Sunday, 18 March 2018

Big Finish Reviews+ Short Trips: Mel-Evolent by Tony J Fyler



Tony’s away with the fairies.


Written by Simon A Forward.
Read by Bonnie Langford.

Doctor Who and fairy tales. What could possibly go wrong?

Not, as it turns out, an awful lot if you trust your Time Lord fairy tale to Simon A Forward.

The Short Trips are a playground, where writers can do almost anything, so long as they can craft their anything into the time run-time of a short story. They’ve been used to add depth and weight to companion characterisation, to show vital moments in the Doctor’s life that have never been seen on screen, to add texture to the Doctor Who universe, and to even show the kind of adventure that is commonplace on the Tardis, but still has a threat level that gets the pulse racing.

Forward does all that and more besides in his tale of Mel and the fairy queen of darkness, the with-queen from the other side of the mirror.


Mel-Evolent starts with scenes that both perfectly encapsulate the 80s, technicolour vibe of Bonnie Langford’s time with the Sixth Doctor, and gently satirizes the keenness with which both Colin Baker and Langford used to take to the pantomime stage. ‘Once upon a space and time…’ it begins – you’re almost hoping for an ‘Oh no it isn’t!’ thrown in, but Forward moves things along quickly – a trip to the Tardis theatre (oh yes, it has a theatre now), gives us a declaiming Doctor, a costume bundle, a stab of nostalgia and then, rapidly, a shiver of danger as Evil-Mel looks back at them from a dark – not to say a black – mirror.

Forward’s pacing of the plot here is impressive, as the genuine danger to the here-and-now in which our heroes exist is quickly explained and escalated, and the Mel in the mirror, looking for all the world like a particular horn-headed Disney witch-queen, sends evil, misshapen dwarfish minions to devour the Tardis.

While the Doctor stays behind to Do Something Clever With That Pigging Exercise Bike, it’s up to Mel to dress up like her Inner Badass and go to do battle with her doppelganger to save the day.

The temptation, when writing a Doctor Who fairy tale, is to only go so far, to go along obvious lines, or to allow the Doctor to stay in fairy tale territory too long, to the point of believing the myth, rather than giving some kind of anchored science fantasy explanation (New Who, Series 5, we’re looking at you).

Mel-Evolent does none of those things, but fuses Doctor Who and fairy tale lore in a new, inventive way that pushes beyond the ordinary, and makes you realise the power of a really good writer, to deliver things you would never have thought of. The actual threat in this story, the what of it and why of it, is sublime, and you won’t see it coming till a heartbeat before it arrives – Forward gives you just that long to realise what it is, and just enough description to trigger your nostalgia, before moving…erm…forward in terms of plotting and emotional punch. Forward delivers a story that goes beyond traditional fairy tales, to really nail the Doctor Whoness of his story to your consciousness, leaving you well and truly satisfied at the end of it all. What’s more, there’s a quality to the actual descriptions of things like ‘liquid space’ that make you stop and clap the business of writing, the ability creative people have to go beyond the workaday and open your mind to things you never thought you’d see.

Bonnie Langford was one of the most poorly served companion-actresses in Classic Who, from her two-line character description, to her frequent reduction to boggling, screaming and asking ‘What’s that, Doctor?’ in scripts which left her little else to do.

Big Finish has worked for years to give her more to work with as an actress, and this Short Trip punches above its run-time as far as expansion of character is concerned. Langford for her part takes to this opportunity to go to the Dark Side, and especially when she comes face to face with her mirror-side doppelganger, there’s a sense of visual and vocal differentiation that’s very easy to imagine on screen. In fact, the combination of Forward’s descriptive prose for some areas of this trip into a weird realm, and Langford’s assured but Mel-breathy delivery, lets you lose yourself in the visuals of this audio short very easily, and rewards you for doing so with one of the more immersive Short Trips in recent times.

Overall, this is a barnstorming Doctor Who fairy tale, and among the best examples of its kind, because it goes that extra mile on every level – the story doesn’t rest on familiar fairy tale territory but pushes beyond to give you imaginative surprises that make you think about them even after the story’s over. It takes Mel to new places, where you wouldn’t ordinarily imagine her going, and so proves a constant but little-regarded element of her nature as a person – when faced with necessity, Mel pushes down her fears, rolls up her sleeves and gets on with the job at hand to the best of her ability.

So – a magical mystery tour to the land beyond the mirror, a strengthening of the character of one of Doctor Who’s most poorly-served companions, a Doctor Who fairy tale that merges real-world threat with fantastical imagery, and all in the space, and for the price, of a Short Trip. It’s been a while since Forward wrote a Big Finish story. On the strength of this, it shouldn’t be so long till he writes his next.


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