Tony looks better in
black and white.
When you have a core cast
of four people, two of whom have sadly passed away, and you’re making new
stories for an entirely re-cast version of the original, tone matters.
Of course, tone always
matters, but particularly when there are four new voices in the roles of four
much-watched and highly-studied characters, tone reeeeally matters.
Tone is a thing the First
Doctor Adventures, with David Bradley re-inventing the First Doctor, has been
very particular to get right. Breathe. Relax. You’re very firmly in First
doctor territory here.
What we mean by tone of
course is that there’s a difference between First Doctor stories and Fourth
Doctor stories, and a different difference between First Doctor stories and
Twelfth Doctor stories. The kinds of
stories that they told in the First Doctor’s era almost feel like a time
capsule now. They did a lot of ‘evil aliens being mean to nice people, let’s
defeat them’ stories, to be sure, but there was a distinct sense also that in
the First Doctor’s time, the science fiction could twang off on an entirely
random philosophical angle which later ages wouldn’t allow, because of all the
running and shouting that had to be done. And of course the First Doctor’s time
is the golden age of the ‘pure historical’ story, where there was no alien
threat at all, merely the events of history themselves in which our heroes got
mixed up.
There’s one of each kind
of story in this set, and that’s what reinforces the absolutely unique First
Doctor flavour of the set. Just as stories like The Aztecs, Marco Polo, The Web
Planet and The Keys of Marinus could only be First Doctor stories, so too could
The Invention Of Death and The Barbarians And The Samurai, by John Dorney and
Andrew Smith respectively. All of which of course helps sell the reality of the
re-voiced Tardis crew, who this time out seem to have stopped trying to be their TV counterparts, and
started just being them, leading to a
more convincing – and therefore involving experience all round.
The Invention of Death is
an experimental mind-melter, which reminds us of The Fragile Yellow Arc Of
Fragrance (Google it, or search for it on the Big Finish website), in that it’s
sci-fi with a very strong sense of difference from everything that’s familiar
to us. It’s like The Twilight Zone with aliens or Black Mirror with charm, and
that means you listen hungrily to the full length of the story, even though if
you dare to pause, you can sketch out where it goes. The point is it’s so very interesting, conceptually, that you want
to find out how it gets where you think it’s going. The Tardis crew land on a
planet where there are androgynous, semi-morphous people, whose life is mostly
taken up with playing games. No sexes, no houses, no sickness, no want, no
need…no death. No reproduction.
All could and should be
well in such a world, of course, but they have their games – which they play by
hurling razor-sharp javelins at each other. There are no consequences if any of them get hit – they self-repair quickly and
go on with the game.
They like their games.
When there are strangers
in their midst, they want to share their games with them.
See what I mean? You can
sort of see where it’s going fairly early on, but it will still take a turn or
two to surprise you. By bringing the very concept of ‘death’ to this world, and
therefore the concept of healing, the Tardis crew set a miniature revolution in
motion – things can be learned in a society where people die. Knowledge becomes
a burning need in a society like
that. But someone understands that all too well, and starts spreading death
among the citizens. Can the Doctor and the fledgling scientists of Ashtallah
find a cure for death, stop the killer, and introduce the notion of
reproduction to a world on which it has never before been necessary?
John Dorney’s script is
classic and does the thing that’s most coherently the province of early Doctor
Who – it dares to imagine the entirely unlike, not just extrapolating from life
as we know it, but in the truest terms of science fiction, asking a big what-if
– in this case, what if there was no death, and never had been?
David Bradley…
OK, let’s put this out
there. David Bradley was a truly masterful William Hartnell in An Adventure In
Space And Time. He was as good a First Doctor as he was allowed to be on screen
in Twice Upon A time.
David Bradley has found
his home as the First Doctor at Big Finish.
What’s more, all three companions
feel like viable alternative-dimension versions of the characters we know this
time out, all helping to bolster the reality of what you’re listening to, and
make it feel like part of the run of adventures you know. In story terms, it’s
also true to the First Doctor era by giving almost everyone something to do,
but leaving Susan something of a third wheel as Barbara’s injured, Ian’s on a
quest and the Doctor’s involved with the scientific shenanigans of a world
without death. It might not give Claudia Grant the best of deals in terms of
story-threads, but The Invention Of Death is a solid slice of highly inventive,
speculative and philosophically searching science fiction which holds true to
the tone of the televised First Doctor.
Susan typically faired
rather better in the ‘reasons for being in the drama’ stakes when the story was
a pure historical, and so she does here in Andrew Smith’s gorgeously researched
and sumptuously rendered The Barbarians And The Samurai. What we’ve got here is
an abbbbbsolutely nail-on-head perfect First Doctor historical, but with
perhaps a pinch or two of modern spice to prick up your tastebuds. Finding
themselves in 19th century Japan, during a period when no Westerners
were permitted in the country, our heroes have an immediate problem – and one
where their apparent ethnicity is an issue (a rare one for pure historicals, to
be sure, but still one that anchors the story in the reality and the nature of
the times). Finding themselves split up, the Doctor and Barbara are taken to
the palace of the local daimyo (a mayor or sheriff, but with a personal army of
kickass Samurai to do his bidding), while Ian and Susan are forced to hide out,
and are rescued from a vicious Samurai attack by a so-called ‘peasant’ who
kicks way more ass than a simple peasant should be able to. On the road to
getting the team back together there are palace intrigues, mysterious men in
masks, double- and possibly triple-dealing plots to break the rules of
exclusion between Japan and the West, a seemingly doomed love story and a
massive ‘how the heck are we going to get out of this one?’ late-game
cliffhanger that forces the Doctor and Ian to turn scientific sorcerer. Smith
is a master at multi-stranded drama, and this might even be considered a jewel
in his already intensely impressive crown, because he balances all the elements
here on a Samurai blade – the pacing is fast, the action plentiful, the
intrigue elements believable without requiring anyone to be stupid to make them
work, and the tapestry he creates is rich and broad, meaning you feel like
you’re listening to a proper Hartnell six-parter, without it ever feeling
overstretched (because of course, it’s actually just a four-parter). It’s an
immersive, full-on historical that really can hold its head up alongside the
likes of Marco Polo, The Aztecs and The Crusade.
Bottom line, if you’re a
fan of the kind of Doctor Who that really only existed within the first three
years of the programme’s history, you need to listen to this – the cast have gelled
well together, the scripts are highly polished, and the overall experience is
of slipping in a DVD of one of the classic black-and-white adventures, but
without the budget restraints that might have lessened their visual impact. Go
back and travel with the first Tardis crew again, for adventures that are broad
and beautiful in a less canon-cluttered, more anything-goes universe.
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