The Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem find themselves stranded in a dimensional nexus where reality, morality and sanity no longer apply.
The Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem find themselves stranded in a dimensional nexus where reality, morality and sanity no longer apply.
THE AXIS OF INSANITY
Big Finish seemed to have settled into a comfortable pattern: follow a McGann season with a brilliant Marc Platt script. However, with the 2004 “new writer” policy, this was naturally impossible, and Doctor Who comic and Transformers writer Simon Furman was brought in to pen the first past Doctor release of the year. His offering? A bizarre, surrealist plot that attempts to represent the point holding together the various broken realities caused by alterations to history. Unfortunately, these ideas are wrapped in a thoroughly uninteresting plot, and the audio as a whole struggles to be anything greater than terrible.
So far, it would appear that comic writers struggle with the audio format. Alan Barnes’ DWM strips were well-received; his audio scripts to date have been terrible. Furman, meanwhile, fills the play with staggering imagery: giant, fire-breathing dragons, carnivals, jesters, a TARDIS graveyard! — but forgets to include convincing description or any sort of plot. What we’re left with is a tedious runaround in which almost nothing happens when the characters aren’t running around in circles telling each other how evil they are. There’s bad expositionary dialogue, the settings don’t really come across, the characters are poorly captured, and the conflict lacks any sort of tension. I’ve often said that boredom is the worst crime a Doctor Who story can commit, and this is yawn-inducing.
This is a shame, because buried in the script are some wonderful moments. The final confrontation, in which the Doctor explains the eccentricities of Time Lords, is brilliant. The final scene in the TARDIS graveyard is beautiful. The cliffhanger revelation of a Time Lord corpse at the end of episode three is terrifying. Furman has a knack for these sorts of scenes, and one is forced to wonder why an editor didn’t work with him to generate a better plot.
The acting in The Axis of Insanity seems poor across the board, and even Peter Davison shows a marked step down from his usual excellence. To my ear, he sounded bored and more sarcastic than usual, and distinctly unimpressed in his confrontations with the villain. True, he rises to the occasion when necessary — as above, the scenes at the end are magical — but I was surprised that not even the Doctor could draw me into proceedings. Still, a middling performance from Davison trumps good performances from many, as he still sounded quite natural in the role.
Nicola Bryant, on the other hand, fails to pass muster as Peri. Furman clearly doesn’t understand the character: this is a Peri we’ve never seen on television, on audio, or in the books: she’s forthright, argumentative, sarcastic, and jaded. How on earth does this character turn into the one seen in The Caves of Androzani? I understand that some liberties must be taken but this is pushing things too far. Bryant, meanwhile, seems to be voicing the character at a higher pitch than usual, and her accent is the worst we’ve heard it since Whispers of Terror — shockingly, for a character I usually like, she constantly annoyed me.
Erimem is all over the map in this play: she goes from chirpy and inquisitive to easily-offended to cunning to ignorant with almost no natural flow. Caroline Morris does what she can with the material, but it doesn’t sound as though she knows what approach to take. This has to be down to the direction; I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Doctor Who play with such wildly inconsistent regulars. It’s a shame, too, because there’s some good material for Erimem in here: learning to read, learning about other Time Lords, and basically saving the day on her own — plus Chicago references always make me happy.
Many have lauded Garrick Hagon’s performance as the Jester, but I found it utterly irredeemable. It’s a bad ripoff of Mark Hamill’s Joker; Hagon’s too old to be cackling like that, as his voice wobbles badly when it should stay strong. At least he has some charisma, which is more than can be said for Liza Ross, who fails to convince. Marc Danbury is likable as Tog, but the character is thinner than the paper CD insert. Only Roy North impresses as the Overseer, so of course he gets killed off.
The sound design is masterful. Gareth Jenkins impresses yet again, as he’s asked to create a surrealistic land of fictional/alternate realities purely out of sound and somehow manages to succeed. He even makes the Firebreeds scary, despite a lack of any support in this regard from the script. Andy Hardwick’s music is excellent as well, perfectly capturing the intended mood of the various scenes. I’ve made the Gary Russell’s-direction-directly-proportional-to-script-quality argument before, and here it’s readily apparent: this is a poor script, and the performances are hesitant at best all around.
This would never have been a great BF release, as it’s working against too many negative factors. But it seems as though nobody wanted to rise to the occasion: despite some excellent sound design, the performances are about as poor as the script. One of the most disappointing Doctor Who audios I’ve ever heard — and having no idea going in just made it worse.
3/10