Tony’s run off with the Supertemp.
There was never a chance
I’d do anything other than love this set. Donna Noble’s my favourite New Who
companion, and she’s up there in the top five from almost sixty years, so more
of her, on audio, slotted in between her TV adventures? No brainer – yes
please, and more soon if it’s all the same to you.
But in the event that
you’re not a Donna Noble fan, two things are true. First, I’m not sure
we can be friends anymore – and you certainly can’t have the good biscuits. And
second, this set has to act as a proof of concept for you that Donna, like
Jenny, and Christina, and Charley Pollard, and Lucie Bleedin’ Miller, deserves
her own set, rather than her adventures being merely a money-maker for Big
Finish.
I’d argue it does that
straight out of the box in Out Of This World by Jacqueline Rayner,
because not only does this have the feel of on-screen episodes like Partners
In Crime, with Donna and a pal investigating situations that turn out to be
alien as all-get-out, which is terrific fun in its own right, but it deals
sympathetically with Sylvia, Donna’s mum. This collection of adventures is set
when Donna takes a break from swanning about the universe shouting at people
after the events of Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead, meaning
she has her own issues to get over – believing that Donna Noble had finally got
it right (as she sees it), with the hunky husband certainly, but more
than that, oh so much more, with the children, the mundane, wonderful
receptacles of all the love that Donna is capable of, and then having all of
that sucked away from her, leaving her as she was, as she is, still capable,
still on some levels yearning to share that love, but remembering the pull of
them, the ache of belonging to them utterly, through love and pain and the
smell of their hair. She needs a break from time and space after an experience
like that, but at the same time, Sylvia has just lost her husband of forty
years and her grief is still raw, still a touch on the desperate, vicious side,
not wanting to lose anything more in her life, and certainly not to have her
girl fly away into danger with a blithe, chirpy madman in a box, perhaps to get
killed in the big black void of it all, perhaps never coming home again.
It would be too soon, in
the first story of the first box set of Donna adventures, for there to be
anything quite so magnanimous as a meeting of minds between Donna and Sylvia,
but Jacqueline Rayner does as much as their timeline will let her to have them acknowledge
each other, the reality of their pain, the truth of it – and she does it all
while telling a story that will actually make you laugh out loud.
As part of a plan to bring
her out of herself, and also to anchor her on Earth, Sylvia invites Donna’s old
school friend, Nat, to come and remind her of all the good things that an
ordinary life can involve. Annnnnd then she overplays her hand, by getting
Donna involved in a speed dating night. The banter between Donna and Sylvia is
screen-accurate and then some, the relationship between Donna and Nat is
essentially the friendship that exists between Catherine Tate and Niky Wardley,
who’ve known each other for 20 years and change, so it bristles with inviting
warmth and banter, and the speed dating night from hell is peppered with
spectacular, explosive, funny lines as Donna introduces herself to her would-be
suitors. That at least one of them is probably an alien bodysnatcher in the
most literal sense is just additional fun (though when you bring in Dan Starkey
as an unpleasant vivisectionist and Anthony Howell as the smoothest hunk on the
planet, you’re going to have audio fun anyway). Adding the fabulous Isla Blair
as Marge, the organiser of date night, means you get a cast rich in vocal
talent, and Rayner’s script hits all the right notes, and then gives you lots
of fun gracenotes into the bargain. For all she needs a break from the weirdness
and potential pain of the wider universe, the awakened Donna Noble can’t stop
sniffing out trouble – especially trouble with an alien tang about it. While
Nat’s a new addition, Niky Wardley of course is no stranger to Big Finish,
having played Eighth Doctor companion Tamsin Drew, and here she throws herself
into the role of the companion’s companion, balancing Donna’s changed nature
with her own brand of what-the-hell-is-this-now? gobsmackery at the weirdness
of Donna’s life and the pace and the power at which she lives it.
Aliens on speed dating.
Donna Noble, Sylvia Noble, Natalie Morrison and aliens on speed dating, written
by Jacqueline Rayner, balanced like Sylvia’s perfect golf swing on the arc of
fabulous bantering humour and soft, sad, human, recovering pain, with a
whacking great sniff of adventure along the way? Oh hell to the yes and twice
on Sundays. The first story out of the box here is a symphony of pleasure for
Donna-fans, but more than that, it offers the potential of some serious character
and relationship development between Donna and Sylvia – it won’t go beyond the
on-screen spikiness they had, but it might do more to add notes to Sylvia’s
eventual semi-roar at the Doctor about the wonder that was Donna.
We won’t spoil the
transition for you from home with Sylvia in Out Of This World to Spinvasion,
by John Dorney, but suffice it to say it follows a tried and tested Doctor
Who format – Nat’s first brush with aliens was on Earth, and for her second she
goes into space for an alien invasion that’s quickly superceded by an alien
invasion. In Dorney’s joyously satirical story, rather than face the hardcore
resistance of invaded life-forms, an alien species has invaded Valdacki by
hiring the best PR firm on the planet, and having the invasion spun for them as
a series of relentlessly positive newscasts, media releases and guided, planted
stories – hoorah, we’ve been invaded, more time in the factory working like
slaves. Hoorah, production targets have been increased, a greater chance to
prove we’re not slackers like some people. Hoorah, there are rockets of
death falling on the slackers, the scroungers and those who take bread out of
our hard-working mouths…
You get the picture? In
fact, Spinvasion probably started out as a sharper and more pointed
satire than it’s ended up as, because now it more or less sounds like…well, any
random Tuesday, to be fair. The ability of spin to take you beyond accepted
concepts of decency, community, common endeavour or common sense and into
division, self-interest and ultimate self-deception is a thing with which we’ve
been living for years now, so to hear it taken to perhaps the next-but-one
degree as a tool of alien oppression, rather than the domestic variety, is a
strangely close-to-home sensation. Nevertheless, it’s a story that’s enjoyably
told, with Nat (inherently less rebellious than Donna), working her way into
the alien spin machine, while Donna herself joins the fairly lacklustre
resistance and tries out-spin the spinners.
It’s enormous fun with a
dark pulse of realism to it, and it features Tim Bentinck as alien warlord
Ganthak and Phil Cornwell (last seen in Who selling the Tardis to Peter Capaldi
on the streets of Pompeii) as spinmaster Mr Parsnip, which guarantees good
slickness and slime to be opposed by the Chiswick girls. Fun fun fun, and yet,
a little stab in the heart every time Donna asks ‘Is everyone on this planet
thick?’ Because the Valdacki are very, very close to being human. They’re very
very close to being us. And yes. Yes, we really are this thick.
The Sorceror Of
Albion by James
Goss is more or less a
joyful, screamingly inaccurate historical story in the William Hartnell style,
and it hangs more or less entirely on an incident in The Crusaders. For
the sake of argument, imagine there’s a rangy old wizard stomping about the
land of Albion, in need of help to defeat some shiny blazing warriors who keep
trying to get at him and his granddaughter. And the only person who can help
him is the redheaded Merlin who steps out of the magic box.
Yep. You read that right.
Donna Noble, supertemp from Chiswick – is Merlin. And yes, Merlin finally gets
to be piggin’ ginger!
Are ya happy now, Battlefield
fans? Good – moving on.
As with many a Hartnell
historical, there are great swathes of this story where the hero (Donna in this
case) is locked up in a dungeon, her power emanating mostly from her
reputation, her swagger and her stubborn refusal to help until she’s a)
released, and b) asked nicely. Meanwhile Parval the wizard (David Schofield, no
less) and his granddaughter Vivien (Lydia West) are both a stand-in for
Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford, but also bring their Lear and Cordelia to bear on
the ancient British environment, because while Donna’s trapped in a dungeon
refusing to share her obviously humungous power, companion Natalie discovers
that there’s more to both their relationship and the situation than meets at
least the contemporary eye.
We genuinely don’t want to
spoil the plot of this one for you, but it’s dramatic, a little heartbreaking,
a little inspiring and above all, it’s a gorgeous listen as you try and work
things out with Nat, and absolutely appreciate Donna’s joyfully stroppy con-compliance.
Of all the stories in this set, it’s The Sorceror Of Albion that most
channels its Classic Who, and while it’s a slightly odd thing to do in a box
set slotting into a New Who chronology, it’s nevertheless right on the money in
terms of satisfying Big Finish fans, New Who fans and Classic fans alike.
The set comes full circle
with The Chiswick Cuckoos by Matt Fitton.
If you’re a higher-level
sci-fi fan, which is quite likely if you’re giving your money to Big Finish,
the reference in the title will be obvious to you. We’re in doppelganger
territory here, replacement people doing nefarious things, and that
always-present fear that they’re actually doing them better and more
effectively than you, genuine human being as you think you are, could ever do.
In Fitton’s script,
there’s a rather fun double through-line, with the ‘Cuckoos’ provoking
responses on the personal level for Donna, Sylvia, and Nat, while
also…y’know…trying to take over the world. As you probably must if you’re an
alien doppelganger. It’s probably written into the contract.
There are strong
performances all down the line in this episode, which also sees the return of
Isla Blair’s Marge character from episode 1. Perhaps most joyfully, Catherine
Tate, Jacqueline King and Niky Wardley all get strong things to do, and some
solidly impressive words to say. There’s a revisiting of the relationship
between Donna and Sylvia, and there’s also some unpicking and unpacking of the
relationship between Donna and Nat which is especially relevant after the first
three episodes – it feels like by the end of this episode, Donna is stronger,
able to face her reactions and her past in a more objective way than she was at
the start of the set, meaning Kidnapped! achieves that most dangerous
things for a retrospective add-in to an existing chronology: it develops its
central character. It allows Donna to grow between the horrendous shock of her
life as she knew it being whisked away from her in Forest Of The Dead and
the seemingly more relaxed Donna of Midnight, but it does it in a way
which feels true to the character in both those stories. Oh, and it will,
almost casually, break your tiny human heart right at the end, with a line that
could have been written by Russell T Davies himself, and probably scored by an
ominous Murray Gold plunge-note.
For fans of the character
and of Catherine Tate’s performance, Donna Noble’s fate is one of the great
tragedies of Doctor Who history – up there with Katarina’s death, probably up
there higher than Adric’s. It’s such a seemingly final full-stop in her life
that any more adventures for the supertemp always felt like they’d be
relatively inconsequential add-ins to the existing timeline.
What Big Finish has done
here is find a viable window in her life with the Doctor in which to give Donna
not only a set of enjoyable, engaging, funny, moving adventures, but to give
her some personal growth into the bargain.
If you’re a fan of
Donna’s, you’re absolutely going to need this – but then, you didn’t need me to
tell you that.
If you’re not a fan
of Donna’s, you probably still need this, because it’s a window into her world
that will make you think of the character in a whole new way, while showing the
effect that the Doctor has on people who travel with him, how it broadens up
their viewpoints and their lives and their confidence in ways they never knew
they needed. It’s a set of adventures that shows how Donna has grown since she
began travelling with the Doctor, yes, but also how good a human being she
always had the potential to be, before, after, and even instead of him.
