What is the significance of the tolling bell? What connects 2197 with 1952? Time’s End is approaching for the Doctor and Evelyn.
What is the significance of the tolling bell? What connects 2197 with 1952? Time’s End is approaching for the Doctor and Evelyn.
THE NOWHERE PLACE
I realized something in my brief research for this review — I’ve never been a big fan of Nicholas Briggs’ Doctor Who audio writing. His earlier work — adapted primarily from old AudioVisuals plays — suffered from a constant problem: an inability to connect his rather brilliant character work and attention to detail to an overarching plot. I haven’t heard the Dalek Empire series, so I cannot comment upon it, but it was only with “Embrace the Darkness” that his work began to improve. That was a thematically-consistent play with a logical if necessarily disappointing ending, but it indicated good things on the horizon. “Creatures of Beauty” was the good thing, a brilliant piece which used its fractured narrative as a tool rather than as a gimmick. Unfortunately, “The Nowhere Place” is a bit of a step back — though incredibly atmospheric and scary in the early going, it attempts to tackle too much and collapses upon itself at the conclusion.
It is entirely fair to say that nothing much happens in the first two episodes, but to Briggs’ credit (and it is entirely his credit, as he wrote, directed, and designed the play) the atmosphere never flags. Briggs tends to write stories taking place on dank, unforgiving spacecraft, and the Valiant is a suitably claustrophobic environment. By setting up the military order of the ship and its crew, Briggs creates a menacing sense of dread when he shows that order slowly collapsing under the influence of the mysterious door to nowhere. The station bell is a wonderfully creepy harbinger of doom, and the sound design perfectly indicates when one character can hear it but others cannot. Colin Baker’s terror at the beginning of the play is unnerving enough, but when Evelyn begins to hear it as well, “The Nowhere Place” becomes truly gripping stuff.
Curious, then, that the tension is undercut by the third episode’s trip back in time to the locomotive Ivy Lee. This is a necessary part of the plot, and one supported by the conclusion, but it’s particularly odd to see the Doctor and Evelyn go from fighting for their lives to pretending to be ticket-takers and passengers on a train. The comedy is humorous enough, but a more sinister undercurrent would have been effective. Regardless, this gives way to episode four, where things go wrong. Let it first be said that Briggs’ threat — a pre-human Earth species, cast into the end of time due to a navigational error, and condeming all future Earth races to a similar fate — is perfectly fine in concept, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The Doctor is stunned at their motive — pure jealousy — and so was I, as it struck me as a bit too simplistic for the story. It’s also an example of an overly-epic concept: the first two episodes are effective because characters we know are threatened, but the conclusion, featuring billions of lives of millions of races being crushed to death in an end-of-time crucible, is just beyond comprehension, and certainly beyond portrayal with a few sound effects. Furthermore, the construction of the final scenes in the so-called nowhere place leaves much to be desired: essentially, the threat is defined, explained, and resolved by Colin Baker yelling a lot of descriptive dialogue.
“The Nowhere Place” features some fine performances from its cast. Baker and Maggie Stables are on fine form as always, though Baker goes a bit over the top at the climax, shrieking “THE CLOISTER BELL!!!” and making me giggle. Martha Cope’s Captain Oswin seems one-note at the beginning, but as the play progresses Cope admirably portrays a character desperately trying to maintain control in an impossible situation. The rest of the Valiant’s crewmembers are mostly interchangeable, with only John Schwab’s XO standing out as unconvincing. John Killoran and Briggs provide a fine double-act in the bizarre third episode, showing both Palmer’s suspicion and Ridgely’s naïveté.
As mentioned above, Briggs’ sound design is excellent, giving the spaceship a claustrophic sense of threat, the train an eerie sense of calm, and the “nowhere place” a lot of odd noises and echoes. The music serves the story without overwhelming it. Briggs’ direction is also top-notch: while I have my complaints about the story’s conclusion, “The Nowhere Place” never flags, nor does it become boring, nor do the actors run away with the script. Given Briggs’ many talents, it is unsurprising that he is able to combine them all into a unified whole, and I commend Big Finish for allowing him to produce his own scripts in this fashion.
Overall, I enjoyed “The Nowhere Place,” but I was disappointed with its conclusion. A bad ending doesn’t necessarily kill a story — certainly, the atmosphere of the opening episodes was first-rate — but it does let it down, putting into question the decision to listen to it in the first place. I was hoping for the next “Creatures of Beauty,” but instead I got the next “Embrace the Darkness” — a decent, entertaining story, to be sure, but one with sufficient flaws to prevent it from reaching the top shelf.
Recommended, with reservations.
7/10