Thursday, May 19, 2016

The Roof of the World by: Adrian Rigelsford directed by: Gary Russell: Trying to be Marco Polo, The Hand of Fear and The Abominable Snowmen, but Failing

The Roof of the World stars Peter Davison as the Doctor with Edward de Souza as Lord Mortimer Davey, William Franklyn as Pharaoh Amenhotep II, Nicola Bryant as Peri and Caroline Morris as Erimem.  It was written by Adrian Rigelsford, directed by Gary Russell and released in June 2004 by Big Finish Productions.

 

Other than sharing the title of its first episode and portions of the setting, The Roof of the World has nothing to do with the First Doctor story Marco Polo.  Instead the story is a pretty standard pseudo-historical in the same vein as The Talons of Weng-Chiang, with the Doctor, Peri and Erimem arriving in Tibet in 1917 so the Doctor can participate in a cricket match on the top of Mount Everest.  All is not well as there is an Old One trapped in the mountain and it takes over the mind of Erimem and it’s up to the Doctor to stop it.  This story is a blatant rip off of The Hand of Fear as well as The Abominable Snowmen, and knowing Rigelsford’s track record with original thought that really isn’t any surprise as the man wanted to write The Dark Dimension for the 30th anniversary.  This being a preview of his writing really shows that it wouldn’t have been very good to begin with.  Rigelsford writes in a very clichéd manner that takes directly from other Doctor Who stories, without any sort of intent to homage, but to rip-off other stories.  It wants to take from the mythology of the Virgin New Adventures, but it is unable to actually pull the style of these novels off with any sort of style.

 

Peter Davison gives a great performance as the Doctor as do Nicola Bryant as Peri and Caroline Morris as Erimem, especially considering how out of character they are at different points in the story.  The Doctor and Peri both come across as extremely bland which may be on par with some of the television stories, but with the character development seen in these stories it is completely unacceptable to have them acting like this.  Erimem doesn’t fare much better as she gets a chance to become the whiny companion who has had a life of royalty as a spoiled brat even if in other stories she has shown that she wasn’t spoiled and is actually a competent leader, unlike presented here.  Again Caroline Morris is trying her best but it is Rigelsford’s bad writing that causes a lot of the problems.  The supporting cast is full of pretty big British names from the sixties with Edward de Souza, who is most famous for being in Mission to the Unknown for Doctor Who fans, as Lord Davey who is basically Lord Cranleigh from Black Orchid which isn’t an interesting character.  He is annoying and extremely arrogant.  William Franklyn, most famous for playing the Book in three seasons of the Radio version of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, plays the Old One as well as Erimem’s father Pharaoh Amenhotep II in a performance not worthy of his vocal skill as everything in the story surrounding the villain comes off as flat.

 

The biggest draw to this story is Part Two which is the only part to do some genuine character building.  The Part takes the form of Erimem’s hallucinations as she thinks she is dead and reflects on her life while the villain in the form of her father.  As a single episode it almost works as its standalone story and seems like it could have been an extra possibly titled “Erimem’s Story” as a second story attached to the three part The Roof of the World.  You can literally switch to Part Three after the end of Part One and not miss a single thing.  Rigelsford uses that episode as extreme character development which really doesn’t work well.

 

To summarize, The Roof of the World is about half good and half bad as it has some good ideas and a second episode that is absolutely brilliant at looking into the mind of a character, but the acting, characterization and main plot just isn’t good enough to keep my interest over the running time.  50/100

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