A Big Finish Audio
One of the things that I have yet to actually get around to doing is reading any of the Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventure books produced in the early-mid nineties. I do know that conceptually I do not agree with the general tone of the books based on what I’ve seen, and some of the fandom that came from them. As a first “true” introduction to the format, these plays based on the Virgin New Adventure books, are equally as problematic to me.
“One would-be assassin is in a mental ward. Another’s on the run. Their intended victim is stirring up the mobs. Terrorists are planning a strike of their own. A talk-radio host is loving every minute of it. A Whitehall insider whispers about a mysterious UN operative, with a hidden agenda. Everyone’s got someone they want to be afraid of. It’ll only take a little push for the situation to erupt – and something is doing the pushing. But you can trust the Doctor to put things right. Can’t you?“
The actual audio drama that I am looking at reviewing here is called the Fearmonger and stars Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred reprising their roles from the latter era of the original series. Immediately we find The Doctor and Ace hot on the heels of some kind of monster that may or may not inhabit the body of a crazed right wing political group leader. At least this is what a man who regularly calls into a Fox News styled pundit show seems to think, and says that he plans another assassination attempt on her, as a previous one (that the play opened on) went south. We find the Doctor commandeer the radio show and egg on the “crazy” man, basically saying “yeah! There is a monster” which riles everyone up. This leaves Ace and the Doctor to investigate the situation themselves in order to get some answers.
The right wing political party in question, The New Britannia party, is a pretty rough group of characters who base their entire political stance on racism. They basically want to throw out anyone who isn’t white and sherilyn Harper, their leader, doesn’t help with her rhetoric. Against them is a terrorist group trying to end the hate ironically with assassinations and bombings. Immediately you may notice that the back-bone of this story is very dark, and that is honestly a big problem with it for me. While things like nationalism, jingoism, racism, immigration and politics have always featured in Doctor Who media, the show was at least clever enough to try to keep it toned down.
With this new tone, the storytelling loses its fun and clownish charm, instead going for preachy social commentary. This was a trend in the 1980’s McCoy episodes as they ham-fisted things like racism into episodes that did not need it in the plot. Remembrance of the Daleks comes to mind with a few scenes of black segregation in the 1960’s that served no purpose other than to make the watcher feel bad, and cluttered up the over-all narrative. This bleak and preachy take on the Doctor is not my favorite to be honest.
I guess it may be my problem as a listener, that I need to differentiate the show and these audios more in order to really enjoy them, but as a fan of the classic show rather than a series of books, the themes in here clash with my preconceived notions of what the characters should be doing. Aside from my gripes, the acting and production on this play are VERY well done, and to be honest it is the best produced play from Big Finish so far. I know my opinions on the McCoy era may not be the most popular, but I will try to look at the other Virgin New Adventure stories with a more open mind. We’ll see how that goes.