Big Finish Reviews+ Plight of the Pimpernel by Tony J Fyler

 

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 20^th century somehow manifesting in the 18^th 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 21^st 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 21^st 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.

Big Finish Reviews+ Warzone/Conversion by Matt Rabjohns

Whilst Adric may not be many fans favourite companion to have ever graced the show, his death at the time in Earthshock was definitely a palpable and very moving moment in the history of the show. We had had deaths of companions before, with Katarina and Sara Kingdom in The Daleks Master Plan, but somehow Adric's death seems to be more vividly remembered. ​

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The show at the time never dwelt much upon personal or emotional issues as much as they do in the modern era, so with Warzone/Conversion its very good to see Big Finish going into detail with how the Doctor and Nyssa and Tegan cope with the fallout of Earthshock. Do the writers succeed in delivering a memorable follow on to those shocking events? Well, the answer is yes in most respects. ​

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Firstly, the sound production and music are truly authentic to the 80s era of the show. Impeccably so and the bonus interviews are always fun to listen to also. Always great to hear insight right from the actor’s mouths. ​

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Warzone and Conversion are written by two different writers (Chris Chapman and Guy Adams) but the stories are directly linked. It is always very annoying though that Big Finish may not always use the monsters name in the titles, but they always have a picture of them on the front! This at once ruins any mystery the stories may have in my own view. However, if you can get past this annoyance and give the stories a chance, they are rather superb overall. ​

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Warzone begins with the TARDIS team, together with new companion Marc, landing in Warzone. A massive gaming race track full of life-threatening obstacles in the best Doctor Who fashion of old. The story has very good pace and develops not quite as ludicrously quickly as most of the modern era show on telly does. The Doctor and his friends at once have to literally run for their lives and become embroiled in the race. And the Doctor soon discovers just what the race is for. The main plot thrust of this story may actually be one of the more simple given to a Big Finish story, but it is all the better for it. It gives the characters a firm background and the acting from all involved in this story is top notch and right on the nail. Two of the best actors in this first story are definitely Pepter Lunkuse as Esma. She interacts well with the Doctor over the course of the two episodes almost enough to make you think she has the potential to become a companion.

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Timothy Blore as Morris works so well paired off with Nyssa. It’s good to hear Nyssa being given such a good role within the story. And she seems to strike up a great friendship with Morris so it’s quite sad and jarring at the riveting climax to part two to have to break apart the bonds that were forming between both Nyssa and Morris and The Doctor and Esma. The warning the Doctor gives to Esma and Morris about being strong willed enough to resist becoming the Cybermen is a brilliant scene. ​

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Amidst all of this Tegan is not forgotten. The chemistry between her and George Watkin's as Marc is wonderful to listen to. It is quite the fearsome and soul destroying ride that Marc is forced to suffer in this story, and it is only going to get worse in Conversion. ​

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Peter Davison is absolutely on his best form within these two stories, but especially in Conversion.

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I will get the only niggle I have with this story out of the way first. The characters of Herb and Creasey just seem a bit too caricatured and clichéd. Though Angela Bruce gives a brilliant performance as Herb the characters are just absolutely nothing new and seem to be rather grafted on to the story rather than written in. Your typical run of the mill space pirates who aren't given anything original to handle. Mind you if you love space pirates then these two girls’ banter can be very amusing. I'll give them that. But that is where my niggles end. ​

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The rest of the story is extremely well written. It gives Peter Davison the chance to display an angrier and more upset and therefore more rude and unknowable edge to his Doctor’s persona. It’s always excellent when actors get to rise above their normal game with an exceptional script, and this script definitely gives Peter the chance to blow our socks off with his titanic performance. ​

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And then the delicious treat of once more being able to hear David Banks and Mark Hardy reprise their 80's Cyber roles just steals the show. Here in this story the Cybermen are truly soulless and incredibly nasty with their plans. The prototype conversion they almost succeed in performing on Marc is harrowing and George Watkins copes sublimely well in being totally broken and at his wit's end amidst this horrendous experiment. ​

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The emotional impact on all the main crew of the TARDIS is palpable at the stories climax leading to a very unexpected ending. Tegan is truly unsettled and unforgiving of the darker side the Doctor has displayed during this story's run. Even in spite of the fact that against all the odds the Doctor has done his utmost to help Marc return to being as much of a human being as he can. Guy's writing in these final scenes is riveting and heart-breaking for all the main TARDIS team. ​

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Conversion is the kind of cyberman story we need to see appearing on the screen in the new modern era televised Doctor Who! To me the serials the modern era has churned out have all rather fallen short of the mark, in that I think they have forgotten the Cybermen aren't robots, they happen to be dehumanized cyborgs! David Banks and Mark Hardy truly work on this fact well in Conversion. ​

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The CyberLeader even gets to have a jibe at the Doctor, whom he accuses of being a hypocrite. The Doctor is resistant to murder, yet he destroyed the Cyber Leader in Earthshock. The only thing to offer in the Doctor's defence is that situation was one of acute stress and even a Time Lord is not perfect every day of the universal year. But it does add a gritty edge and bring out a touch of the mystery of who the Doctor truly actually is once more. Vague little titbits like this are scary to hear. It’s good to see Peter being given a more Seventh Persona role for once, after all, all the incarnations are still the same man.​

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Warzone/Conversion in summation then are two extremely well written stories on the whole. They are a truly stark and belting follow on from the sombre and sad events of Earthshock. I can only hope that Marc can somehow recover from his ordeal. Truly the impact of what the Cybermen can do to people if they get hold of them has never been quite so well portrayed before. This story even beats the Bill Potts conversion of Peter Capaldi's Cyber epic. I would strongly recommend this story as a worthwhile and dark follow on to Earthshock. As two two parters they work extremely well indeed. But be prepared to be stirred by the huge amount of emotional gravitas injected into these episodes. ​

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Although maybe one other little oddity is that Warzone/Conversion does seem to have forgotten the events of the earlier Big Finish release The Boy That Time Forgot. That story led us to believe that Adric in fact did not die but was left at the beginnings of time and went a little insane. Perhaps this is just forgetfulness although it does make the story's timeline placement rather unfathomable from my perspective, as Nyssa and the Doctor in the Boy story were without Tegan, so that means the story had to be set between the TV stories Time Flight and Arc of Infinity, and then Tegan returned but somehow The Good Doc and Nyssa seem to have lost all memory of the events of the Boy that Time Forgot, so that's just a little strange. But it’s not a major quibble, and it’s not as if the show isn't constantly mucking around with its own history and time lines!

Big Finish Reviews+ Iron Bright by Tony J Fyler

I am Iron Man, says Tony.

Iron Bright, by Chris Chapman, promises what could be, and arguably should be, a definitive Sixth Doctor story, as it brings the man with the peacock coat face to face with a pair of Victorian geniuses – father and son team, Mark and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Sixth Doctor has form meeting Victorian geniuses – one of his best TV stories, Mark of the Rani, set him adventuring alongside George Stephenson – so there’s a frisson of hope and expectation attached to any story that takes him back into even faintly similar territory.

Chapman’s done his research – Iron Bright (the meaning of which we’re almost desperate to tell you, but won’t, so you have to listen to the story) takes us underground, into the great Thames Tunnel, where things are going wrong for the Brunels and their workers. There are cryptic ghosts that kill people, for one thing, which is going to rain on any parade you plan, and Mark Brunel (played with a good deal of bluster by Christopher Fairbank) is planning quite the subterranean shindig, to attract wealthy investors to the project. Even in this simplicity of conflicts, you’ve got a ton of story to be told, a clash of worlds to investigate, as Victorian socialites meet homicidal ghosts from Somewhere Else Entirely and try not to die underground. When the Doctor and Isambard discover where the ghosts are coming from though, the conflict takes on a whole new scale, as well as pushing us into new realms both of science fiction and of social allegory – worlds are connected together, the story tells us, and what might be seen as progress on the one could have terrible consequences on the other. It’s a notion of some relevance as our modern Earth bakes, melts and feels the fist of nature under the stress of climate change – the good times of industrial progress, if uncurbed, can lead to the devastation of a world.

The escalation of the story is logical, for all there feels like some degree of padding in the middle back at the Brunel house, and the cliffhangers are above-average here, with the shift in scale feeling like it needs you to take a bigger, deeper breath than you thought you needed as it opens up the story from the small, fairly claustrophobic world of Victorian tunnels under the Thames to much broader and very different vistas, but there are parts of the mid-section that feel like a history lesson of the world from which the ghosts are coming, and while the escalation is impressive, the context-lessons continue into Episode 4 as you find out the thing you thought was happening is actually an entirely different thing that’s happening, because of the context the Doctor discovers. You could certainly argue it’s valid to include, because the context explains the reality of what’s been going on, and ultimately directs you as to how you should feel about it, but being quite so heavily layered in context even as armies are marching to an apparently unstoppable war does make for a thicker layering of story than the pace seems to demand. There are also elements of Iron Bright which strive for more than they achieve – there’s a lovely character called Tan played by Catherine Bailey, and a maid with serious companion-potential, played by Becky Wright, who, while adding some lightness to the mixture, don’t seem to have a great deal to do except explaining some of the plot and then going back and forth to tell people things. And there’s a degree here to which invention and convolution  risk losing some listeners, especially in regard to whose fault the main threat actually is, and why, so you end up having the Brunels in a story and feeling like they’re not used as well as perhaps they could have been, as you dash back and forth from one reality to another, trying to work out what’s going on, stop a war, deal with the thorny issues of whose fault any of it is, absorb the environmental message, pause for sombre reflection on what amount to gravestones with a vengeance, climb a big tower, press a big button and play a game of chicken with a leader who’s come down with a chronic case of manifest destiny.

It’s tightly packed, this story, and no mistake. There’s just a risk of you losing the will to understand it as it switchbacks and loops the loop in time, space and dimension-bridging, while dragging along a lot of backstory and contextual information. It’s just possible, when you’re done with the ride, that you’ll wonder whether it was all actually worth it.

Iron Bright is densely packed and frenetically paced, progressing from a classic Sixth Doctor oddity to a panoramic science fiction dimensional war of conquest and survival, with perhaps just a twist or two too many for some listeners to keep hold of as it careers towards its ending. It’s worth a listen, because after all, it’s Old Sixie meeting Isambard Kingdom Brunel and absolutely boggling his mind, but it’s one to take an episode at a time, pausing every now and then to make sure you understand where you are before you go on and risk getting lost in the twists.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Middle by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s stuck in the middle with you.

What do we do with old people?

Let them rot? Waste away with their dwindling memories when we judge they can’t be productive anymore? Ship them off to a chronologically-convenient Dignitas when they become a burden on the State?

Those are questions that seem to have been the starting point for The Middle, the latest Sixth Doctor audio adventure from Big Finish. Writer Chris Chapman though expands on his initial theme, creating a society that works as a social satire of all kinds of stereotypes within our culture.

On the planet Formicia, society is regimented – the young (those up to the age of 35) get to swan about having fun with no responsibility. The next 35 years are spent in ‘the Middle,’ a giant Kafka-esque version of Heaven, supposedly doing all the real work, but for the most part watching the young. And once you hit 70, the Biblical three-score-and-ten years allegedly ‘allotted’ to human beings, you move on from the Middle to the inevitable End.

Into that environment, Chapman brings the Sixth Doctor and his two latest friends, 19 year-old Flip Ramon (nee Jackson), and, on her 35^th birthday no less, Leading WREN Constance Clarke, previously at World War II cipher-cracking station, Bletchley Park. The fact of it being Constance’s 35^th birthday is highly convenient to the story, as it allows the three to be separated early on – Flip sentenced to a life of spa treatments and all-night parties, Constance to the Middle, and the indeterminately-aged, but significantly older than 70 year-old Time Lord straight to whatever the End might be. There are some twists and turns there, and we won’t spoil them for you, but suffice to say, there’s more to it than a sci-fi Dignitas, and consent is not really key to the experience. Each of our time travellers finds allies in their quest to re-unite and get off the topsy-turvy world of Formicia, but along the way, they feel it incumbent on them to take down The Middleman, Formicia’s very own Big Brother, who even goes to the trouble of providing an alien invader they can fight to distract themselves from problems at home (thank you, Mr Orwell).

It’s an interesting dystopia, Formicia, because for a lot of people – indeed, for the people the Sixth Doctor encounters in the End – the societal model that gives freedom to young people, work and worth to the middle-aged and ageing, and the genuine attractions of the End to the elderly could really work. That leaves Chapman pushing hard to show us what’s wrong with the model, which is the lack of fluidity and consent – there’s no going ahead or coming back within this strictly ageist society – in order to justify the Tardis team’s actions in destroying a whole way of life for a whole biodome, leaving only the messiness of choice and democracy behind them.

What The Middle delivers, ultimately, is Classic-style four-part Doctor Who that works some surprises into its storytelling, but which is for the most part powered along by some epic performances – Sheila Reid adds another to her collection of ‘feisty old bats you don’t want to cross’ here, and Mark Heap is excellently moustache-twirling, if vocally unrecognisable, as the Middleman. The three principals, Colin Baker, Lisa Greenwood as Flip and Miranda Raison as Constance are increasingly gelling into an all-time favourite ‘full Tardis’ team, and The Middle allows extra levels of separation to show their dynamics in different lights. It’s a story that delivers everything you think it’s going to, and then an additional spin on some social questions to boot. If the ending grows untidy when we uncover what Formicia really is, who the Middleman is working for and why, it’s only a small quibble because up till that point, The Middle delivers enough topsy-turvy, philosophically interesting but stolidly-paced ‘find a friend and work on getting back together in defiance of all the rules’ adventuring to satisfy most listeners. Above all, The Middle feels like it would fit in with TV Baker Doctor Who – it has rather more in common with stories like Vengeance On Varos than the inclusion of Sheila Reid’s voice, in that you can imagine Formicia being made of mostly plywood sets. Does it actually answer the questions it sets out to ask? Perhaps not in any real sense – the actual solution that awaits old people at the End would be monstrous were it to be real. But if nothing else, while sentencing the young to a kind of enforced vapidity, The Middle goes out of its way to show that older people should remain a vital part of our society, and that they’re capable of much, much more than our society currently allows them to be.