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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 – 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

Torchwood – Serenity

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Written by James Moran and directed by Scott Handcock.

Torchwood monthly range release 29.

Spoiler-free verdict: A burst of concentrated fanservice which never quite manages to unite its disparate elements into a deeper meaning, but is far, far too much fun to care.

Recommended pre-listening: None.

***

Where to begin with Torchwood fandom? Well, perhaps where this story did in its promotion, with a single copy left for whomever might claim it at a shrine devoted to Ianto Jones on Mermaid Quay in Cardiff. The popularity of Ianto and his relationship with Jack Harkness is a powerful core of Torchwood‘s reception, and continues to dominate fandom conversation to this day, particularly in terms of shipping and fanfic.

What that means is, when it comes to an easy sell of a Torchwood audio, official Jack/Ianto fake-married comedy is utter gold, the easiest success story since some bright little guy decided to tell the story of how the two shacked up in the first place. Serenity is a perfectly-engineered tactical strike in getting the approval of anyone who considers themselves a Torchwood fan.

As a Torchwood fan who eats this stuff up, but also a bit of a miserable git of a critic, that puts me in an interesting position. Serenity is genuinely, thoroughly delightful. The first 30 minutes or so are some of the most fun I’ve ever had with Big Finish, and that’s alongside competition as stiff as Jackie Tyler, singing killer Muppets, or the Grel (if you don’t know that last one, you haven’t lived… or laughed). The pleasures come quick and hit the mark beautifully, with a wonderful wave of innuendo and mundane passive-aggression perfectly capturing the horny hell of suburban repression. There’s a few things to take away from this, most importantly that Gareth David-Lloyd as Ianto is utterly incredible at playing this material, his seething rants about the “Best Kept Lawn” competition and “spit-roasts” adding up to, for my money, possibly his best performance ever. He attacks this tremendously witty script with gusto, with incredibly rewarding readings to every line.

Similarly rewarding is the pathos in plonking Jack and Ianto down in a domestic situation. The script wisely keeps this from being perfect fluff; fanservice without in-character frission somewhere along the line can feel a bit empty. Instead, there’s always a sense of this being an awkward fit for the characters, with Jack dumping Ianto in this life 24/7 while skipping to and from the Hub being a particularly delightful source of tension. But that sense of tension makes the amount of joy they get from this life all the more rewarding; small moments like them washing a car together, with Ianto eagerly ordering Jack to take off his shirt, combine with the tension to create a properly lived-in sense of domestic bliss. Their arguments also provide a source of external relationship commentary from neighbor Vanessa (Ellie Darvill), whose monologue about losing her husband and the value of loving each other in every moment perfectly hits the balance between the angst of Torchwood fans knowing Ianto’s fate and the joy of them seeing the moments they’re happy together first. In short, this is a sharply done relationship study that knows exactly which buttons to press to get the crowd going wild.

But the fanservice also ticks a different box in the return of a monster from the Torchwood TV series. As with Broken, Serenity shows Big Finish saving their big Jack/Ianto monthly slot for the return of a writer from the TV series, in this case James Moran, author of, most notably, Children of Earth Day Three, but most relevant to this audio, of series 2 episode Sleeper. This is, it has to be said, functioning on an entirely different register of fandom consumption; certainly, my experiences with Torchwood fandom has rarely produced people interested in discussing monsters of the week as the draw. Most conversation about Sleeper I’ve seen have revolved around Ianto’s sass and the “let’s all have sex” line. And in my view, it strains the pleasures of the audio somewhat.

That is not to say the Sleepers aren’t a good fit. They are, for the themes of this story, a fantastic fit. But the tone of this story entirely changes when they arrive, emphasized by Blair Mowat’s excellent score, which shifts from the glib suburban new compositions of the front half to bringing back the thrilling motif composed for Sleeper on TV in the back. Much of the first half of the story sets up a world and characters that ultimately matter little to the final thrust of the story, and the comedy quickly dies away into action-adventure. Structurally, a lot of this mirrors the TV episode, which went from an intimate personal drama to a budget-breaking action movie midway through. But whereas that episode higned itself around one woman’s quest to hold onto her human identity, this just isn’t interested in the question; Bob, Kelly, Vanessa, all the neighbors are not valued much by this story once the invasion switch is flipped, and their personas are never heard from again. While the deneument does make a nice parallel between the Sleepers and Jack and Ianto as people who can sit in this suburban ideal but never quite stay a part of it, it never quite makes deeper connections I’d long for between this suburban world and the invasion lurking underneath.

Most notably, the climax features the Sleeper formerly known as Bob (Joe Shire) lecturing Jack and Ianto about how the violent tendencies of humanity will doom it, which is itself a strong, weighty idea. And this story does provide evidence of that destructive evil in the suburban world it creates. For me, one of the most expertly-written and overall memorable moments is the thinly-veiled homophobia in Bob’s reaction to Jack and Ianto winning the lawn award, which is just the right amount of pleasant external packing on underlying evil to be so, so human. But the thematic connections never quite materialize, which feels like a missed opportunity; for all the teases of Bob’s crushing on Jack and potential swinging, the story’s handling of destructive sexuality never quite erupts into anything, and franky, I feel cheated out of more swinger comedy, because that was gold. Contrasting the Sleepers with Jack and Ianto is as far as the script overtly goes toward thematic resolution. The big ideas are juggled, and they are good, but they never quite get there the way I’d like them to.

But then, maybe that’s just because Jack and Ianto are just too big to do anything else with, and maybe this story is just clever enough to know it. The biggest dramatic moment doesn’t come from the Sleepers themselves, but from Ianto shooting Jack to prove he is him. And similarly, the heart of this story doesn’t come from the neighborhood that Jack and Ianto let get blown to smithereens, residents included, for dramatic effect, but rather the moments we get to spend with them trying to make a life work there, just for a little while.

Perhaps Serenity doesn’t entirely get where it’s going on the big monster plot. But it knows what matters most to Torchwood fans, and goes for the jugular. And they, like me, will love it.

8/10

Missy – The Broken Clock

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Written by Nev Fountain and directed by Ken Bentley.

Spoiler-free verdict: Juggling a perhaps too-complex plot, true-crime pastiche, and surprising emotional depth, The Broken Clock is a ballsy script that has no right pulling it all off as well as it does. Mad and exceptional.

Recommended pre-listening: A Spoonful of Mayhem; Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated

***

The old cliche is, of course, that a broken clock is right twice a day. So what does that say about the character of Missy? Is she irreversibly wrong? Or is there a possibility for right in her?

Such a question has made her by far the most compelling take on the Master on TV, reaching a remarkable climax in The Doctor Falls. And here, Nev Fountain examines it from a different angle, with similarly compelling results. As she confesses to fellow ex-soldier Joe Lynwood, she once knew what side of good and evil she existed on, but now, it’s not so clear.

To hit this home, Missy is put in a tentative position of narratory power over a story haunted by iconography from her past lives, namely a mysterious grandfather clock and a man with a pointed beard. While, quite cheekily, neither of these are what they seem to be (no multi-Master shenanigans here), they nonetheless are loaded choices in terms of her emotional development. This post-War Master is haunted by the person she has been, to the point where even just trying to reclaim an old ship is a struggle against the people she has wronged, in this case the ship itself, a humanoid TARDIS named Mark. Sure enough, she does some horrible things here, most exquisitely taunting a security guard over his impending death, and shooting a few actors that may or may not be real. But it’s noteworthy that she also fails to kill Joe in the end. She says to the listener that she’ll let him off the once, but maybe, just maybe, this broken clock is showing right. Or maybe she isn’t quite broken after all.

Adding on the framing device of a cheesy True Crime documentary very nearly destabilizes this mix, one incongrous, bizarre ingredient that threatens to take up all the oxygen. There are, perhaps, a few too many scenes of characters pondering whether they are actors in a recreation or real people, and the story never quites go as far as it could to justify this on a plot level. But on a thematic level, it’s fitting. The questions of subjectivity and narrator control echo across this fractured identity for the woman who was once the Master, and by foregrounding how she gets portrayed as determining who she might be, most deliciously of all in a comedically weak performance by a reenactment actor, Nev Fountain creates the richest portrayal of the Master on audio perhaps ever. As Joe highlights at the end, the murders of this story were, from another angle, no murders at all; subjectivity is king, and no single storyteller shows the whole picture, so instead, let’s embrace the fractal pattern as the truest whole of all.

But beyond that, the narrative device adds something vital to this story: fun. For a rich character study examining trauma and morality, this is gleefully bonkers, with comedic record-scratches, bad accents, arch narration, and catchy diegetic music. As many laughs are to be had here as in the previous episode’s face-off with the Monk, a remarkable achievement in the absence of star quality like Rufus Hound. In short, The Broken Clock is a magnificent achievement, a juggling act of absurdity and depth that perhaps shouldn’t work, but like its star, manages to use both to create something wholly remarkable and memorable.

A hightlight of the year.

10/10

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