Big Finish Reviews+ The First Doctor Adventures Vol. 5 by Tony J Fyler

 

Tony’s feeling ruff.

The First Doctor Adventures sets with the David Bradley cast have often followed a tried and trusted formula – one space or futuristic story, one Earth historical, more or less by way of capturing the spirit of those early black and white years before the historicals were largely phased out. 

It’s a combination that works well on audio, because it shows how the medium can deliver the drama, meeting both challenges with the same central cast. 

Volume 5 sticks with this winning combination, giving us For The Glory Of Urth, by Guy Adams – and no, that’s not a typo – and The Hollow Crown, by Sarah Grochala. One space, one history. Everybody clear? Good, let’s go adventuring. 

Doctor Who has almost always been a great platform for satire and allegory. By spinning events on our recognisable Earth off into a science-fiction setting, it’s been able to entertain and inform at the same time. It’s also been able to let writers a little off the leash and give their take on things. This sort of freedom is what brought us Terry Nation’s views on the idiocy of Nazi ideology, wrapped up in a personal tank and called a Dalek. It’s what gave us Kit Pedler’s fear of a lost humanity through organ replacement surgery, wrapped in bandages and called the Cybermen. It’s what gave us Robert Holmes’ scathing indictment on commercialism culture, the shop window dummies who fought back, known as the Autons. Holmes, again in a scathing mood, created the Sontarans as a satire on big-minded militarism. And let’s not forget what happens if you send Robert Holmes and excessively high tax demand – you end up being mercilessly parodied in the Sunmakers, that’s what.

If there’s a writer in the audio world of Big Finish who most precisely channels Holmes’ ‘better writing through satire’ abilities…it’s probably Guy Adams. There are other great comic writers in the Big Finish ‘stable,’ but no-one quite sticks the knife into modern life and makes it bleed pure science-fiction satire like Adams. 

Strap yourself in when you listen to For The Glory Of Urth – it’s almost too close to the bone of real life in the 21^st century bone, while simultaneously being a highly effective futuristic science fiction story. 

The Doctor and his friends materialise on Urth, where all that remains of the human race suffer a godawful life under the grinding rule of an arrogant upper class who make regular proclamations of love for the proles, while demanding they go without more food, work harder, or take the option of being destroyed, to – in almost as many words – decrease the surplus population, for the good of Urth. This is a society in which the upper crust is so singularly, pointlessly pleased with itself, it strives to maintain nothing less than species purity – there are regular scans for people with any alien DNA, and if it is found, they are immediately part of the underclass, or possibly just tortured and killed for their outsider nature. 

There is also a generic, uncomplicated, shamefully recognisable ‘fear of the alien,’ on the grounds that Urth is the last outpost of the ‘inherently superior’ human race, and that aliens want to come and destroy that precious, proud heritage, either directly by war, or through underhanded co-mingling. 

In a sense, Urth is an outpost of fascism for cretins, and pleasingly, both the Gallifreyans and the 1960s humans are revolted by what they find there. The story develops in ways that are simply sublime in the second half of the running time, but to tell you much about those developments would be very much a spoiler. Suffice it to say that the assumptions on which the first half of the story is based are perhaps not as sound as they’re made out to be, and when Guy Adams’ story blossoms and we get to meet some actual potential alien invaders, the parallels between the current world of Brexit Britain and the world of Urth and its tin-pot little ‘Feel sorry for me with my burden of command’ rulers become positively “chef’s kiss” perfect. 

Clive Wood as Daddy Dominus, the self-important, self-pitying is perfect in terms of being jussst far enough from observable reality to be a legitimate science fiction performance, and the double act of horrorshows that are Mummy Martial (Amanda Hurwitz), the chief strategist of Urth, and Sissy Cruciatu (Susie Emmett), its chief scientist and torturer (Err…yes, it’s that sort of a world) are the kind of venom-spitting odd couple that made some of Eric Saward’s sharpest stories zing. 

Be aware, the world of Urth is no fun. Spending too much time there would be nauseating in the extreme, like living in a UKIPtopia. But the writing and the performances that make Urth come alive are so sublime, you’ll go back for many a re-listen to this story. You won’t be able to stop yourself, it’s just that cathartic, like squeezing a really ripe spot. 

And speaking of “Out, damn spot!,” after what seems like a solution to all the early First Doctor’s navigational troubles, in The Hollow Crown, the Doctor manages to get Ian and Barbara back to Shoreditch. 

Just…under the rule of the wrong Elizabeth. 

Yes, we’re back in Elizabethan London here, in the company of William Shakespeare. There are delicate Doctor Who timelines not to disturb on both counts this far into New Who territory, especially as the First Doctor won’t be aware of any of them. 

Sarah Grochala’s story navigates these elements with a seeming ease, without at any point ducking them. Also, unlike celebrity historicals in the Tennant era, when those elements were set up, there’s no wink to ‘camera’ about these things here – they’re just presented as the standard perils of time travel, while the story itself digs deep and hooks you in. There are rogue plays, rabble rousers, cross-dressing red herrings, a friend of the queen and an ill-fated rebellion here, all of which the Tardis crew have to navigate. 

Add to that some really sparky crew dynamics, with Susan doing her best ‘sulky Earth teenager’ act in the company of a son history says Shakespeare doesn’t have. Barbara, meanwhile – relatively fresh from her experience with the Aztecs, and similar experiences in recent audio adventures too – is determined to stick her neck out and tell the rebels that they’re doomed. And for once, it’s Ian who’s equally determined to see exactly what might be changed about the history we think we know. It all makes for a heady, involving drama that zips by much faster than its run time will have you believe. 

Oh, also, it stars Wendy Craig as Elizabeth I, than which nothing better exists in this vale of rampant what-the-hellery. 

Bradley’s Tardis team has long settled into their roles, and with the always slightly unnerving fact that Claudia Grant sounds more like Susan when she’s just being Claudia Grant than when she’s acting as Susan understood, they’re a highly enjoyable team. It’s worth giving additional props to Jemma Powell as Barbara this time out too, especially in The Hollow Crown, where Barbara’s role is superbly well-written and realised. 

All in all, For The Glory Of Urth and The Hollow Crown are extremely different stories, with similarities in their underpinnings. They each make us look at some things we think we understand from a brand new angle, and they both do so while very firmly determined to tell a great story first and foremost. 

They succeed all along the way, which means the First Doctor Adventures, Volume 5 can stand proudly alongside its predecessor sets – which, given the quality of this range, is both never necessarily a given, and is really saying something. You have to work almost ridiculously hard to turn out stories this engaging while being true to both the spirit of early sixties Who, and to the spirit of enhances adventure that 21^st century audio allows. Everyone involved in the First Doctor Adventures, Volume 5 works that hard, and the result is a set that delivers on every level.

Big Finish Reviews+ First Doctor Adventures, Vol 2 by Tony J Fyler

Tony looks better in black and white.

When you have a core cast of four people, two of whom have sadly passed away, and you’re making new stories for an entirely re-cast version of the original, tone matters.

Of course, tone always matters, but particularly when there are four new voices in the roles of four much-watched and highly-studied characters, tone reeeeally matters.

Tone is a thing the First Doctor Adventures, with David Bradley re-inventing the First Doctor, has been very particular to get right. Breathe. Relax. You’re very firmly in First doctor territory here.

What we mean by tone of course is that there’s a difference between First Doctor stories and Fourth Doctor stories, and a different difference between First Doctor stories and Twelfth Doctor stories. The kinds of stories that they told in the First Doctor’s era almost feel like a time capsule now. They did a lot of ‘evil aliens being mean to nice people, let’s defeat them’ stories, to be sure, but there was a distinct sense also that in the First Doctor’s time, the science fiction could twang off on an entirely random philosophical angle which later ages wouldn’t allow, because of all the running and shouting that had to be done. And of course the First Doctor’s time is the golden age of the ‘pure historical’ story, where there was no alien threat at all, merely the events of history themselves in which our heroes got mixed up.

There’s one of each kind of story in this set, and that’s what reinforces the absolutely unique First Doctor flavour of the set. Just as stories like The Aztecs, Marco Polo, The Web Planet and The Keys of Marinus could only be First Doctor stories, so too could The Invention Of Death and The Barbarians And The Samurai, by John Dorney and Andrew Smith respectively. All of which of course helps sell the reality of the re-voiced Tardis crew, who this time out seem to have stopped trying to be their TV counterparts, and started just being them, leading to a more convincing – and therefore involving experience all round.

The Invention of Death is an experimental mind-melter, which reminds us of The Fragile Yellow Arc Of Fragrance (Google it, or search for it on the Big Finish website), in that it’s sci-fi with a very strong sense of difference from everything that’s familiar to us. It’s like The Twilight Zone with aliens or Black Mirror with charm, and that means you listen hungrily to the full length of the story, even though if you dare to pause, you can sketch out where it goes. The point is it’s so very interesting, conceptually, that you want to find out how it gets where you think it’s going. The Tardis crew land on a planet where there are androgynous, semi-morphous people, whose life is mostly taken up with playing games. No sexes, no houses, no sickness, no want, no need…no death. No reproduction.

All could and should be well in such a world, of course, but they have their games – which they play by hurling razor-sharp javelins at each other. There are no consequences if any of them get hit – they self-repair quickly and go on with the game.

They like their games.

When there are strangers in their midst, they want to share their games with them.

See what I mean? You can sort of see where it’s going fairly early on, but it will still take a turn or two to surprise you. By bringing the very concept of ‘death’ to this world, and therefore the concept of healing, the Tardis crew set a miniature revolution in motion – things can be learned in a society where people die. Knowledge becomes a burning need in a society like that. But someone understands that all too well, and starts spreading death among the citizens. Can the Doctor and the fledgling scientists of Ashtallah find a cure for death, stop the killer, and introduce the notion of reproduction to a world on which it has never before been necessary?

John Dorney’s script is classic and does the thing that’s most coherently the province of early Doctor Who – it dares to imagine the entirely unlike, not just extrapolating from life as we know it, but in the truest terms of science fiction, asking a big what-if – in this case, what if there was no death, and never had been?

David Bradley…

OK, let’s put this out there. David Bradley was a truly masterful William Hartnell in An Adventure In Space And Time. He was as good a First Doctor as he was allowed to be on screen in Twice Upon A time.

David Bradley has found his home as the First Doctor at Big Finish.

What’s more, all three companions feel like viable alternative-dimension versions of the characters we know this time out, all helping to bolster the reality of what you’re listening to, and make it feel like part of the run of adventures you know. In story terms, it’s also true to the First Doctor era by giving almost everyone something to do, but leaving Susan something of a third wheel as Barbara’s injured, Ian’s on a quest and the Doctor’s involved with the scientific shenanigans of a world without death. It might not give Claudia Grant the best of deals in terms of story-threads, but The Invention Of Death is a solid slice of highly inventive, speculative and philosophically searching science fiction which holds true to the tone of the televised First Doctor.

Susan typically faired rather better in the ‘reasons for being in the drama’ stakes when the story was a pure historical, and so she does here in Andrew Smith’s gorgeously researched and sumptuously rendered The Barbarians And The Samurai. What we’ve got here is an abbbbbsolutely nail-on-head perfect First Doctor historical, but with perhaps a pinch or two of modern spice to prick up your tastebuds. Finding themselves in 19^th century Japan, during a period when no Westerners were permitted in the country, our heroes have an immediate problem – and one where their apparent ethnicity is an issue (a rare one for pure historicals, to be sure, but still one that anchors the story in the reality and the nature of the times). Finding themselves split up, the Doctor and Barbara are taken to the palace of the local daimyo (a mayor or sheriff, but with a personal army of kickass Samurai to do his bidding), while Ian and Susan are forced to hide out, and are rescued from a vicious Samurai attack by a so-called ‘peasant’ who kicks way more ass than a simple peasant should be able to. On the road to getting the team back together there are palace intrigues, mysterious men in masks, double- and possibly triple-dealing plots to break the rules of exclusion between Japan and the West, a seemingly doomed love story and a massive ‘how the heck are we going to get out of this one?’ late-game cliffhanger that forces the Doctor and Ian to turn scientific sorcerer. Smith is a master at multi-stranded drama, and this might even be considered a jewel in his already intensely impressive crown, because he balances all the elements here on a Samurai blade – the pacing is fast, the action plentiful, the intrigue elements believable without requiring anyone to be stupid to make them work, and the tapestry he creates is rich and broad, meaning you feel like you’re listening to a proper Hartnell six-parter, without it ever feeling overstretched (because of course, it’s actually just a four-parter). It’s an immersive, full-on historical that really can hold its head up alongside the likes of Marco Polo, The Aztecs and The Crusade.

Bottom line, if you’re a fan of the kind of Doctor Who that really only existed within the first three years of the programme’s history, you need to listen to this – the cast have gelled well together, the scripts are highly polished, and the overall experience is of slipping in a DVD of one of the classic black-and-white adventures, but without the budget restraints that might have lessened their visual impact. Go back and travel with the first Tardis crew again, for adventures that are broad and beautiful in a less canon-cluttered, more anything-goes universe.