disc points the way toward what’s going to happen on the other, it’s fascinating to hear events building towards an inevitable conclusion. Additionally, the various conflicts underscore a simple, effective point: possibility is always more attractive than reality. This leads to an incredibly fatalistic feel: the listener is presented with, essentially, two alternatives, both of which lead to utter misery. This is a consequence of the format — it would be impossible to write a happy ending on one disc and still have it lead naturally back into the other one — but it makes everything seem incredibly pointless, especially since the tone of the play doesn’t match the script’s fatalist undertones.
There’s also a political discussion on display here with the Slithergee world: an alien race is shown to take over a world by guilting its inhabitants into conceding more and more land and power. Clearly, Morris isn’t a member of the politically-correct brigade — the concept of hate crimes, for example, must not appeal to him. Fortunately, he presents his arguments in comedic scenes which match the overall tone of the play: despite their power, the Slithergees really are quite silly, and their begging for mercy is amusing. Morris also introduces a number of continuity elements into the play; they’re quite amusing and unobtrusive.
After his understated and effective turn in Project: Lazarus, Sylvester McCoy is asked here to return to his more expressive season 24 persona. Unlike his performance in Bang-Bang-A-Boom!, McCoy keeps his acting in check, recapturing his manic earlier role without lapsing into silliness or poor line readings. Morris is a strong comedic writer and McCoy nails his performance, demonstrating some excellent comic timing and good chemistry with the rest of the cast.
Flip-Flop also marks Bonnie Langford’s third return to the character of Mel, and again, unlike Bang-Bang-A-Boom! she somehow manages to return to her earlier persona while remaining charming. There’s a fine line between an admirable Mel with a great deal of integrity and a thoroughly annoying and preachy Mel, and both Morris and Langford combine to create the first kind. There are also some nice continuity nods with this character, especially the “deceitful and dishonest” line which nicely subverts The Trial of a Time Lord.
Unfortunately, the supporting cast is almost totally insignificant. Stewart and Reed have the potential to turn into a great Doctor Who double act, but they’re rendered almost entirely as plot devices, acting only to generate the temporal paradoxes which drive the play. Francis Magee and Audrey Schoellhammer try to wring as much drama as they can from the roles, but it doesn’t really work. Bailey and Potter are ciphers as well, though Pamela Miles does decent work with the part. Trevor Martin, though, is superb as Capra, easily the best supporting character in the play.
David Darlington has really outdone himself with the sound design on Flip-Flop: it is exceptional. From the sound of snow underfoot and the work on the Slithergee voices and sound effects to the exciting and dynamic score, this is yet another triumph at the production level. Gary Russell offers his usual effective direction — this can be a difficult pair of regulars from whom to draw a solid performance but he does it easily. As mentioned above, the packaging is also effective — some have complained that it’s nonuniform but it’s close enough.
Overall, Flip-Flop is constructed almost entirely upon its structure, and this isn’t necessarily a positive. Fortunately, Morris has built this plot with a great deal of care, and everything holds together well — but this comes at the expense of characterization. The political references might also annoy, but that’s no fault of the author. It’s a fascinating play, and very well-produced, but one gets the sense that it could have been even better.
Improvements could start with the title.
Recommended.
7/10
“Ghettoes, Curfews? Sounds like they’re having a simply unwonderful Christmas time.”
Agendas.
Doctor Who has always fallen victim to them. From Barry Letts’ Buddhist peacenik agenda for the Pertwee era, to Eric Saward’s mercenary agenda, to RTD’s current atheist agenda (hint, it’s in the first scene in Torchwood’s pilot). It seems fashionable for fans to declare their left-wing credentials by slamming The Dominators for its pro-military right wing ethos whilst bigging up Warriors of the Deep as a potentially great, radical script sold short by production faults. Which is odd because it’s even more bullying and mean spirited in its pacifist appeasement message than The Dominators was in its message. It’s simply that the latter message is more in tune with those fan’s favour and politics.
It’d be nice if we could have avoided the point where the show really became a religion and its pacifist morality became dogmatic. But now that we’ve reached the point of no return, the best we can do is to embrace all agendas, and thus neutralise this cultish conformity of telling us what to think. It’s only fair and democratic for the show. So occasionally something right wing is needed to balance things out.
The Apocalypse Element somewhat danced with the asylum seeker issue in the most effective way by using refugees from the Dalek wars seeking sanctuary on Gallifrey. That said refugees turn out to be Dalek replicants hints that the writer could have a negative view of immigration, but it could equally be that they’re not interested in sermonising either way, but that they like playing on cynical paranoias to make the story scarier.
But Flip-Flop is blatant in its reactionary message. This is consistent with Johnathan Morris’ work, after all Bloodtide was a much welcome backlash against the peacenik appeasement messages of the previous Silurian stories. Flip-Flop is about political correctness taken to its nightmare conclusion of becoming an effective weapon of conquest that stifles and ties the hands of everyone. Where a troubled colony is being overran by alien immigrants who are gaining more and more power by pulling the race card and playing the victim. It’s a story about the letter of equality crushing the spirit of it. Indeed the way that the humans are reduced to sight guides to the Slithergees seems to be a deliberate metaphor for the blind leading the blind.
To be honest though, the abstract nature of this story in using aliens to represent immigrants makes it hard to imagine which, if any ethnic group Johnathan Morris personally has it in for. This is simply speculative fiction that takes current anxieties and runs with them. Doctor Who has always homogenised its alien cultures as merciless conquerors and shown the dangers of human gullibility and trust, something that Jubilee heavily critiqued. This is doing what’s traditional but for the modern world in exploding our worst fears and demons as a release of them. This is far more a reckoning and exorcism of issues we may have with the modern PC world than an actual preaching of BNP bullshit. Okay maybe Johnathan Morris does have a pro-BNP agenda but once something becomes art it becomes independent from the author’s interpretations, and the more artistically rendered it is, the more interpretations and possibilities it’s open to. And this story certainly paints a vast emotive picture.
Infact this is a story that aims to speak to as many listeners as possible. The gimmick of the Black Disc/White Disc was that each disc could stand alone. So much like Dalek Empire, this is being consciously written in the style of 70’s era Doctor Who where stories were specifically written to be engaging and understandable even to a random channel hopper who’d only tuned in halfway through the last eposide – that’s what makes the era so classic and why it’s so timelessly accessible even today. The 80’s era of course made no such concessions, since it was the beginning of the age of demographics. As such a single image from The Sea Devils of reptilian corpses rising to the side of a Navy Ship could instantly communicate the story’s meaning and morality about the blind, cavalier aggression of mankind’s military and our failure to understand the alien to even an ADD-suffering channel hopper, whereas Warriors of the Deep spends four episodes desperately and heavy handedly trying to sell its insincerely pious, hypocritical moral message and coming off as simply laughable or downright offensive. As we discussed in He Jests at Scars, the problem of the JNT continuity-driven stories is not so much in failing to explain elements from the past to a casual viewer, but failing to give them a reason to care. But Flip-Flop aims straight for the heart and gets us to care from the get go with an unmistakable and infectious mood of pathos, presenting us with characters that we immediately ‘get’ and we find ourselves with an immediate emotional stake in the story, and whilst much of the message is controversial, some of it is bound to strike a universal chord with everyone’s feelings of helplessness, of wasted words, futile efforts and of walking on eggshells and being stifled by the letter of the law of etiquette, and how in many ways authority is wielded crucially by instilling guilt in its subjects. In-fact if you were to look at it from a left wing perspective, the story’s depiction of a government using the current spate of bomb attacks to chop down on civil liberties could be seen as a lambasting of the Bush administration and the War on Terror.
This is a story that’s very much about the state of modern society, and the sad contradiction of living in a supposedly ‘enlightened’ age amidst violence and chaos and a pervading mood of injustice and helplessness, and a pessimism born of knowing that if this really is an enlightened age then all this mess really is as good as it’s going to get. Where TV from morning to midnight, from the Jeremy Kyle show’s nauseating diagnosis of the rotten state of modern Britain from a position of pathological narcissistic snobbery that would make even some the biggest egos in fandom blush, to Eastenders to Big Brother, constantly reminds us that we live in an age of no hope where human beings have lost the ability to live together harmoniously and have instead reverted to tribalism and apparently need the helping hand of a supernanny to restore them to civilisation. We also live in an age where the more we know and the more sense of entitlement to rights we have, the more we become stuck in a depressingly ubiquitous argument culture. Where peole can find all kinds of clever and cryptic ways to convolute, controvert and complicate serious issues to the point where the nastiest people can get away with the most hideous crimes because the ordinary people and victims just can’t be bothered protesting and arguing anymore over what should be a simple issue.
It uses its emotiveness well. It’s a deeply poignant, bittersweet Christmas story in which the Christmas snow is the result of nuclear winter and which bears stains of blood, and where the Christmas spirit of good will and charity to all has been taken advantage of and exploited. The nature of reactionary thinking is that there was once a mythlogical golden age, a time in living memory where people were happy and safe and had control of their lives. Flip Flop presents this world of perpetual helplessness and weak wills, and wasted years of bitter regret in the icy cold of a forever nuclear winter and thus makes the listener share in the character’s pathos and fixated desire for retroactive salvation, to go back to a time when people weren’t helpless and could make a difference. It’s that kind of emotional impetus to change history that He Jests at Scars completely lacked.
What’s perhaps cause for complaint is that the Doctor is probably at his most ineffectual here, reduced to a complete bystander and his only function seems to be to bring the Tardis to this world and make it ripe for hijacking. Mel has been an absolute revelation in the audios and is on brilliant form here, even though fans might be sceptical about her presence in such a serious story, she actually fits here like an anti radiation glove. When the Tardis is hijacked she reveals a particularly firey side of her personality (which will emerge again in The Juggernauts) and displays more guts in standing up to the hijackers than the Doctor does. But what justifies it barely is the way it poetically matches the all encompassing theme of helplessness. Like Genesis of the Daleks and Logopolis, the Doctor is presented as a slave to predeterminism.
It’s appropriate that their mission back in time leads them to a night when the well meaning president and her secretary were having sex. Whilst it may have been an excuse for the writer to indulge in X-rated naughtiness, there’s no better juxtaposition than sex and death, and it perfectly suits the mood of the play and almost seems to represent the last time someone in this world was happy, a warming memory coming to life before their eyes. Like the jailbreak in Creatures of Beauty, it’s an ecstatic, desperate burst of life in the middle of an environment of misery and spiritual death.
As with Dalek Empire III, the fatalistic conclusion will no doubt infuriate some. You can look at it as the logical conclusion of the story’s pessimism and view of the future as a Catch 22. But otherwise you might see it as not being a conclusion at all, simply a cheap cheat and obfuscation for the sake of it, made even more infuriating by the story’s post-modernist smartarse smuggitude, coupled with its sense of xenophobic superiority. But personally I find myself liking so much about the story, its beautiful saddening score and its history and world building, and how every character has such a rich past, that I tend towards the former. Maybe I’d even say that like Dalek Empire III, its story is so alive and full of history that it’s like real ongoing life and it can’t be constrained by narrative demands for an ending, and thus this inconclusive imponderable approach makes its world more real and memorable. Plus it gets in some pleasing fannish references to Quarks and infamous Billy-fluffs, and as a little fun exercise, try to see if you can spot the Groundhog Day reference.
It’s clear from the later McCoy audios like Dreamtime and Live 34 that Big Finish had tried to clean up its act to compensate for this story’s attitude to immigration, which is certainly laudable, and it represents how there’s always hope that there’s enough good messages in Doctor Who to cancel out the occasional bad one. But again this goes back to the point that the art can overcome the inherent meanness, as with the best vintage Robert DeNiro vehicles, like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Once Upon a Time in America. Put it this way, if you were to listen to this story after watching a 70’s exploitation film, whether it be I Spit on Your Grave’s vile misogyny or Coffy’s disturbing celebration of vigilanteism and black self genocide, Flip Flop would actually seem soul-cleansing by comparison.
Flip-Flop
Big Finish Productions, Main Range #46. 4 episodes. Written by: Jonathan Morris. Directed by: Gary Russell.
THE PLOT
The Doctor and Mel are in the middle of an unseen adventure, in which they are facing rampaging Quarks on a space liner. Quarks have a weakness: a type of crystal, found only on the planet Puxatornee. The plan is simple. Materialize on Puxatornee in the year 3090, grab some crystals, and head straight back to the space liner ot “quash the Quarks,” as Mel puts it.
Things prove to be anything but simple. From the moment they arrive, the Doctor and Mel experience a bizarre feeling of deja vu. Local officials seem to already know them as enemies, and are determined to capture them for interrogation. At first, they assume they are suffering the consequences of what their actions will be on a later visit. But when they start encountering two versions of the same people, they come to realize that something far more confusing has happened, and that for Puxatornee history has jumped the tracks in more ways than one.
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Still in Season 24 mode, but more in command of himself than has been the case in any (chronologically) earlier 7th Doctor story. In this story, the Doctor does very little clowning, particularly when he realizes things are wrong with time. He clearly takes time very seriously, and refuses to simply allow changes in the timeline even when he sees how bleak the future is for Puxatornee.
It’s ironic that both the Doctor and McCoy’s performance are so “in-control,” when the Doctor himself is as ineffectual as we’ve ever seen him. By the story’s very nature, the Doctor can’t actually do much of anything. From the moment he arrives on Puxatornee to the moment he leaves, he is simply reacting to events. His token attempts to stop Puxatornee natives Stewart and Reed from altering history don’t come across as much more than a token, and he seems uncharacteristically disinterested in helping the populace to do anything to change their horrible situation in the present. Put it down to his mind being on the Quarks, I suppose.
Mel: In previous reviews, I’ve raved about how well Bonnie Langford’s Mel works in her Big Finish stories. Langford is still very good here, and the 7th Doctor/Mel pairing works much better on audio than it did on television. One benefit of this story is that the Doctor and Mel are together for almost all of it, with no “splitting up” subplots to help pad the running time. Unfortunately, that leaves Mel in pure “tag-a-long” mode. She’s there for the Doctor to bounce dialogue off of, and gets a few good lines of her own… but as little as the Doctor does in this story, Mel does less. Our intrepid time travellers are basically observers for the length of this story, rather than full participants.
Villains of the Week: Daniel Hogarth voices the Slithergee, a race of alien refugees who, 30 years prior to the main action of this story, came to Puxatornee humbly requesting permission to set up a colony on the planet’s moon… or else. The Slithergee are the story’s best creation. They mewl and whine and wheedle pathetically, intoning “I am a poor, blind Slithergee” as a catch phrase to play up their apparent helplessness, even as they take over more and more and more of Puxatornee. When the human population has been reduced to squalor, occupying only about 10% of the planet’s surface and having no real future of their own save as “sight guides,” the Slithergee continue to cling to being a minority. “Being a minority has nothing to do with how many of you there are,” they insist. And yet they can also be quite sinister, as in the Slithergee leader’s final (chronological) scene. “For I am a poor, blind Slithergee,” is a bizarre line to hear when it’s said sadistically, but the context of the scene, the delivery, and the way in which it ends make for one of the story’s most memorable moments.
THOUGHTS
OK, so “The Planet of the Slithergees” is basically an extreme, hysterical right-wing vision of what will happen if you let the asylum seekers in/grant minorities rights/fill-in-the-blank as appropriate to your country. “They’ll take over, and then we’ll be the minority!” That element of the story probably is best taken as a satire of those views, rather than being meant to support them. Certainly, the Slithergee future comes across as an absurdist vision of hell, rather than a genuine pertinent warning.
Absurd enough that it’s actually quite funny, even as it’s disturbing. The two Slithergee episodes are definitely the strongest material of the story. In the order in which I tend to choose for the play (White/Black), these two episodes form the centerpiece of the play, which I think works quite well, with the two episodes set in the “Apocalyptic” future acting as bookends.
Though quite funny, this may be the bleakest Doctor Who story I’ve ever encountered. What we are given in this story is a planet whose human population has no future. In the Slithergee future, humans are practically a slave race, subject to increasingly strict regulation and summary execution for “Hate Crimes” (read: saying anything bad about a Slithergee). In the Apocalyptic future, the planet is a radioactive wasteland whose dwindling populace is slowly dying. Every human we meet is equally doomed in either future. And thanks to the time loop the story presents, the planet itself never progresses beyond 3090, going back and repeating first one variant of the 30 years of hell, then the other, with no escape possible.
Saward-like mercenary figures Stewart and Reed find each alternative worse than the other. The Stewart and Reed from the Apocalyptic future, once they see the Slithergee-dominated one, insist that at least in their version of reality they got to keep their dignity. The Stewart and Reed from the Slithergee future, once they see the Apocalyptic wasteland, insist that in their version of reality “at least there was a chance.” In a nice touch, both pairs of Stewart and Reeds, when they see the handiwork of their counterparts, are appalled at the senseless violence their other selves have perpetrated.
One thing that really struck me, listening to the story this time around, is that neither future was the “true” one for Puxatornee. Both futures are the result of time travel. President Bailey never gets the chance to give her answer to the Slithergee request. The Apocalyptic future results from the unprovoked attack launched on the Slithergee by Bailey’s unstable deputy… which happens after Bailey is assassinated by people from the Slithergee future. With no interference from the future, it is entirely possible that Bailey could have refused the request, or proposed an alternative to the request, without a war.
Meanwhile, the Slithergee future results from Bailey having the Fear of God put into her by the Stewart and Reed from the Apocalyptic future. “Give the Slithergee what they want… or we have no future!” With no interference from the future, it is entirely possible that Bailey could have acceded to the Slithergee’s initial requests without lurching into terror-led appeasement, doing whatever she sees as necessary to avoid war, no matter what.
The two futures we see are two extremes – an extreme war begun by a madman’s unprovoked attack vs. a slide toward slavery caused by extreme appeasement with no limit. In an interference-free reality, a center path may have been found that would have led to an acceptable future for Puxatornee. Which may bring home the Doctor’s warnings to Stewart and Reed about the consequences of interfering with the past. Puxatornee’s not only a planet with no future beyond 3090… They don’t even have a true future beyond 3060, because those final 30 years of either path simply are not the future they should have had.
So there’s no question that this story provides a lot of interesting meat for the viewer (well, listener) to digest. Clearly a lot of thought went into this script, and it’s extremely well-constructed. Particularly when we see background bits of Parts One and Two brought to the foreground in Parts Three and Four. It’s a very interesting story, and certainly worthy of good marks.
So why isn’t it a great story?
Part of it is something I’ve already mentioned. The Doctor and Mel don’t do much of anything. They literally provide a vehicle for Stewart and Reed to change the past, and then go back to see the future they’ve created. But they are pure passengers. They tour the two Puxatornees, taking in the two equally-horrible alternative realities, but they don’t even attempt to do anything. The Doctor is the Doctor. In any of his incarnations, he should be trying to help the oppressed humans regain their equality, and he should be trying to help the dying humans survive the dwindling supplies and radiation. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in doing anything, even to the point of dismissing Mel’s suggestion of leaving some kind of warning for the alternative Doctor and Mel. Are the Quarks really as distracting as all that?
Also, by nature of the story, the story you’re listening to climaxes at the end of Part Three. By either path, Part Four is simply a “reset” to the future you started with, existing to set up “the beginning” of your story. This leads to a limp final part, as the listener is returned to their original future variant, with the remainder of the running time simply setting up what has already been heard. A certain degree of tedium is inevitable, particularly in the much-less-interesting “Apocalyptic” future.
Still, it’s a very thoughtful script, carefully constructed and with plenty of interesting elements worthy of discussion. The “loop” structure may blunt the serial’s own dramatic potential to an extent, but it’s a brave attempt and a mostly successful one. Well worth a listen or two, in any case.
Rating: 7/10.