BF33: Neverland
In which the problem is the execution.
Released: June 2002
Listened: May 2021
I listened to a couple of Big Finish audios, out of some sense that I wouldn’t be doing this properly if I didn’t at least *glance* at the company that has by now made, I believe, 98% of all extant Doctor Who. I chose Zagreus, as their 40th anniversary offering: that meant I really had to listen to the story that leads into it, too, so... let’s get it over with.
You can see the BF mafia reaching for the right ideas. A season finale; the idea of the monsters being the consequences of the goodies’ past crimes; the question of how far the Doctor would go to protect his companion; it ending on self-sacrifice... These are all beats the new show would do, better. [Writer Alan Barnes has some really good ideas. In synopsis this might sound quite good.
But... it’s shit. F*cking hell it’s shit. At the most basic level the people making this do not have the ability to turn those ideas into functional drama. They just don’t have the craft. It’s far too long. There’s no sense they understand when technobable is an acceptable way of advancing the plot or creating a macguffin, and when it’s just a load of old nonsense.
And the acting! For most of this, Paul McGann is the best thing in it, which is damning. Lalla Ward [Romana] and India Fisher [Charley] both suck, obviously, but the guy playing the recurring Time Lord of mild inconvenience, Vansell, does a very good job of showing why his entire career has been shit like this: the argument about whether Gallifrey should use its power has the potential to be interesting, but he just can’t sell it. When Don Warrington arrives for his extremely brief turn, you suddenly realise how dependent Doctor Who is on having Proper Actors to sell this shit, because he can do it.
Anyway. I long ago lost the part of my brain that hated BF on the principle that it was anti-book/not commissioning my mates/the domain of The Evil One... but this is just really really dull. There’s the grain of a good story here, but they just don’t have the skills to turn it into one. Meh.
Other thoughts:
Rassilon is basically the kindly god/father of the Time Lords here. I sort of like the dualism, that sometimes he’s that, sometimes he’s a ruthless time bastard.
Interesting how in this period everybody knows the book continuity even if they hate and/or are trying to overwrite the books, e.g. Romana becoming president happens in Blood Harvest/Goth Opera, and is just taken as read by BF, they don’t bother coming up with another explanation for how she gets out of e-space that I’m aware of?
They really should have given at least some thought to what the concept of “anti-time” meant.
Rolled straight on to Zagreus. Next up.
Of all things shit and Big Finish (of which there are a great many), you *chose* Zagreus? You poor silly bugger.
I remember it being better than it was. This time, thirty seven years later, I spent the first third wading through Eric’s sub-Adamsian toss waiting for the TARDIS crew to turn up and when they did, they did the square root of fuck all.