Tony’s putting his feet up on the desk
when
this dame walks in…
Whereas Volume 6 of The
Diaries Of River Song had a distinctly Doctor Who sensibility, with River
popping in here and there to have adventures in the gaps the Doctor left
behind, Volume 7 is very much River set loose from the Doctor altogether,
having particularly criminal-flavoured adventures of her own, in (for the most
part, at least) her Melody Malone guise. And if you’re going to have the
big-haired investigator on the case, why not take the opportunity that affords
to write takes on various different kinds of crime thriller? So these are not
so much The Diaries Of River Song as The Casebook Of Melody Malone.
Up first, we’re in Scandi
Noir territory with Colony Of Strangers, by James Goss. Most of
the conventions of this comparatively new genre of crime fiction are here for
the referencing on the particularly Nordic colony of Bondar – it’s damn cold,
people are mostly exhausted and miserable, there are murders, or at the very
least bodies (#ItsComplicated), there are cover-ups and connivings based both
in the vested interest of would-be beneficiaries, and the ordinary grimness of
people being people. There are frightened people too, afraid of strangers and
interruptions to their established pattern of life, and afraid, sometimes, of
each other, aware that something’s going on that shouldn’t be, but often
uncertain exactly what it is. As such, the atmosphere is set for uncertainty,
misunderstanding, mishap, murder and bloody-minded endless grimness. That said,
between them James Goss and Alex Kingston wring some humour out of the set-up
without ever going wildly over the top and breaking the mood. There are
classical sci-fi moments too, with people walking about who are most assuredly
dead, odd bodies being dumped on the beach just when River’s due to have a nice
cup of tea and a stroll, a classically tight-lipped mayor (Wanda Opalinska),
and a police chief (Charles Armstrong) surprisingly unskilled in the art of
solving crimes, for the simple reason that there more or less aren’t any in his
world. It’s all balanced on the knife edge it needs, creepy, funny, with a high
stress note and, just beneath the permafrost, lashings of fairly traditional
science-fiction underpinning the Scandi Noir setting. As such, what you get is
River Song does The Killing (at least almost never literally), but
without the sense of ennui and desire to go and sit in the fridge that the
original brought with it.
Abbey Of Heretics, by Lizbeth Myles, takes us to the time and very nearly
the place of the Brother Cadfael mysteries, by Ellis Peters. For those
criminally in the dark, Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk during the period
in British history when, notoriously, ‘Christ and his saints slept’ – the war
for the English crown between Stephen of Blois and Empress Matilda. If you’re
still none the wiser, think 1139-54, just over a hundred years after the Norman
Conquest. Where Cadfael solves crimes that step inside his cloisters or worry
the lawmakers of his local town of Shrewsbury, Sister Melody, to be fair to
her, just wants to have a night in with a very good book. A very…specific very
good book, to be sure, and one where, if she’s absolutely honest, she’s more
interested in the pictures than the words, but you’d be amazed at the trouble a
girl can get into in the 12th century for reading the wrong sort of
literature. Especially if there’s a mysterious plague creeping through the abbey.
And a monkish ghost popping up to scare
something-absolutely-other-than-the-willies out of the inhabitants. Melody runs
foul of three nuns in particular, each of them in their way possessed of
extraordinary powers. Sister Ursula, played by the vocally
spot-her-in-a-noisy-room distinctive Jaye Griffiths, is the librarian and
illuminator, and is keenest to give the new novitiate some words of friendly
advice. Sister Patrick (Aurora Burghart) is the keeper of the infirmary, and
very definitely just a healer, not a
miracle worker, damnit, while Sister Magdalene (the unsurpassable Janet Henfry)
is a nun with a recognisably austere objection not just to the book Sister
Melody’s looking for, but to all potentially salacious literature and history,
a would-be whitewasher of the souls of those in her care.
Ghost monks, unusual
signals, and a book that absolutely shouldn’t exist in a 12th
century abbey lead Sister Melody to uncover alien plots, though they’re nothing
like the traditional ‘Earth invasion’ palaver in which they Doctor invariably
finds himself involved. This is smaller, more intimate dabbling, though there’s
still at least one corpse too many by the end of the adventure, innocents
sacrificed to an alien ambition.
Lizbeth Myles’ script is
neatly full of intrigue and secrets, echoing conclaves, almost Da Vinci Code
style mysteries, a dash of The Name Of The Rose style murder and a
not inconsiderable body count. With mysterious plague among the sisters, ghost
monks, hostile powerbrokers, savers of souls prepared to go to extreme lengths
and a wholly remarkable book, there’s never an overt ticking clock in this
story, which is absolutely to Myles’ credit, but there’s certainly a sense of
intensifying danger as time goes by and death follows death.
There’s also something
more than a little glorious about River Song, who’s worn the habit before more
in eyebrow-raised pastiche, actually donning it and living among the sisters as
one of them, an undoubted sinner by the standards of the age, but resisting the
urge to bring her greater knowledge to the fore in a mocking way – there’s very
little of the exuberant ‘Oh, Sweetie, the things I’ve seen…’ about her here,
and it’s refreshing to hear River in a truly immersive cover, never mocking the
sisters’ faith or obedience to what is of course a patriarchal system, despite
the reality of her own freewheeling universal life. In that acceptance of who
they are and why they’re here, in, to use an obvious word, that sisterhood,
there seems to live a River Song more real than her legend, more compassionate
than her gun-toting record, and more righteously furious than the wider
universe generally lets her be. In that wider, futuristic universe, River Song meets
life and death, as we do even now, as inevitable elements of her ongoing story.
In the cloistered environment, it’s as though the innocence of some souls is
brought closer to her emotional core, and she reacts, in response to all the
wider universe’s normalization of death, with a more sharply moralistic flame
than we’re used to from her, to protect and to avenge those who died before
they needed to. We all love River in her striding, cocky, universe-is-her-oyster
style, but here, there’s a sense of what it’s like to really be River
Song, to know a lot and to have to make that knowledge count for
something.
After which, we’re back on
relatively familiar River territory in Barrister To The Stars by
Big Finish newbie James Kettle.
We point out his newbie
status because it’s the only point at which such a thing is noticeable in this
script, which is really a clashing together of worlds and legends. Without ever
naming names, this is River Song meets Rumpole Of The Bailey – a
crime-solving lawyer on a UK TV show (and subsequently a series of hilarious
novels) written by John Mortimer. Both Horace Rumpole and Roger Hodgkiss (who
takes his place in this story with a neat inversion of their initials) are
curmudgeonly barristers at the Old Bailey, describe themselves as ‘Old Bailey
hacks,’ have formidable wives and an interest in claret, and face particular
nemeses on the bench. In Rumpole’s case that nemesis is at least initially a
judge nicknamed ‘The Bull.’ Hodgkiss’ arch-enemy is a judge played with
formidable fire and a similar mindset by Annette Badland (familiar to most Who
fans as Margaret Slitheen).
All of this is fine and
dandy and in itself gloriously funny, but what, we hear you cry, has any of it
to do with River Song?
Very simple. River’s been
accused of murdering a warlord at an interstellar conference. She needs a
defence lawyer. She zaps Roger Hodgkiss (played by the force of voice acting
nature that is David Rintoul) out of his 20th century practice at
the Bailey to come and both defend her, and if at all possible, to find out who
really killed the Duke of Ferrox (Think Brian Blessed’s career, played with a
Scottish accent by Clive Hayward). What you essentially get from this story
then is River Song…meets Rumpole Of The Bailey…set in something like The
Curse Of Peladon.
You know that’s
going to be fun, right?
Fun is absolutely the
order of the day. Hodgkiss is chosen by River to represent her in the space
court (presided over by a computer with what turns out to be the personality
and voice of Badland’s Earth judge character), while investigating a giant
sentient puddle of acid with a protein fixation, a telepathic seductress with
low self-esteem, the Duke’s faithful homicidal retainer, a being who’s
dislocated in time by about half an hour, so you just have to have your half of
the conversation, go and make yourself a cup of tea, come back and wait for
them to give you the answers you asked for, and a workforce who share a
personality and a skills base, so they’re all the same person, but yet can
share the skills to do any of the work you need them to, from maids to plumbers
to reception staff and more.
There’s a gorgeous amount
of free-range imagination in the creations Kettle brings to this story, while
still focusing on the Rumpole riff and not being afraid to give River some
dubious motives of her own – not least when she, the accused, becomes Hodgkiss’
junior solicitor, investigating her own case.
After the bleak Nordic
crimefest of Colony Of Strangers and the more intimate, emotionally
engaged River of Abbey Of Heretics, Barrister To The Stars, (or Barrister
Galactica, as Big Finish writer Matthew J Elliott suggested to me it should
be called – and you’ve got to be honest, you can see his point, can’t you?)
gets back to kickass semi-comic River and delivers a real pick-me-up. The
smashing together of these ingredients, and doing it with this level of aplomb,
makes the idea of a return engagement for James Kettle something to be
contemplated with joy and impatience.
Speaking of return
engagements, Roy Gill’s Carnival Of Angels brings back not
only classic Melody Malone, Private Eye, but sets its story just a little way
outside of Manhattan (Coney Island, to be exact), and finds something new to do
with the Weeping Angels. As if that weren’t enough returns, it also brings back
Timothy Blore as Luke Sullieman (If you need the shorthand: alien werepanther,
and student of Professor Song’s) from his previous River story, Animal
Instinct. We know of course that Angels zap you and live off your time
energy. Carnival Of Angels is both a glorious and a deeply twisted use
of that fact – imagine someone had found a way to give the Angels a kind
of…fast food. Fast food like you find at every carnival in the world…
Mm-hmm.
Stylistically, there’s fun
here too, with a very Philip Marlowe vibe to the introductory narration, and a
character who talks like Marlowe but lacks his investigative chops, leaving the
field clear for Melody Malone to solve the mystery of the carnival, and
allowing Luke a way to progress out of River’s formidable shadow.
The Diary Of River
Song, Volume 7 is a
collection of stories that focuses more than usual on the idea of Melody
Malone, and on the adventures that focus on her involvement in solving very
particular kinds of crime. While it’s by no means the only way to go
with future River sets, enough is done here to establish the idea of
Melody-solving-crimes as a viable way to at least add to the broad spectrum of
adventures she can have. Imagine a future in which Miss Melody Marple
seeks out sinners in St Mary Mead, where River does Columbo – ‘Oh, and
one more thing, Professor…’, where she sings a Midsomer Melody, or where she of
course goes back to visit the Great Detective of Paternoster Row…
As an idea, using River in
her detective guise for the length of a whole box set might initially have
raised eyebrows among some listeners. What the writers and actors who bring
this set to life have done is prove the concept has legs, little grey cells and
a sonic magnifying glass. The next time Melody Malone gets a box set, the same eyebrows
will be raised in excitement.
