Tony will not be
seeking the Presidency.
Probably.
Doctor Who that can get
unnecessarily tied-up in its own backstory. Whenever it does that, the hardcore
fans usually love it, because it repays them for their diligent, list-making
adoration.
Time In Office is a story
that will have hardcore anoraks’ hearts all aflutter. But, and here’s the
important thing, it’s also what’s known as a high-concept story – you can
reduce it to one line of premise and happily ignore all the history - so it
doesn’t shut any newcomer out.
The one line premise: Some
damn fool’s made the Doctor President of Gallifrey.
What you have then is a
story which plays with the conceit of the harshest critic of a political system
suddenly being thrown in at the deep end of leading that political
system. Welcome to CorbynWorld. Welcome to SandersWorld. Welcome, quite
possibly, to the end of the world as the Time Lords have ever known it.
Eddie Robson’s story kicks
off with the Doctor being dragged back home, forced into the robes of high
office and made to Do Things by a powerful faction of his fans among the Time
Lord high-ups – give speeches, oversee the rebuilding of the Capitol (there was
a battle – don’t ask, it’s covered in enough detail within the story),
introduce sweeping education reforms, go on diplomatic missions and so on.
Robson addresses all of these duties almost as mini-quests, while the Doctor’s
political friends and enemies make their various plans to enshrine him or oust
him or kill him more or less from the moment the robes are on. That mini-quest
element gives Time In Office the slightly disjointed feel of being a few
political short stories woven together, but they’re woven with a breathless
sense of pace and brio, and directed by Helen Goldwyn with enough panache to
sweep you along from one crisis to the next while behind the scenes, the big
wheels of revolution are turning.
There’s also a great sense
of fun in Robson’s script, played for all it’s worth by Fifth Doctor Peter
Davison and his gang, so for instance the dilemma of making big change to a
society where time travel is possible, and where there are agencies whose job
it is to make sure only the ‘right’ changes are made, delivers a certain amount
of ‘I anticipated your anticipation of the action I have yet to take’ farce
that’s mercifully resolved before it tips over into trouser-dropping tedium,
and diplomatic relations with a species of god are brought to a disastrous head
when some of their true believers pop round for tea. There are more such
incidents peppered throughout the run-time of Time In Office, but at its heart,
beneath all the fun and froth, there’s a reasonable political allegory of our
world, in terms of who is motivated to believe and support what, and why you
should probably keep an eye out on all fronts once you start to meddle in
politics.
You’ll undoubtedly get
more out of Time In Office if you’re a longstanding fan – there’s connectivity
and continuity up the wazoo for those who understand it, including the pleasing
reunion of Fourth Doctor companion Leela (played by industry favourite and
highly committed actress Louise Jameson) with the rather more mild-mannered
Davison Doctor, and her tying in to an entirely different Big Finish audio
series set on Gallifrey itself. But if you’re coming to Time Lord politics
entirely fresh, Time In Office absolutely has enough genuine skulduggery to
keep the House of Cards fans happy, while having its tongue set firmly in cheek
and its hearts in the older tradition of political satire. If anything, then,
Time In Office is Yes, Lord President – political farce with a solid vein of
satire on our times (and on slavish fandom itself) as the Doctor exposes the
truth of the Douglas Adams mantra that those who actually want political power
should on no account be permitted to wield it, while having quite a lot of fun
over the course of two hours that will reward a re-listen a year, five years
and ten years down the line.
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