Monday, 22 January 2018

Big Finish Reviews+ O Tannenbaum by Tony J Fyler


Tony’s singing carols.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, how lovely are your branches.

Wellll…

The loveliness of tree branches of course depends on your relationship to the trees. O Tannenbaum, the Christmassy short trip from Big Finish plays with some tropes we’ve seen in New Who Christmas Specials – in particular, Christmas trees that are possibly more than they seem to be.

The story by Anthony Keetch balances on a knife-edge of sweet and twinkly, threatening now and again to tip over into properly dark and scary. But this is a First Doctor story, and more than that, it’s a later First Doctor story, with Steven Taylor in it, and that gives a certain reassurance that the old man with the magical blue box is in control of events, at least enough to wring a happy ending from the scenario of an isolated cabin in the woods, with a lonely little girl whose father went out hunting on Christmas Eve, and who hasn’t come back.
Let’s put this on record. The continued existence and excellence of Peter Purves makes an audio recast of the First Doctor entirely redundant. Purves has been excellent for years now when it comes to evoking the twinkly-but-still-potentially-cross later First Doctor, as well as Steven, and he brings both performances beautifully to bear in this Short Trip too, making for a wonderful short listen.

If there’s an issue with O Tannenbaum, it’s in storytelling that telegraphs its surprises a little too hard to early, and a sense of a very guessable punchline looming up ahead of you at least as early as halfway through.

But it’s Christmas, at least in this story, so don’t be a grouch, just embrace the joy of Purves telling a wintry, piney, deep snow story of the old man with a box, his space pilot sidekick and putting right the things that have gone unfortunately awry in the universe. For those listeners who felt David Bradley’s First Doctor had a little too little of the limelight in Twice Upon A Time, this is a perfect antidote, the original Doctor here unleashing some of his schoolmasterly severity to extremely effective advantage – there are moments in every Doctor’s era where they stand there and suddenly you feel that fundamental character coming through – Paul McGann’s shoes fitting perfectly, Tom Baker dressing down the Cybermen, Christopher Eccleston feeling the Earth turning, David Tennant giving no second chances because he’s that sort of a man, Peter Capaldi’s war speech…

This story gives us is a solidly 21st century First Doctor proving moment, a moment when the white-haired old Time Lord stands up, lays down the law and brings back Christmas for a scared little girl and her daddy. For that, it’s a glorious way to spend a very small amount of your money, and despite its sugary Christmas notes, it’s one you’ll return to year-round for that moment of the First Doctor doing things as they should be done.

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