They
seek him here, they seek him there,
Our
Tony, he gets everywhere…
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a novel in our universe.
It’s a novel in the Doctor’s universe,
too.
Which rather begs the question of who it
is the Doctor and Peri are helping to rescue French aristocrats from the
guillotine in post-Revolutionary France.
Certainly, ‘Sir Percy Blakeney’ claims
to be…well, first and foremost, Sir Percy Blakeney, and secondly the Scarlet
Pimpernel. But that can’t be – or can it? Is a fictional hero who won’t be
written into existence until the 20th century somehow manifesting in
the 18th to fulfil his destiny? And if not, what’s really going
on?
Chris Chapman’s The Plight of the
Pimpernel raises lots of interesting questions in its first half, and the
Doctor in particular is keen to play along with the swashbuckling aristocrat in
whom he’s always seen a little of himself, both for the simple pleasure of the
derring-do involved, and to find out the answers to those questions.
In some respects, it’s an odd conceit, The
Plight of the Pimpernel, with both the Doctor and Peri at one time or
another playing Pimpernel (in line with one of Pimpernel author Baroness
Orczy’s later stories, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel), alongside
or instead of Sir Percy.
The Doctor’s determination to buckle his
swash is very Sixth Doctor – he was always more open to self-indulgence than
some of his other selves, and there’s definitely a streak of that
self-indulgence in the way he chooses to play this situation.
Here though, that self-indulgence –
which might otherwise have seemed relatively harmless - has bigger and deeper
consequences than can be comfortably imagined.
Of course, from the very beginning, this
idea of a Pimpernel where there should be no Pimpernel sets up a handful of
potential truths: the Pimpernel’s an imposter; the Pimpernel’s an innocent
amnesiac, a la The Next Doctor; we’re not really in Revolutionary
France, etc, etc. Our minds leap to them all pretty quickly, and the rest of
the running time is involved in showing us which – if any – of the things we
thought were going on were correct.
Along the way though, there’s scope for
both unusual sci-fi action when it turns out the Pimpernel is wanted by more than
the French authorities, and an interesting philosophical line that might just
give you a new perspective on the Doctor’s post-Time War character.
The villain in this story is in a pretty
grand tradition of Classic Doctor Who, from Omega to Eldrad to Scaroth and
more. People used to power, who, having suffered a dramatic setback, try to
make a new destiny for themselves.
That’s what gives us that pause for
thought about the post-Time War Doctor. How you deal with the things you’ve
done, and how easily you forgive yourself for the hurt you’ve caused in the
past, are key themes to the drama surrounding the Pimpernel.
And while we may not have been involved
in space-time shenanigans that send the police force of a major European nation
after us, we’ve all had regrets in life, all had relationships. Whether our
regrets define us, and whether, when it comes right down to it, we’d do things
differently if we had the chance, are decisions we make for ourselves.
Here we have a Sixth Doctor in at least
some degree of crisis, because he uncovers a target against whom he can unleash
his famous moral outrage, but the complexities of the situation into which he’s
led by the surely-can’t-be-real Scarlet Pimpernel mean that as well as the
external target of his rage, he also feels the need for some savage
self-criticism.
Remember the Sixth Doctor of The Twin
Dilemma? All reckless action and devastating repentance? There’s a touch of
that character keystone in this story, though both Chris Chapman and Colin
Baker are in far tighter control of the character here, meaning the Sixth
Doctor’s fury is more buttoned-down and powerful than it is necessarily
explosive and shouty.
In a way, that makes the Sixth Doctor
less safe for us as listeners than we’re used to, which gives a degree of
thrill to the story. You’re actually, at one point, not entirely sure
you’re safe in his company. As he chases after the villain, having been duped
himself into doing frivolous things that may have cost lives, there’s a sense
that he can only atone, can only cleanse his lofty Time Lord conscience, by
spilling the blood of the character who led him to his folly.
Intense, high-octane stuff when it
really gets going, The Plight Of The Pimpernel.
It’s also, before we oversell the
dark and brooding nature of that plot-strand, a right old romp that would in no
way be out of place in the 21st century show. Apart from anything
else, it’s larks with the Scarlet Pimpernel! Wigs, silks, dashing escapes and
rescues from French dungeons – all the makings of a great Sunday afternoon
adventure movie.
To give him credit though, Chris Chapman
does point out that it’s rarely as if those who were heading to be
executed were friends of the people. The Revolution by no means came about
spontaneously – it was an eruption of long-growing frustration against
the…ahem…1%. And while, like most revolutions, it ended up turning to blood and
bureaucracy, at its heart, it was a fundamental rejection of unfair financial
and social privilege, so those rescued by the Pimpernel are less innocent
victims than they’ve been traditionally portrayed.
If you’ll forgive a contemporary
reference, they’re the people who would these days spout Fascistic hate on
Twitter (and in real life), and then cry about being ‘cancelled by snowflakes’
when their access to a mouthpiece is taken away. It’s just that the
Revolutionary French had a rather more…permanent…method of cancellation.
With class tensions bubbling into
violence, a Percy Blakeney who surely can’t be Percy Blakeney since Percy
Blakeney is fictional, a chance to act out the Pimpernel role for himself and
at least a couple of devastating realisations later in the story, The Plight
Of The Pimpernel puts the Sixth Doctor properly through the wringer in a
way rarely seen on screen, and not enormously often done on audio either.
In fact, it’s dangerous character work
throughout, because the Doctor, our avatar for all that’s right and good in the
universe, is duped, coerced into actions that turn his anger in on himself, and
potentially lead to a crisis point as to whether he is, after all, ‘a good
man.’
The Plight Of The Pimpernel is a powerful audio story that balances
the necessary swash and buckle of its premise with a philosophical pulse that
riffs on self-forgiveness – even if those you wronged have yet to forgive you.
And it ends with a degree of the Time Lord Merciless, as seen at the end of The
Family Of Blood, and with the same vibe – his kindness has been abused, the
Doctor has been duped, and his actions to try and avoid bloodshed have led to
the deaths of innocents.
The Sixth Doctor frequently wears his
moral outrage on his gorgeously-multi-colour sleeve, like a big brother for
those in the universe who can’t defend themselves. If you turn that inward, if
you make him something close to ashamed of himself, you begin to get a sense of
where notions like the Valeyard, the War Doctor, and the Time Lord Victorious
come from.
There’s never anything explicit in the
story that forward-references any of that, but you’ll get a guaranteed shiver
before this story’s over, standing where you are in the 21st
century, and knowing what lies ahead for this Doctor and the ones who’ll follow
him.
The Plight Of The Pimpernel sets up a fair few expectations early
on, and does its best to meet them. When it starts to give you answers to the
questions at the heart of the story though, it goes beyond its initial premise
and delivers something that’s absolutely true to the spirit of Classic Who,
while foreshadowing a Doctor who will be more than the universe’s best friend.
A Doctor who will need to purge his own darkness, and occasionally his own
dangerous tendency to trust, if he’s to do the job that being the Doctor
demands.
