Tuesday, 5 December 2017

Big Finish Reviews+ The Tenth Doctor Adventures, Volume 2 by Tony J Fyler


Tony’s getting smug and bouncy all over again.

The Tenth Doctor divides audiences but for some, the rent-a-gob cheeky chappie with a spine of steel will always be their ideal, go-to incarnation of the world’s favourite Time Lord.
The second series of modern Doctor Who, which paired incoming Time Lord David Tennant with Rose Tyler, is loved and loathed by hardcore fans in equal measure, bringing a soap opera quality to the drama, and a hip, flip, bouncy, smug energy to bear on the format of Doctor Who.

Big Finish, for its second set of Tenth Doctor adventures, has paired Tennant back up with Billie Piper as Rose and thrown Camille Coduri’s Jackie Tyler into the mix just for fun.
Tennant pours himself back into the Time Lord’s gym-shoes easily, and Piper recaptures the chirpy, occasionally snide but always courageous, running-away-from-home-to-see-the-universe voice of Rose Tyler, so there’s nothing about their performances that feels off-kilter – itself a remarkable feat ten years down the line.

Scriptwise though, things are a little less perfect.

There are three tales here, one in the ‘present’ of 2007, one in the past, and one in the future, and the box set grows less effective as it goes on.

Infamy of the Zaross by John Dorney, is an idea that works well in 2017 – alien invaders who aren’t what they claim to be, but want the infamy the invasion will bring them. It’s a parable of modern celebrity which allows Tennant, Piper and Coduri to each have moments of power and purpose – there’s Tenth Doctor ranty, ‘I am angry now!’ speech here, while Jackie Tyler gets to punch an alien, and Rose gets to Be Sympathetic to a fellow human who feels they need celebrity to be something. As audio adventures go, it’s a full-tilt energetic run that feels in keeping with some of Russell T Davies’ bouncy stories from back in the day.

The Sword of The Chevalier, by Guy Adams, does everything you could really want of it, and still ends up feeling too long. In Adams’ adventure, we get to play at chivalry and transgender politics with the Chevalier d’Eon in 1791. This is actually a celebrity historical story, and the Chevalier is the celebrity – someone who was classed by society as both a man and a woman at different times in their life, and who was also a master swordsman and spy, well worth a Google if you have the time. Into the Chevalier’s world comes the Consortium of the Obsidian Asp – a gloriously Russell T Davies name for a villain with an interesting nature, an arch sense of its own superiority and a penchant for slave trading. Rose, the Doctor and the Chevalier set themselves to the task of exposing the Consortium, and there’s a logical reason why the adventure turns into an all-out sword-fight in its later stages.  Nevertheless, the Consortium has a fairly obvious weakness, and it’s one the Doctor knows before they arrive on 18th century Earth, so much of the toing and froing and dying in The Sword of The Chevalier could have been avoided by the Doctor opening his mouth earlier than he does, giving the story a sense of being ultimately much touche about nothing.

The Ice Warriors are back in the third story, Cold Vengeance by Matt Fitton, bringing their eternal dilemma with them: how do you do something with an Ice Warrior beyond what it’s good at. They’re excellent at waking from hibernation and killing people. Doing more than that with them, particularly in a closed-off environment, is tricky. Cold Vengeance stays close to their comfort zone, giving us a base-under-siege story of a giant space-based frozen food centre, awakening Ice Warriors, third generation space pirates, quite a lot of running around and a faithful management computer. As an example of the art of the base under siege, it’ll keep you entertained for an hour, and there’s a twist in the ending which plays with the Ice Warrior honour-codes to good effect, while acting as a poignant satire on hardened attitudes to immigrants in our own society. All of which works well, but leaves you with the sense of Ice Warrior déjà vu in terms of its central plot.

The Tenth Doctor, Volume 2, is a blend of the innovative, the satirical, and the classical. It’s by no means without its flaws in terms of its scripts – which according to the Behind the Scenes interviews were put together in a hurry, but as an evocation of the spirit of Series 2, with the bouncy happy Doctor and the London teenager, it’s dead-on. If you like the particular Tardis team of the Tenth Doctor and early Rose, you’ll love it in spite of its storytelling shortcomings. 

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