Tony Fyler
dodges a bullet.
There
are points throughout Doctor Who’s history where spin-offs become possible.
Some have been realized, others not yet. 1985’s Remembrance of the Daleks
screamed ‘spin-off’ right from broadcast, its team of three humans fighting the
combined Dalek threat alongside the Doctor and Ace having the distinct air of a
‘Web of Fear proto-UNIT’ about them – Group Captain Ian ‘Chunky’ Gilmore,
Professor Rachel Jensen and Dr Alison Williams were well-characterised, rounded,
real people, and when the Doctor and Ace left them behind, there was always
the sense of them having lives beyond their involvement in the Doctor’s life.
That’s how you can tell a natural spin off point – if you can imagine the
characters going off to have adventures of their own, that’s a spin-off point.
But
still, before you commit resources to writing and recording stories for them,
any group of spin-off characters needs a try-out, and that will usually be a
story which allows them to show off their potential, but which probably still
includes the Doctor in some way, to carry the weight of ‘omnipotent alien with
a plan’ plotting, in case such a thing is necessary.
The
Intrusion Countermeasures Group – Gilmore, Williams, ministry man Sir Toby
Kinsella and maybe, at some point, Jensen – were given their try-out in The
Assassination Games, the third Big Finish story celebrating fifty years of
Doctor Who, the so-called “1963” stories. In terms of personal reaction, I was
looking forward to the Peter Davison and Colin Baker outings in the trio, but
not particularly the McCoy entry, not being the biggest of his fans. Both the
first two though disappointed by padding and a moderate insanity of plot.
McCoy’s The Assassination Games managed to keep the story reasonably tight all
the way along, and I was forced to concede it had ‘won’ the trio.
Because
it’s both a Counter-Measures origin story and a Seventh Doctor story, the trick
is in giving everyone enough to do, without spinning the story out for hours
and hours and making the listener lose the will to listen. That’s why you give
such a story to a writer like John Dorney. He establishes the tone, the period
and the nature of the action rapidly – a new kind of nuclear missile, the
Starfire, can cause solid amounts of devastation, but leave relatively little
fall-out and minimize the shockwave effect. And Britain has it. The chance to
break the nation out of its post-war post-imperialistic doldrums and set it on
the path to world power status beckons, and then people start getting shot –
assassinated in ways that elevate the tensions around an already highly-strung
nuclear chessboard.
There
are nuclear agendas, nuclear protestors, political sex scandals (this being
1963, the year of the Profumo scandal is shamelessly, even joyfully worked in,
with a ‘good-time girl’ sleeping with both a Minister for Defence and a Russian
spy), some fantastic undercover work from both Ace and the Doctor (the Doctor’s
reveal in particular is delicious). There are basements full of alien tech,
there are hyno-zombies, and there are creepy alien illuminati who combine
elements of The Faceless Ones, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Bodysnatchers and the
Darwinian nightmare of parasitoid wasps – so, pretty grim, all in all. But more
than all of this, there’s a solid sense of period here, and of the potential of
what Counter-Measures could be: perennial Big Finisher Hugh Ross adds to the
Counter-Measures team we know with a smooth, polished performance as Sir Toby, the
ultimate Westminster mandarin, while there’s something entirely logical for everyone
to do within the storyline – Alison the duffle-coated idealist going undercover
with Disarmament Now, Jensen giving the semi-official once-over to the armament
stores of the arms manufacturer du jour, Sir Gideon Vale, Gilmore chasing down
assassins and saying ‘What the devil-?’ a lot – it sets out a manifesto that
says ‘This bunch could sustain an adventure series on their own, once the
Doctor bogs off in his blue box again.’
While
Dorney and veteran Big Finish director Ken Bentley keep the plot cracking along
and reasonably tight, there’s also enough about the plot that’s absolutely
barking mad, in the style of the great ITC adventure serials of the 60s and 70s
– Danger Man, Department S and yes, The Avengers – and adds that element of
demented invention to the stall that The Assassination Games sets out for a
potential Counter-Measures series. Without being too spoilerific, threads of
conspiracy and the potential replacement of key personnel lead to
doppelgangers, double lives and a potential third world war between America and
Russia – nothing like upping the stakes! It plays in to the paranoia of the
age, but also delivers enough realism in the characters’ lives and dialogue to
make you buy into the potential of the story and the show.
In
some ways, The Assassination Games is the inversion of Remembrance of the
Daleks, in which the Counter-Measures team (in embryo) were strong enough, but
played second fiddle to the Doctor and Ace’s battle with the Daleks. In The
Assassination Games, the Doctor and Ace are strong enough, and crucial enough,
while playing second fiddle to the Counter-Measures team, meaning that once
it’s over, you don’t immediately think ‘I could listen to more Seventh Doctor
right now,” but rather “I could listen to more with that Counter-Measures team
right now.’
Fabulously
of course, you can – the original Counter-Measures team went on to have four
whole series of adventures. 2016 has seen the special bridging story, Who
Killed Toby Kinsella?, which will kick off The new Counter-Measures, a
reinvention of the concept for the villains of the 1970s. Time Will tell
whether the Counter-Measures team can stand up to the that multi-coloured
decade.
But
back in 1963, The Assassination Games works well – barking and realistic,
finely balanced yet crackingly paced, bridging the gap between the
extraordinary Remembrance of the Daleks and the spin-off it deserved.
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