Monthly Archives: August 2019

The Legacy of Time – Relative Time

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Written by Matt Fitton and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 4.

Spoiler-free verdict: A pleasantly zippy romp with modern aesthetics and values, filling an empty plot with strong performances and loving, varied fanservice.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins, The Split Infinitive, The Sacrifice of Jo Grant

***

Relative Time is fun. It’s not deep. It doesn’t have much to say. It doesn’t need to. What it does have is Georgia Tennant at her most charismatic, Peter Davison at his most snarky and bewildered, and for bonus points, John Heffernan as one of the most delightful Big Finish antagonists in their catalogue, the Nine. Throw them into a fizzy script written with love for all eras of Doctor Who, and I’d struggle not to have a good time.

The pairings in this story are just plain fun. Putting Georgia Tennant and Peter Davison together is just an obvious choice, and the father-daughter duo play a distorted version of their actual relationship with aplomb. The contrast of their classic/new values pays dividends, with Jenny’s fast-talking exhuberance and dubious morals contrasting wonderfully with the put-upon, straight-laced Fifth Doctor. The sequence of the Doctor teaching Jenny to drive is particularly genius, bringing the parent/child bonding cliche into a sci-fi setting with cheeky energy. And in parallel, the Nine gets himself his own feminist presence of a companion in Thana, who is every bit the impossible space kleptomaniac he is, while also getting in some jabs at the Nine’s absurdities and the general patriarchal presence of Time Lords. The two teams don’t face off against each other much, but their individual dynamics make each scene independently engaging.

The contrast between era values dominates the tensions of the story, and fuels both pairings. With Jenny, there’s a delightful tension between her and her Dad in terms of ethics, stemming from her TV episode but, for my money, much sharper. Where on TV she was a fairly shallow soldier learning from the Doctor, here she has a fully-formed set of values, which just happen to include stealing from the rich to build herself a time machine. It naturally ends in reasserting the Doctor as a “man who never would,” but does so in a far less messianic and all way; Jenny clearly has affection for his ideals, but remains her own person, with the story choosing to end in asserting she’s marvelous in of herself. Meanwhile, there’s some light new series jabs about from the Nine/Thana plot; Thana’s point about how the Time Lords are patriarchal is hardly a new observation, but it’s a fitting one for a story contrasting classic values with a new feminist character. And, of course, the delivery is hilarious.

In addition, the story clearly has a lot of love not just for the classic and new series, but Big Finish itself. The story is a collage of fandom, from a plot ripped from Russell T Davies’ TV episode The End of the World to a main antagonist from recent Big Finish and, perhaps most delightfully, the return of the Vortisaurs from the early Main Range Eighth Doctor audios. The sheer delight of being able to include space-time dinosaurs in this story is obvious and deeply relatable, with Thana’s comedic reactions to a bunch of rich jerks getting massacred by them providing great entertainment value; this is a story about playing in the Big Finish toybox and knowing that that can be an inherently satisfying thing to do. For a set celebrating Doctor Who at Big Finish, this is the one story that feels like it’s celebrating what their creative output has added to the show more than any other, and as a result, it’s a vital addition to an anniversary celebration.

It’s not the deepest story in the Big Finish catalog. Hell, it’s hard to find much for me to say about it, even with how much I enjoyed it. But I have space for that in my life. Georgia Tennant proves to be one of the most fun talents Big Finish has, and Matt Fitton proves to be one of the best at giving her fun things to do.

This is a simple story that puts a smile on my face.

8/10

The Legacy of Time – The Sacrifice of Jo Grant

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Written by Guy Adams and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 3.

Spoiler-free verdict: The Legacy of Time finds itself a second standout in an emotional high point that places meaningful character interaction first.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins, The Split Infinitive

***

The best fanservice is the sort that can be meaningful both for those in love with a thing, and those who never were. The Sacrifice of Jo Grant is such fanservice. The UNIT era is a low point of my personal investment in Doctor Who. But this episode manages to stir, because of how it uses its nostalgic affection for an era to find new emotional meaning.

The highlight of this episode, of course, comes from facing the marvelous portrait of adult Jo Grant provided by Russell T Davies for The Sarah Jane Adventures with her incarnation of the Doctor again. The expected beats are, of course, beautiful; Guy Adams continues his take of Jo as in love with her Doctor from Tidal Wave in the UNIT range, and it works just as well here as it did there, with climactic confessions and high stakes whipping up a frenzy of a climax. But the best scenes aren’t the big ones. For me, the standout moment is Jo confronting this Doctor about vegetarianism, an ideal he never held, but one she came to expect of him. It’s a sharp, mature discussion of ethics on a topic that can all too often be preachy, and even has in other Jo Grant stories this year. Not only did it succeed in making me contemplate vegetarianism, but it succeeded in saying something meaningful and new about the ways people rub off on each other through two beloved icons, helping me understand the love for them, too.

The use of modern UNIT leads here is less of a headlining feature, and successful, but less remarkable. Both Treolar and Culshaw put in strong performances recreating their characters, but unlike Jo Grant, Kate Stewart is not a character that has had much space to stand on her own terms outside her relationship with a Doctor Who icon, and thus her internal debate over contacting her father is a bit more perfunctory. I do like that, rather than go with “no changing history”, Kate is allowed to use the plot situation to make something good happen. But on the flip side, while hearing her speak to the Brigadier is new, it ends up not saying much of note. Similarly, while it’s delightful hearing Osgood lauded as a genius by the Doctor and geeking out over him, those are beats we’d seen from her in her debut. Jo turns out to be the catalyst for the most relationships here as well, and I could listen to her and Osgood hanging out at water parks forever.

Ultimately, and rightly, the plot chooses not to get up to much to facilitate these relationship beats. There’s some guff about holes in time, leading to some action scenarios in Osgood’s c-plot offering varying levels of thrills, but the real draw here is the time a group of characters get to spend together as a result. There’s never a real sense that Jo will end up sacrificing herself, or that Kate will destroy history as a result of messing up with her dad, but the situations are handled fully on the emotional level of the characters, elevating them far above the fairly simple events. It’s a celebration, and it feels like one.

Beyond that, there’s a fundamental niceness to this episode, which makes it a nice contrast to the other set high point, the bitter Lies in Ruins. For example, when Kate falls for an obvious alien impersonation of Osgood, nobody blames her, all agreeing that trusting Osgood was the right call and that Kate couldn’t have known. And, of course, as mentioned previously, Kate’s interaction with her father isn’t treated as a threat to history, but rather as a chance. Ultimately, the whole time travel plot comes down to that, with even its big sacrifice beat coming down to the Doctor cheating with time travel while the Time Lords look the other way. What we get here is a story about how the Sirens’ destruction of time isn’t so much a major threat as it is an opportunity to have a few more quality moments with relationships long lost. There’s just something tremendously pleasant about that.

Maybe we can’t have this every day. Maybe it doesn’t make for the most interesting hour on a plot level. But it’s so lovingly written and positive, with an eye for sharp character work, that you aren’t left wishing for anything else.

The Sacrifice of Jo Grant is exactly the sort of fanservice you want from an anniversary.

9/10

The Legacy of Time – The Split Infinitive

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Written by John Dorney and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 2.

Spoiler-free verdict: A solidly acceptable nostalgic thriller elevated by high-concept storytelling.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time, Lies in Ruins

***

The Legacy of Time is an unusual aniversary special. Unlike most Doctor Who celebrations, this isn’t a tribute to the show, but rather a tribute to what Big Finish has done with it. That was clear in what the previous episode did with Bernice and River, but it’s even more clear here. The Seventh Doctor and Ace teaming up with the Counter-Measures team isn’t really something one would typically propose as a tribute to the Seventh Doctor era, but it is something that pays tribute to a major Big Finish spinoff.

This ethos greatly governs the story. There’s not really any revelations to be had about any of the characters, and the Doctor and Ace take their time to even turn up in their plot. In terms of style and structure, this is an episode of Counter-Measures, with grounded sci-fi thriller trappings and Cold War claustrophobia. The choice of villain widens the net a bit, with the Rocket Men, originating from some rightly beloved Companion Chronicles, turning up in a surprise fanservice twist. But that’s about all this story has in terms of meat on its bones: loving homage to other things Big Finish has done. Themes beyond nostalgic gaze at action stories and thrillers are in fairly short supply, and the story doesn’t really flex any emotional manipulation muscles.

It’s fortunate, then, that it’s told by someone as talented as John Dorney. The unfolding of the plot in two time periods, with Ace and the Doctor in each with a different period Counter-Measures team, keeps the familiar thrills bubbling into more exciting material. The set-pieces are pleasantly bonkers and largely well-judged; it’s hard to go wrong with throwing characters out of an airplane. And overall, the script oozes love for what it’s getting to do. It’s fun hearing the characters compete with pop culture references from different periods of what thriller the plot reminds them of (Bond references aplenty!), it’s fun hearing the distinctive Counter-Measures incidental music offering up oodles of stye, it’s fun hearing hints of Ian and Rachel going out together, and it’s fun having the whole story come down to a shaggy dog joke about UNIT dating.

But, I have to confess, this just isn’t the sort of fanservice that I live for. I enjoy the Counter-Measures range, but it’s not something that occupies a very large space in my heart (aside maybe from Lady Clare, who is wonderful and needs to be in everything and I got very excited by hearing referenced here). The Seventh Doctor era, including and especially at Big Finish, is something that means a lot to me, but more for the long-running arc with Hex, who is sadly absent from this set, or the stuff with Benny, who’s already been covered by the previous story. And aesthetically, it doesn’t hit the political or emotional depth I associate with the Seventh Doctor era (which, it must be said, featured nicely in The Assassination Games, the Seventh Doctor’s last run-in with this team), or even the splash of camp I controversially love from season 24. This is fairly white, traditional action romping. So while The Split Infinitive is a clever story that it’s hard to muster much critique for, I equally find it hard to muster much investment.

It’s a perfectly welcome addition to the box set. But it’s not something I’d buy a set for.

6/10

The Legacy of Time – Lies in Ruins

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Written by James Goss and directed by Ken Bentley.

The Legacy of Time episode 1.

Spoiler-free verdict: Two of Doctor Who‘s very best characters, River Song and Bernice Summerfield, meet at last, something that could easily sell a story in of itself, but Paul McGann has to go and give one of his best performances ever and steal the show. In other words, shockingly good.

Recommended pre-listening: The Sirens of Time

***

19 July 1999, the first Big Finish Doctor Who audio, The Sirens of Time, was released. It wasn’t their first release overall (Oh No It Isn’t, September 1998), nor even most of the creative team’s first Who audio work (the Audio-Visuals and BBV productions), and it is not even their best, but there is nonetheless something totemic about it, and it ushered in much that is worth celebrating. Someone had to draw a line somewhere, and it was as good a place as any. So here we are, twenty years later, with a six hour celebration of everything that’s been built off that audio. What is there left to build on it?

Well, as Lies in Ruins reveals, quite a lot. Time has passed, and Big Finish has changed with it. The company is full of writers who hadn’t worked on a single line of published Who in their lives in 1998, one of whom wrote this story, and the company has acquired rights to beloved characters who had yet to ever exist.

So, River Song, face of the new, meets Bernice Summerfield, the first face this company saw. I expected this to be fun; these are two of my favorite characters in an anniversary celebration story, fun seemed guaranteed.

This was not fun.

Lies in Ruins is a prickly, difficult, angry thing, with characters who can’t stand each other being driven to desperate places, brought to life by some of Big Finish’s most talented performers bringing their A-Game. There’s a degree to which that’s dissapointing; I still want a story of River and Benny having flirty fun quite desperately, and it’s a shame neither character gets much lighter emotional interaction with the Doctor here. But what is offered in its place is so incredibly good that complaining seems a foolish thing to do.

For starters, the River and Benny relationship is in no way interpreted how I’d have imagined it. Author James Goss notes in the extras that it would be easy to have a version of this story in which they’re terribly witty and tearing each other apart the whole time. I can’t say that’s something I agree with at all as a reading of the characters, but in practice, it works, and works particularly well for an aniversary. These characters are two tremendously different takes on a similar starting point, divided by the existence of the new series, and so discussing the ways they compare and contrast in the midst of the Time War, the metatextual break, between classic and new, is particularly sharp. But beyond that, it works because the story gives them another take on the companion to use as a punching bag.

Enter Ria, played by Torchwood star Alexandria Riley. She is, by design, a fairly vapid and hateful character, impossibly naive and far too eager. In my fairly critical review of The Sirens of Time, I said I felt like the Sirens themselves were a less than charitble commentary on the companion archetype, complete with twisted ankle joke. Well, here, Ria does, in fact, twist her ankle, and in general feels like a response to those themes in Sirens. The difference is, while in Sirens, the twist was that the apparent companion is an evil temptress, here, the apparent siren is, in fact, a creation of a man, the Doctor, to fill a reductive role and make him feel good.

It’s a tremendously difficult balance to strike. The Doctor is particularly monstrous here, both in what he does with Ria and the murder he is willing to commit against the scavengers to save what he believes to be the ruins of Gallifrey. Perhaps the strongest scene of the episode, for my money, is Ria’s confession to Bernice that the Doctor terrifies her; I don’t think there’s ever been a more unnerving picture of what the Time War does to the character. And my God, Paul McGann sells it. The script sells it. This is unmistakably the Eighth Doctor, and unmistakably as dark as he can go. Plus, there’s one other twist: while Ria is naive and empty at first, she reaffirms love for this series that overrides all, for the adventures, the heroism, the cleverness, the heart, the words over weapons. Her death hurts, but it’s a necessary hurt for the darkest of days, and restates why what she embodies does, in fact, matter.

And while this story fails to be in any way about River or Bernice themselves, it needs them to show the light on either end of that tunnel, calling the Doctor out (and checking him out, this is McGann’s Doctor) in a way Ria never could. “War doesn’t suit you,” declares River at the climax; it’s an obvious conclusion, but a necessary and beautiful one. The final scenes are full of grace notes, finding the beauty coexisting with the tragedy, and reminding the listener that, however dark it gets, Doctor Who comes out the other side, out of the wilderness years, through the new series, and beyond to whatever lies next.

This is an unpleasant, difficult hour of audio drama, with the most harsh and prickly performance I’ve ever heard the Doctor given. But because of how it faces that, building on and responding to an old story by applying new values and great humanity, it captures everything I love about Doctor Who along the way.

Lies in Ruins is a masterpiece.

10/10