Friday, 8 September 2017

Big Finish Reviews+ Signs and Wonders by Tony J Fyler


Tony Fyler is wonder-ful.

For those just joining us, Hex is dead.

Hex, the Scouser nurse from slightly in our future who stood a chance of being something extra special to Ace, but then normalized their relationship to one of bezzie time-travelling mates, is dead.

Hector, on the other hand – who may or may not be Hex’s personality and body re-animated by an Elder God and purged of its Hexish memories – up and about like nobody’s business, back to traveling with Ace and the Doctor, but doing it, from his point of view, the first time round, and doing it in his own very distinct style, while Ace gets a bit puppydog about the fact that he’s Hex…which, as far as he’s concerned, he isn’t.

With us so far?

Good, good.

A trip back to Merseyside is in order then, because clearly, you’re the unflappable sort who doesn’t confuse easily.

Welcome to Signs and Wonders.

Signs and Wonders has a fairly straightforward premise front and centre – there are evangelistic types on the Mersey, prophesying the end of the world. Nothing new there, and the slightly disconcerting thing is, one day they’ll be right, and unbearably smug about it.

What if that day is today?

Weird lights in the sky, earthquakes, power cuts, you name it, it’s being visited on the unfortunate souls of Liverpool and the surrounding boroughs, to the extent that Lucas Stone, former celebrity, now apparently doomsday cult leader, is getting a flock of supporters for his idea of partying like it’s 1999.

The thing that’s particularly interesting – and which makes Matt Fitton’s script more easy to listen to than you might expect against such a doom-laden backdrop – is that almost nothing is what you expect it to be in Signs and Wonders. From the premise, you could make an educated guess at the story you think would unfold: aliens manipulating the weather, for the purpose of enslaving some humans for some diabolical reasons of their own, through the auspices of religion.

Signs and Wonders is way better than that, and way more…Seventh Doctor, to boot. Then, just because it can, it even turns its fundamental Seventh Doctorishness on its head, and gives you elements you’d expect, but twisted in some cases a whole 180 degrees.

It’s genuinely difficult, beyond that, to tell you much about Signs and Wonders that won’t spoil it for you. The cast is top notch, with Warren Brown as Rufus Stone and Jessica Martin as the Reverend  Janet Green outstanding on different sides of a religious divide, only one that crackles with a Seventh Doctor Olde Timey ultimate battle vibe. And when you find out what really is going on in Signs and Wonders, it slaps you upside the head like a lemon thrown by an orang-utan – refreshing in a somewhat painful way, but you have to give them points for their aim.

It’s worth mentioning too that this is the last in the chronological run of Hex-or-Hector stories. There’s an ending here, an ever after, though whether or not it’s a happy one would of course be telling. But for Hector, there’s a homecoming, a chance to pick a side, pick a destiny, face his fears, his faith and his future. Oh and of course, meet God. Or at least a god.

For the Doctor, there’s the battle as usual, but flipped first on its head, and then somewhat sideways, because when signs and wonders fill the sky and stalk the earth, it’s probably a good idea to note which god does what before you go picking fights.

And for Ace, there’s an ultimate disappointment, a loss, a gain, and a kind of reconciliation to life after…well, life, if nothing else. In Signs and Wonders, Fitton gives us perhaps the most Seventh Doctorish script it’s possible to write, while actually delivering something cleverer than that cliché, more complex than straight line storytelling on TV would ever allow.

Signs and Wonders will leave you surprised, with a pulse rate pounding, and having confronted life, death, faith, reason and at least a couple of forms of love – one of which turns out to be the most surprising, and arguably the most wonderful, thing of all.

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