Tony Fyler feels a hunger.
If you’re looking for an
indication of tone for the last couple of seasons of Tom Baker’s time, the time
he shared with the Second Romana, you could do worse than to set a story in a
European city, with them trying to get some uninterrupted holidaying done. The
Labyrinth of Buda Castle, by Eddie Robson, takes elements of tone from the
likes of City of Death and particularly Shada, beginning with a case of garbled
Baker-Ward gibber that rivals the whole ‘May Week’s in June’ malarkey on a
Cambridge punt from the opening of Shada. As with previous story The Wave of
Destruction, the tone is determinedly in a Douglas Adams/Graham Williams vein,
and there is in fact something of Scarlioni or Skagra about the villain of the
piece – a creepy-voiced ‘vampire’ that manages to go about the place with a
name like Zoltan Frid and having absolutely no sense of humour about it.
In fact, let’s cut right
to the chase and address Zoltan Frid. He’s not from around here, but he does
enjoy several of the things that make a great vampire legend – skulking about
in the dark, draining blood and knowledge from his victims, turning them into
either parasites like himself or massive violent monsters, and he also has a
sense of suave grandiosity that fits him well both in terms of hanging about in
Buda Castle with its Dracula connections (Vlad the Impaler having once been
imprisoned in the titular labyrinth under the castle), and in terms of coming
up against late-stage Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, both of whom are quite prepared
to call his blood-drinking bluff and talk like aliens to an alien. Mark Bonnar
turns in a truly creepy vocal performance that was apparently inspired by
Mercedes McCambridge, who gave voice to the demon that possessed Regan in The
Exorcist. Bonnar’s work, like McCambridge’s, pays off majestically – while Buda
Castle is short in storytelling terms because of the format of the Fourth
Doctor adventures at Big Finish, Bonnar’s Frid stands proudly alongside Julian
Glover’s Scarlioni and Christopher Neame’s Skagra as a performance, giving
this story an almost polar opposite to the screeching, semi-hysterical villains
from the previous story, Wave of Destruction. Dismissive, sure of himself and
imperious as hell, Bonnar’s performance as Frid is rarely loud and shouty, but
is possessed of a low-key malevolence that deserves special recognition. We
hereby present him with the 2016 Project Torchwood Sword of Creepy Villainy. May
he wear it long and proudly.
What else does a story
from this period need? Well, it needs a plot, some characters to like, some
characters to kill, and some characters to redeem along the way.
Enter Celia Soames,
Vampire Hunter. This delightfully clueless Scottish girl on the trail of
‘Dracula’ when she runs into the Doctor and Romana, and she’s almost like the intellectual
Duggan of the piece. Kate Bracken, no slouch in geeky roles, makes Celia come
gleefully to life like a young Agatha Raisin, and her story arc is kept
interesting all the way to the end. Anjella Mackintosh brings a brisk
efficiency to Anita Kereki, a sociologist whose colleague, Miklos Garaber,
becomes the unwitting victim that draws the Doctor and Romana into Frid’s
affairs. And Peter Barrett is particularly effective as Guard-Major Priskin,
charged with keeping the public out of the labyrinth due to flooding and
general weirdness. Like Celia, he has quite a long and complex journey through
this story, and Barrett makes him a believable, flawed, realistic human, so we
care what ultimately happens to him.
In terms of actual
plotting, there’s a logical progression, certainly, but less that’s
conspicuously successful. There’s much beggaring about in the caves of the
labyrinth, a healthy dose of sci-fi science underpinning the mysticism of
Frid’s vampirism, and a pace that pushes the story that there is (the rise and
rise of Zoltan Frid) along well, so there’s never a chance to stand around
getting bored. There’s also some fun had with various vampire myths – climbing
unscaleable walls, passing unnoticed when he wants to, not being able to cross
running water and having a serious aversion to sunlight. For all the talk of
Dracula in this story, Frid’s awakening is taken straight from a later entry in
the grand blood-drinking mythos, The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice. But in terms
of plot, this is a story that seems to just be on the brink of really getting
somewhere and exploding into a great, peril-rich second act, when it’s undone
and ended by the Doctor and Celia in a handful of heartbeats. More than any of
the Big Finish Fourth Doctor Adventures in recent series, this story feels like
it should be part 1 of a two-disc release, as though there’s much more that
could have been made of Frid’s ascension, and the nature of what he actually
is, if he’s escaped at the end of episode 2. The ending, when it comes, has
elements of wonder about it – and leads us to endless speculation about how
close the Doctor is to the events of Warrior’s Gate and his eventual regeneration
in Logopolis – but at the same time feels overly convenient, as though Robson
was having enormous fun, and then realised he had half a page to wrap up the
second episode. Maybe that’s down to Robson, maybe it’s down to the direction
from Nick Briggs, maybe it’s down to a push for realism, in that sometimes,
plans that are too grandiose come to a grinding shuddering halt. Either way, it
feels like this story could have been a two-disc, four-parter, and it leaves us
wanting more of Zoltan Frid.
One to buy, then? Well,
the way 2016 has been treating ageing legends, you’d be foolish not to snap up
every crumb of Tom Baker you can get, but that’s damning The Labyrinth of Buda
Castle with faint praise. The tone of the story is dead on for the Second
Romana period, and Robson has written a villain, in Frid, that’s actively
interesting even when you strip him of all the vampire allusions. Add the
vampire allusions back in, and give him to an actor like Mark Bonnar and you’ve
got something that feels really quite special, and which, unlikely as it sounds
given the way the story ends, would be great to hear more of going forward. The
supporting cast are all solid, with Kate Bracken a standout as Celia Soames. If
the plotting feels like the first half of what should have been a longer story,
you can view it as being an unsuccessful two-parter or a great four-parter that
could-have-been. What it actually is is a great, memorable beginning
(and maybe end) for one of the Fourth Doctor Adventures’ stand-out villains to
date. More Zoltan Frid please, Big Finish. Somehow. There has to be a way –
after all, vampires always seem to die at the end of their movies, only to come
back again for a sequel. Go on – honour one more vampire trope and bring Frid
back for a second (ahem) bite.
Meanwhile, Fourth Doctor
fans, get The Labyrinth of Buda Castle now, for fun and drama on the Danube.
You won’t regret it.
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