The prodigal son has returned to grace us with our
presence for the first time in five years.
Yes, He’s back and it’s about time.
Paul McGann has returned as the Doctor for the first time and now it’s
time to take a look back at the return without the hype to see how good it
actually was. This is Alan Barnes’ first
Doctor Who audio drama after editing comics for Doctor Who Magazine, some for
the Eighth Doctor, and for a first effort the plot is pretty good. The plot of Storm Warning sees the Doctor land on the British airship R-101 on
its maiden voyage to India, which was made famous when it crashed in France in
October 1930 after having unchecked modifications done on it in July 1930. So it seems like the perfect scenario for
Doctor Who to explain the mystery with the mission being to rendezvous with an
alien race to begin talks to trade technologies and knowledge. The plot doesn’t rely on something trying to
stop the crash of the R-101, but the rendezvous actually causing the crash. The script, while never really standing out,
has a lot of witty dialogue that brings you into the feel of the time period
and you can get yourself lost in the music and direction. The script also have some great ideas like
flying dinosaurs called Vortisaurs which feed off the energies in the Time
Vortex including one that ends up in the TARDIS by the end.
Paul McGann’s first Big Finish performance is full of
energy and life. He proves just how
great he would have been as the Doctor had he been given a full series on
television. He is just the breathless
romantic as he waxes on about how he’s met famous historical figures and correcting
all the flaws in the logic. When it
looks like he’s going to be thrown overboard for being a stowaway on the ship,
he just says he’s a German spy and immediately acts as if he doesn’t understand
British colloquialisms from the time period.
McGann is seriously having himself a ball to be back with Doctor Who
again. If this performance is anything
to go on the series is going to be great.
Any Doctor of course wouldn’t be complete without
their companion, but as the rights for the characters of the TV Movie are under
Fox, Big Finish had to introduce an original companion to go along with the
Eighth Doctor. So Alan Barnes came up
with the character of Charlotte Pollard, Charley to her friends, who would
quickly become the main focus of the Eighth Doctor’s story arc. Charley is a self-proclaimed Edwardian
Adventuress who stows away on the R-101 so she can prove a point to a guy that
she can get to the Singapore Hilton on New Years’ Eve by herself. She is an upper class young woman who is
headstrong and just wants to see the world.
She doesn’t mind crossdressing so she can get on the R-101. Charley is portrayed by India Fisher who from
the go gives off an attitude of young naivety yet the bravery to get through
danger. She gives a great first
impression as the companion and as she was supposed to die on the R-101 we have
the makings of a great companion.
The supporting cast is led by the flamboyant Lord
Tamworth played by Gareth Thomas.
Tamworth is the man behind this mission and won’t have anything go
wrong. He ends up staying with the
aliens to lead them on and is obsessed with serving King and Country. My favorite moment of this story is probably
his reaction to the Doctor claiming to be a German spy. He loves the notion because if he was a civilian
he would have had to be thrown overboard, but now the local authorities can see
him shot and Tamworth doesn’t have to bloody his hands. Next up is Rathbone played by Barnaby Edwards
who is pretty much scum. He is power
hungry and will take any chance to gain any sort of power. He even tries to make advances on Charley to
have power over her. Other than these
two however the rest of the supporting cast suffers from just becoming those
characters that blend into the background without really standing out in the
crowd.
The biggest problem with the story is the developments
in Parts Three and Four. So throughout
Part One there has been intrigue built up about the mysterious passenger in
Cabin 43 and it is of course revealed to be an alien. It is a member of the Triskelion, a race
divided into three factions much like the idea of the id, the ego and the
superego. Now the acting is impressive
by Helen Goldwyn who pulls off three distinct voices, but it is the Triskelion
plight that causes problems. Basically
it becomes a plotline similar to The Face
of Evil where two factions become unbalanced because their equalizer has
become ineffective and needs to be replaced.
You can see very easily where everything is going by the time this is
revealed which makes Part Three in particular difficult to get through.
To summarize, Storm
Warning starts off the Paul McGann series with a bang introducing us to
what looks like a great arc and of course a great companion. The supporting cast is mostly great but the
way the plot decides to go really brings the story down from being some of the
best as it could have been so much more original. 75/100
No comments:
Post a Comment