Monday, 5 August 2019

Big Finish Reviews+ Under Odin's Eye by Tony J Fyler



Tony’s in need of some retail therapy.

The Short Trips range allows Big Finish to tell stories that expand the universe of each Doctor, but to do it with particular challenges – they’re written as an ‘audiobook’ rather than as a play for voices. They’re short stories, equivalent to two Classic TV episodes, and the challenge is frequently to balance stories that add significantly to the legend of their Doctor or companion, while ideally saying something to make fans and new listeners think, smile and click the buy button on other stories in the range.

Under ODIN’s Eye, by Alice Cavender, gets quite a lot of this right. It’s a story that balances issues of cultural overwriting, distraction commerce, and fear of power with a couple of above-average gags at the expense of an identifiable Nordic furniture store, a missing personas plotline and a potential invasion, allowing the Sixth Doctor and Peri to both have their righteous indignation and dash about being heroic.

So – all good there, then.

Certainly, given the Short Trips releases only cost £2.99, you get your money’s worth of entertainment here and then some. If something doesn’t click, it’s in the final layer of the storytelling that connects all the plot-dots, which should lead to a whole picture and deliver the oomph, the satisfaction of a mystery solved, a crisis averted, evil defeated and home in time for meatballs. Here, it feels as though a handful of dots are joined, absolutely, but some are missed, and their lack in the overall drive to the finish leads to an underpowered, slightly underwhelming ending.

Again though, it’s important to understand exactly how much is going on here – Alice Cavender delivers plenty of humour, a good dose of, if not exactly Nordic Noir, then at least Nordic Noisette, some solidly rationalistic politics in terms of the ethics of humungo-megastores sucking the lifeblood out of local economies and, inevitably, out of local cultures too. There’s even, in one of the connections that works, a kind of ‘rape and pillage’ Viking element in all that, because we’re not at any point actually on a planet with a Norway here – just one that has a fondness for Nordic culture, etymology and bookcases. And then of course there’s the characterisation. Plots are all very well, and if it’s fairly straightforward, there certainly is one here. Underlying political consciences are great too, and this has one of those too. But a Doctor Who story doesn’t really work without strong characters, and Cavender, by no means a novice in the realms of different Doctors, brings the Time Lord of Moral Indignation bellowing to life here, while Nicola (Peri) Bryant works hard to give the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and the cast of villains, victims, and the somewhat undecided, their personalities in vivid vocal colour.

No review of Under ODIN’s Eye would be entirely complete without a degree of comparison to the Series 11 take on global capitalist icons, so with the inevitability of a QI contestant shuffling towards the wrong-answer klaxon, let’s get the Kerblam! comparison out of the way. Under ODIN’s Eye feels rather more clear-headed and to the point in its appraisal of mega-businesses than the TV take, though Kerblam! was aiming for rather different territory, some of which was more soggy than anything here. While the Kerblam! Men themselves more potential to be memorable than the actual villains here, overall, the clarity of message, added to an ending that’s by no means as rushed as its TV fellow traveller, Under ODIN’s Eye at least draws level, and could even be said to win on points as an experience worth repeating.

All in all, for £2.99, the quibbles about a somewhat linear villainy and an ending that feels oddly inevitable melt away under the strength of characterisation here, and that clear-headed approach to the whole ‘cultural homogeneity of shopping experiences in a capitalist construct, please come again and have a nice day’ argument. Go shopping with Sixie and Peri soon, and really – try the meatballs. You’ll regret it if you don’t.


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