Tony’s stuck in the
middle with you.
What do we do with old
people?
Let them rot? Waste away
with their dwindling memories when we judge they can’t be productive anymore?
Ship them off to a chronologically-convenient Dignitas when they become a
burden on the State?
Those are questions that
seem to have been the starting point for The Middle, the latest Sixth Doctor
audio adventure from Big Finish. Writer Chris Chapman though expands on his
initial theme, creating a society that works as a social satire of all kinds of
stereotypes within our culture.
On the planet Formicia,
society is regimented – the young (those up to the age of 35) get to swan about
having fun with no responsibility. The next 35 years are spent in ‘the Middle,’
a giant Kafka-esque version of Heaven, supposedly doing all the real work, but
for the most part watching the young. And once you hit 70, the Biblical
three-score-and-ten years allegedly ‘allotted’ to human beings, you move on
from the Middle to the inevitable End.
Into that environment,
Chapman brings the Sixth Doctor and his two latest friends, 19 year-old Flip
Ramon (nee Jackson), and, on her 35th birthday no less, Leading WREN
Constance Clarke, previously at World War II cipher-cracking station, Bletchley
Park. The fact of it being Constance’s 35th birthday is highly convenient
to the story, as it allows the three to be separated early on – Flip sentenced to
a life of spa treatments and all-night parties, Constance to the Middle, and
the indeterminately-aged, but significantly older than 70 year-old Time Lord
straight to whatever the End might be. There are some twists and turns there,
and we won’t spoil them for you, but suffice to say, there’s more to it than a
sci-fi Dignitas, and consent is not really key to the experience. Each of our
time travellers finds allies in their quest to re-unite and get off the
topsy-turvy world of Formicia, but along the way, they feel it incumbent on
them to take down The Middleman, Formicia’s very own Big Brother, who even goes
to the trouble of providing an alien invader they can fight to distract
themselves from problems at home (thank you, Mr Orwell).
It’s an interesting
dystopia, Formicia, because for a lot of people – indeed, for the people the
Sixth Doctor encounters in the End – the societal model that gives freedom to
young people, work and worth to the middle-aged and ageing, and the genuine
attractions of the End to the elderly could really work. That leaves Chapman
pushing hard to show us what’s wrong with the model, which is the lack of
fluidity and consent – there’s no going ahead or coming back within this
strictly ageist society – in order to justify the Tardis team’s actions in
destroying a whole way of life for a whole biodome, leaving only the messiness
of choice and democracy behind them.
What The Middle delivers,
ultimately, is Classic-style four-part Doctor Who that works some surprises
into its storytelling, but which is for the most part powered along by some
epic performances – Sheila Reid adds another to her collection of ‘feisty old
bats you don’t want to cross’ here, and Mark Heap is excellently
moustache-twirling, if vocally unrecognisable, as the Middleman. The three
principals, Colin Baker, Lisa Greenwood as Flip and Miranda Raison as Constance
are increasingly gelling into an all-time favourite ‘full Tardis’ team, and The
Middle allows extra levels of separation to show their dynamics in different
lights. It’s a story that delivers everything you think it’s going to, and then
an additional spin on some social questions to boot. If the ending grows untidy
when we uncover what Formicia really is, who the Middleman is working for and
why, it’s only a small quibble because up till that point, The Middle delivers
enough topsy-turvy, philosophically interesting but stolidly-paced ‘find a
friend and work on getting back together in defiance of all the rules’
adventuring to satisfy most listeners. Above all, The Middle feels like it
would fit in with TV Baker Doctor Who – it has rather more in common with
stories like Vengeance On Varos than the inclusion of Sheila Reid’s voice, in
that you can imagine Formicia being made of mostly plywood sets. Does it
actually answer the questions it sets out to ask? Perhaps not in any real sense
– the actual solution that awaits old people at the End would be monstrous were
it to be real. But if nothing else, while sentencing the young to a kind of
enforced vapidity, The Middle goes out of its way to show that older people
should remain a vital part of our society, and that they’re capable of much,
much more than our society currently allows them to be.
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