There’s a lot to do in Dark
Universe, and most of it has to do with timelines.
You may need a deep
breath, a calming beverage, a slide rule and possibly a lie down in a dark room
at several points as you listen to this story. We practically needed all that
and a pickled egg just to write the review.
It would be too much
hyperbole to call this ‘peak Seventh Doctor.’ He after all has a history of
fighting battles that the whole rest of the universe doesn’t see are even there
till episode 3, and this story is much clearer than any of that. Still and all,
we’re into some tangled territory.
OK. Anyone here not come
across the Eleven before?
If you’re reading this,
it’s not likely but it’s by no means impossible. The Eleven was a villain
brought into the Eighth Doctor box sets for Doom Coalition, so if you’ve
not listened to those yet, you might still be living in ignorance about the
Time Lord with eleven incarnations, all of which live concurrently in one body,
making him something of a schizoid puppet-show of a character, but nevertheless
able to call on the particular skills of all his previous selves at once,
because they’re a lot less previous than is usually the case for Time Lords.
If you recall the
on-screen adventures of the John Simm Master, you’ll remember that the endless
drumming in his head sent him at least some way round the twist. Imagine the
effect of having eleven personalities randomly chipping in to any conversation.
Exxxxactly. The Eleven’s
totally tonto, a character both hampered and superpowered by his multiple
personality, and quite how Mark Bonnar keeps the personalities straight in his
head is frankly anyone’s guess. But the point is this: while Doom Coalition was
a sequence of Eighth Doctor box sets, they began with this new character being
imprisoned for his crimes, on Gallifrey, by the Seventh Doctor.
It’s just possible we’re
listening to this wrongly, but it sounds as though the events of Dark
Universe are the crimes for which he’s caught and imprisoned. So, it’s a
kind of immediate prequel to those events – at least from the point of view of
the Eleven. From the point of view of the Seventh Doctor, we’ve as yet no way
of telling how much adventuring he did between sealing up the Eleven and
meeting the hail of gunfire on Millennium Eve on Earth and Frankensteining his
way into his next body, who would then go on to encounter the Eleven as a more
regular and devastating presence.
Clear so far?
Well done.
This release also brings
into play grown-up Ace, or Dorothy McShane rather, who runs A Charitable Earth.
So for once in her life, Sophie Aldred gets to play Ace at the age she is,
rather than dialling it back to her teens or twenties.
This is an Ace, or a
McShane, who hasn’t seen the Seventh Doctor in decades, and who, at least at
first, it seems has more than a handful of scores to settle, meaning she’s
working with the Eleven, more or less because it will break the Seventh
Doctor’s hearts.
The plot? Oh blimey, now
you’re asking.
There’s an expedition to
South America, including the Eleven and Dorothy, to find a very special tree
that isn’t a tree. There are portals and beings of enormous, terrifying power,
beings from the dark universe of the title. This lot? Bad news. Bad, bad news.
Finger-snapping, timeline-changing, species-history-eradicating bad news. Also,
hungry. Hungry for galaxies.
Because, sure, all that
timeline-changing’s gonna take it out of you.
The Eleven’s idea of
course is to team up with the bad hombres from the dark universe, and somehow
keep their colossal power from wiping him out, while using them to
dominate, subjugate and ultimately destroy everyone else who stands in his way,
species by species if necessary. Standard evil Time Lord stuff but – oh, stop
whinging, you knew it was coming – turned up to eleven.
More than anything, the
character dynamics between the Seventh Doctor and Ace are what will get you
invested here, though Bonnar as usual is never less than screamingly good value
for money. But that pairing, advanced now in age, to the point where they know
each other’s moves and motives, and where they can talk as more seasoned
travellers, rather than the daft and brilliant little man with his brolly and
the girl with the timestorm in her background and the rucksack full of
explosives, is pretty spellbinding. And of course, Guy Adams is a writer in
whose hands a complicated plot can be delivered without quite making you
want to beat your own brains out with a pair of spoons, and who knows how to
fill the foregrounded emotional story with lots of good and juicy stuff, so you
feel glad to have heard it, for all it
might be an exhausting ride.
There’s a sense of time
closing in on the Doctor in this story too – not only does the older Ace and
the surfacing of the Eleven make it feel like we’re late in the Seventh
Doctor’s lifetime, but there’s also Carolyn Pickles as Cardinal Ollistra,
another stalwart from the adventures of the Eighth Doctor and more particularly
the War Doctor. She may have at least one more regeneration to go before
she becomes the ruthless commander of Time Lord forces in the Time War, but the
mere fact of having her here in the Main Range of stories drives Dark Universe
towards the later end of the Seventh Doctor’s lifespan, and adds a thrill of
anticipation to the whole thing.
Bottom line, Dark
Universe probably isn’t for everyone – if you like your Who lighter or more
linear, it’s never going to appeal to your core buying instincts. But there’s
absolutely shedloads here that make it worth the listen, from Bonnar and
Pickles to the impending darkness of a timeline that carries on in the Eighth
Doctor and Time War box sets, to the legitimizing within Big Finish of A
Charitable Earth and a catch-up with grown-up Ace, even to some story-beat call-backs
to Remembrance of the Daleks, where the Seventh Doctor plays a dangerous
game and realises a little too late that he may have overplayed his hand.
It might take you a couple
of sittings to get through Dark Universe. Do it though – it pays you
dividends as you go through, and if you have listened to Doom
Coalition and subsequent sets, or if you’re going to, it’s a stylish,
grandiose, operatic introduction to all that they bring with them.
