Tony’s gotta get out of this place…
There’s a theme for the
second part of Series 9 of the Fourth Doctor Adventures. While the Doctor and
Romana are stuck in E-Space, looking with a degree of method for a CVE to lead
them back into their own universe with the stowaway Adric, it’s by no means
inconceivable that others might have heard of them too, and be similarly
searching for a universe a little bit roomier than the one they’re used to. The
Planet Of Witches by Alan Barnes and The Quest Of The Engineer by
Andrew Smith both focus in very different ways on people who want out of
E-Space; in the first case to take a message from that pocket universe to a
wider audience, and in the second to search for knowledge it’s beyond the scope
of E-Space to provide.
You’re probably going to
want to hold on to your brain a little for The Planet Of Witches,
and maybe not operate any heavy machinery while you listen, because it demands
a fairly high level of attention, and if you refuse to give it what it needs,
it will happily sweep you up and away and you’ll be lost. A formulized system
of witches and witchfinders is in operation in this story, with bounty
hunter-style finders capturing and bringing ‘witches’ – for which, read those
with above-average minds – to the mysterious ‘Tiresias’ (Samuel Clemens) who
wants them for complicated reasons of his own. There are many levels to the
system, and our Tardis team fall foul of a finder by the name of Raxxil
(Michael Simkins), who’s transporting three prime specimens of witchery
(including one who goes somewhat obviously by the name of Crone, and who gives
good cackle) to Tiresias and his familiars (think of the scarecrows of The
Family Of Blood), to do…whatever he does to them.
There are distinct echoes
of State Of Decay here – a society in regression from technological
sophistication back to barbarism, witch-burning and the generalised supremacy
of faith-positions over fact-positions, but whereas in State Of Decay
you could follow the deterioration over time in fairly straightforward terms,
here, Alan Barnes does something arguably more interesting with the idea, using
technology as part of the fundamental regression. There’s also a feeling of The
Face Of Evil here, with Tiresias a somewhat mysterious godlike figure for much
of the run-time, surrounded by ritual, and dividing society into the
technologically adept and those who eschew technological knowledge, preferring
to rely on mysticism and faith.
The actual knitting
together of a lot of plot elements is where you need to keep hold of your
brain, because as we journey through this world of witches and witchfinders,
fakes and familiars, it’s quite possible to lose track of who’s who and what’s
what and what happens to whom as we go. But there are, it turns out, many ways
to serve Tiresias – as an elevated consciousness, as a useful spinal column, as
a… tasty, nutritious shake… and an awful lot of which fate belongs to
which…erm…witch depends on how good a brain you have. Enter two Time Lords and
the boy with the badge for mathematical excellence. What could possibly go
wrong? Oh, and the robot dog of course – which really rather alters the answer
to the question of what could possibly go wrong. All of which has to be sorted
out before we discover quite exactly how many people want to get the hell out
of E-Space, and why, but suffice it to say, it’s more than the number you’re
used to if you’ve watched Season 18.
Just as well there are
some Moirai on hand to allocate people their destiny, really (that’s ‘goddesses
of fate in Greek mythology’ to you). Except of course, like Tiresias, and like
almost every witch on the planet of witches, they’re not really what they seem.
They’re something else that’s equally interesting, and they’re more than
willing to make Adric an offer he very nearly can’t refuse, but goddesses would
probably be stretching it a bit, even for Season 18.
When things get complex
and multi-layered and more or less hit Season 18 levels of
what-the-hell-am-I-listening-to?, persevere – Alan Barnes has you covered, and
along the way, there’s glory to be had, not least from the members of the
Tardis team, complete with good Time Lord banter between the clever clogs and
the swot, enormous fun between K9 and Tiresias, some properly satirical gubbins
between star-boy and the tin dog where it sounds like they’re agreeing about
just how immensely clever they are together, and oh yes, you’re really not
going to want to miss the conversation between Adric and the Moirai. We’d love
to quote you some, but the thing about Alan Barnes’ script is that if you give
really even one or two specifics, you spoil something, which can only be
explained if you spoil something else, and before you know where you are, there
are no surprises left in a script which has more than its fair share to offer.
Ultimately, while you need
to concentrate through The Planet Of Witches, it’s a solid introduction
to the idea that in E-Space, CVEs, although they’re never known by that name in
a universe that seems wherever you look to be down at heel and in a state of
regression, are things that have been rumoured, whispered, poorly if at all
understood, but turned into legends enough times to make people set out on damn
foolhardy plans to find them, use them, and turn their shrivelling lives
around. The story feels about an episode too long in the final analysis, as it
goes through one slightly laborious final twist, trying to maintain its
momentum all the way but then being resolved with a relatively simple device. But as an introduction to the idea that it’s
not just the Doctor, Romana, K9 and Adric who are searching for CVEs in the
pocket universe, Alan Barnes gives us fertile new ground for conflict, drama
and storytelling in future potential Season 18 sets.
The Quest Of The
Engineer, by
Andrew Smith, is a bold
bugger of a thing. It has to be – when you introduce a major new character and
have the courage to call them ‘The-’ anything, you need to deliver on the
promise of that portentousness, or you’ll end up falling flat on your face and
looking foolish.
Andrew Smith is not a
writer accustomed to falling flat on his face and looking foolish.
He doesn’t start here.
There are so many things
to love about this story, it’s an utter embarrassment of riches.
Chasing down another
rumour of a CVE, the Tardis team encounter a world which knows about
technology, but frankly wants no truck with it on the grounds that it’s more
trouble than it’s worth. While there, they find a man they’re looking for,
who’s been imprisoned for wittering on about strange occurrences in the
heavens. When they find him, naturally enough in the local jail, there are
gracenotes of Binro the heretic or our own Galileo about Regis Tel (played by
the masterly George Layton). Quite apart from the evidence of a comet winking
out of existence – potential CVE activity, we’re led to wonder? - there are
planets disappearing, in a direct line making for the one on which they’re
currently standing.
Drama! Suspense! Let’s
blow this rebel scientist’s mind by taking him on a trip in the Tardis!
Before they know what’s
happened, they’ve arrived on what should be a rogue planet, but absolutely
isn’t. What happens next needs the kind of visual effects budget only audio can
afford.
Suffice it to say, the
planet that isn’t a planet is actually what happens if a Death Star and a Rubik
cube who love each other very much get certain urges…
There are shades of The
Pirate Planet in at least the big science-fiction concept at work here, not
to mention that whole Star Wars thing, and a touch of the Tesselecta
from Let’s Kill Hitler. But to justify such a grand technical conceit,
you again need to underscore its existence with an intelligence of quite
staggering size who could conceive and built it.
Enter the Engineer, a
character of quite breathtaking brilliance and utter callousness the like of
which we’ve not seen or heard so well executed in quite a while. Take elements
of Davros, elements of Kane from Dragonfire and the ever-present danger
of a flip to grandiose insanity from Mr Hindle in Kinda and you’re
getting somewhere close. Rarely, if ever, does this character make stupid
mistakes, so no average cunning plan of the Doctor’s is going to be enough to
square up against the man who custom-builds programmable, piloted planets. He
has the scale of the best of the Bond villains, and for the vast majority of
the story, it’s Lalla Ward’s Romana who’s given the grand tour and torture package,
while the Doctor, Adric, K9 and Regis explore on what for the sake of notional
accuracy must be called ground level. There are things happening on ground
level of which the Doctor takes a dim view – slavery, planet-mulching, whole
populations schlurped up like the last awkward drops of milkshake in the bottom
of a cup. Worlds full of people with lives ahead of them, sacrificed to the
Engineer’s quest.
What quest is that? Well,
obviously we’re not going to blow that for you – there’s a fairly solid chance
you’ll guess it before it’s actually revealed in any case, but not long before.
And among the planet-squishing and population schlurping and slavery and some
truly horrifying Frankenstein-meets-Peter-Pan experiments, the quest depends on
finding a CVE, a way out of the small pond of E-Space, so this big fish can
find the answers he needs to complete his work.
The character, like the
science fiction, is a work of utter mastery by Andrew Smith, and you need a
real artist to deliver so callous and single-minded and never ever obviously
stupid a character as the Engineer.
Nicholas Woodeson. You’re
going to want to remember the name, because in audio terms, he’s up there with
Michael Gough’s Toymaker, Michael Wisher’s Davros, Peter Butterworth’s Meddling
Monk, Christopher Gable’s Sharaz Jek and Edward Peel’s Kane. Really, he gives
that good a performance as the Engineer, if it had ever been a televised
episode, you’d know his name instinctively thirty years from now, because the
villain would be nailed to your memory. By the end of the story, the
grandiosity of his schemes, the vastness of his callousness and the desperation
of the need which has driven it all are revealed and he becomes one of the
object lessons that Doctor Who has always done so well. Love turned to
obsession, burned by betrayal, fanned into hate and grown cold with three
decades of determined action becomes a laser-focused plan to do whatever is
necessary to turn back the clock, to undo death, to rewrite the dark and
gruesome parts of his own history. By the end, the Fourth Doctor’s own words
echo round your head – if someone pointed out a child to you, and told you it
would grow up to be totally evil…could you then kill that child? The Engineer
is evil, absolutely. Callous, brutal, fanning his own overweening ego in the
blood of millions. But we understand by the end what drove him down that path,
and if it doesn’t excuse him his horrifying actions, it at least puts them in
the context of the brilliant man who played the game he was told to play and
found himself betrayed by those who made the rules.
Again by the end, it feels
like if not a full episode, then maybe an inconvenient half-episode could be
shaved off the running time here, but The Quest Of The Engineer handles
its tensions better and more naturally as it drives towards its cataclysmic
conclusion.
Bottom line, if you only
had one of the Series 9 Fourth Doctor Adventures to listen to, it should
be The Quest Of The Engineer. All the stories in the series have plenty
to recommend them – from the rusteroid of Purgatory 12 to the bizarre
train ride and expanded definition of life of Chase The Night and the
social Darwinism of The Planet Of Witches. But for a knock-down,
drag-out mind-expanding bit of sci-fi with a stunning central villain and a
tale of stakes and consequences along the way, you’re going to have to Andrew
Smith it.
Give The Fourth Doctor
Adventures, Series 9, Part 2 a handful of your lifetime today. It’ll pay
you back in spades.
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