Thursday, 5 September 2019

Big Finish Reviews+ Terror Firma by Jeff Goddard



When finally escaping the Divergent Universe, returning to N-Space and regaining a sense you’ve been cut off from, the last thing you want to do is walk straight into Davros and the Daleks. This was not the Doctor’s lucky day.

Terror Firma was originally released back in 2005 and it features Paul McGann as the Doctor, India Fisher as Charley Pollard and Conrad Westmaas as C’rizz. With the Divergent Universe storyline having come to an end with the preceding story this is a heavily battered and beaten Doctor returning to the regular Universe, or N-Space and there is a sense throughout the piece of things being ever so slightly off.

This is further compounded by Davros literally unravelling before the Doctors eyes as ‘the Emperor’ takes a stronger and stronger hold on him.

Set in Folkestone long after a Dalek Invasion and subsequent conversion into Daleks of vast swathes of the population of Earth Terror Firma is a story that leaves you unsettled and ill at ease from the outset. It’s a story of lost memories, lost senses of self and even lost companions. Joseph Lidster has built a bleak, scarred world that faces up to its adversities with that peculiarly and uniquely British stiff upper lip. As the world has succumbed to the onslaught of Davros and his new Dalek army, so the resistance masquerade (not that it requires much effort) as dinner-party hosting, alcohol swilling and vol-au-vent munching middle class norms.

As the Doctor and his friends get separated and thrust into this world that Davros has spawned in his madness it’s clear that nothing is as it seems. Everything is askance and nothing and no-one can be taken at face value.

Lidster has cleverly used the gap between the TV Movie and Storm Warning, the first Big Finish McGann story, to create a whole period where the Doctor travelled with Samson and Gemma Griffin, but why can’t they, or the Doctor remember these adventures? Why can’t Samson even remember Gemma, while his mother mourns her and drowns her sorrows at the same time?

The real stars of the piece however are the Doctor and Davros, as they face one another for (at least until The Stolen Earth) seemingly the final time. This can be considered a direct sequel to Remembrance of the Daleks, at least from the perspective of Davros (and if you discount War of the Daleks) and the Doctors actions in Remembrance are the direct motivation for Davros in Terror Firma.

With many callbacks to previous encounters between the two, both onscreen and audio, there is plenty to relish in the dialogue between the two and both McGann and Terry Molloy give this one their all, Molloy giving possibly his finest ever performance as he deftly portrays the conflict of Davros finally succumbing to the Dalek he has always been. McGann’s Doctor, darker, scarred and suffering following his touch with Zagreus and self-imposed exile in a Universe without linear time is exactly the man he needs to be, and he brings a dark edge to his portrayal now but you always get that sense that he is yearning to be the Doctor of old.

Charley and C’rizz are both absolutely put through the wringer too her, and as always Fisher and Westmaas give their all, and further prove why they are such a great TARDIS team.

Julia Deakin as Harriet Griffen, mother to the ‘forgotten companions’ Samson and Gemma, gives a frankly stunning performance as both a bereaved mother and woman who wants to put an end to the invasion of her planet.

Samson and Gemma played respectively by Lee Ingleby and Lizzie Hopley have an incredibly difficult task, having to show us both the before and after of their characters. We get snippets of their time with the Doctor throughout the story and it makes you yearn for more. What I wouldn’t give for a series of their adventures. But then they also must portray the aftermath too, both of them changed almost beyond recognition and this is something they do with remarkable clarity.

Terror Firma has long been a favourite of mine, primarily because I am a huge Davros fan being a child of the 80s and one who was terrified by Terry Molloy’s performance throughout my childhood, but also because this is the kind of story only Doctor Who can do and get away with, with its juxtaposition of the everyday, the kitchen sink drama and the utterly insane and bleak science fiction. Lidster crafts these two with skill and precision and leaves you feeling physically drained by the end. I’m not the kind of person to give marks out of ten, but if I were this would be top marks all round.

Something of a masterpiece.


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