Scherzo
stars Paul McGann as the Doctor with India Fisher as Charley. It was written by Robert Shearman, directed
by Gary Russell and released in December 2003 by Big Finish Productions.
A phrase coming to mind
after listening to Scherzo is ‘I need
an adult’ even if you are an adult. The
imagery that is brought to mind by this effort from Robert Shearman are just
terrifying as this story features the Doctor and Charley dissecting a creature
with a broach, eating said creature more than once, fusing together to form one
supreme organism, a foil story about an arrogant king who demanded music
disappear which it retaliated with murdering everyone in the kingdom and the
vast white void of a ring that makes up this experiment. This is the first story in the Divergent
Universe where time just doesn’t exist which is played up brilliantly by
Shearman who in this story has months and years passing in total silence as the
Doctor and Charley don’t feel it happening around them. Shearman is extremely clever with the title
as many don’t know that a scherzo is a piece of music that is usually in a
frantic tempo and gets across the idea that there is great danger and tragedy
just around the corner which is perfect to describe this story.
This story picks up
immediately after the end of Zagreus
and gets off to a bang with the TARDIS breaking up and leaving the Doctor and
Charley stranded in a corridor with a creature made of sound that is slowly
evolving the more the Doctor and Charley make any sort of noise. It doesn’t take long for the creature to get
violent and as it doesn’t understand the concept of time as soon as it reaches
maturity it wants to kill its parents, the Doctor and Charley. On the surface it seems to be an extremely
simple story but as it is Big Finish’s first two hander where there are only
two actors present, Scherzo comes
across as extremely emotional and character driven which wouldn’t work if the
Doctor and Charley weren’t good characters.
I can gladly report that both Paul McGann and India Fisher are on top
form here as they act their socks off to finish the character development
started in Neverland and Zagreus.
The Doctor immediately becomes depressed here as he left the universe as
a sacrifice to Charley which isn’t a sacrifice when she followed him into the Divergent
Universe. His depression increases and
when he fuses with Charley he becomes extremely manic and tries to kill
her. McGann is having a blast with the
part, but India Fisher steals the show as this story goes into Charley’s head
and sees her able to let go of her romantic feelings for the Doctor. It is because of the immense friendship they
share that she is able to get the Doctor free of the sound creature once and
for all.
Shearman is excellent at
writing the characters in a different universe as with the several points of
silence in the story where you can just hear the Doctor and Charley’s
footsteps, there is this pervading sense of the unknown through every
scene. The listener knows that there is
something out there in the whiteness, but nobody knows where it is, what it’s
planning or even if it’s dangerous to our heroes. It is simply the idea that something is
coming that allows the terror to seep in and not just the rather disturbing
imagery present in the story. Gary
Russell and the people at ERS should also be thanked for their direction, sound
design and music as everything just feels lonely which is a great auditory
representation of the loneliness and the troubles of the two characters who are
exiled from the familiar and forced into the unknown which is a basic human
fear. The story acts as a catharsis for
their emotions and it is the direction from Russell who gets this across as it
is all done as subtext in a subtle manner where something like the new series
would flat out say it which doesn’t work well in something like this.
To summarize, like a
scherzo, Scherzo is a frantic sort of
story that gets across the struggles of its characters and the ideas that this
universe has it in for the Doctor and Charley like antibodies have it in for
diseases. Everything in this story fits
perfectly together and much like Zagreus
goes all out with the crazy ideas of the Divergent Universe. 100/100
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