The musical Cabaret tells a very similar story to
today’s Doctor Who of a nightclub in Berlin that is slowly being overrun by the
Nazi party. It also shares similarities
to the themes of Cabaret of acceptance
of ones flaws and facing up to adversary.
As the naïve characters of Cabaret
are unable to see their own flaws and the danger coming for them, so too does
the character of Iris Wildthyme who gets to have her version of The Ultimate Foe as an evil distillation
of her is running the club and making deals with Nazi worms who want to stop
all evolution. They find every bit of
dissent as wrong and the punishment for wrongness is to be killed like the Jews
in World War II.
Continuing on with the
allusions to Cabaret, the Sixth
Doctor and Iris are the analogues for Cliff and Sally as almost star-crossed
lovers. Iris knows something is wrong at
Bianca’s but drowns her sorrows in tequila while the Doctor is doing all the
investigating into the existence of the worms.
Iris is the one who thinks it will all blow over in the end as it is
just politics. The performance from
Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor is great here as this story takes place soon
after the trail and the Doctor finds himself to be extremely vulnerable. He wants to find himself a better life and is
extremely afraid of Mel being his next companion as that means his life is
going to end and he is one step closer to becoming the Valeyard. He goes to Bianca’s club initially to get
away from it and put himself into trouble.
He has no real intention of drinking but he wants to get himself
embroiled in a plot just to take his mind off it. The show is stolen however by Katy Manning as
Iris Wildthyme, trans-temporal adventuress.
Iris is just a fascinating character as she is a parody of the Doctor
who even steals his adventures. She
travels in a bus that is smaller on the inside than it is on the outside and
has become completely smitten with the Doctor.
Katy Manning is just perfect as a character who just goes around the
universe searching for a good time which I love. The performance shows just how versatile Manning
is as an actress as Iris is distinct from Jo Grant which is for the best
especially later down the line when they appeared in the same story together.
Continuing on we have the
villains of the story first being the less interesting of the two with Henry
played by Paul Clayton who is the analogue for Ernst Ludwig, but the
translation is the boring character in the story. He is power hungry and with the setup of the
story, his actions don’t really fit in with the major theme in any real way
which is where the problem lies. In a
story like this everything major should be connected to the overarching
theme. Bianca on the other hand while
she is a villain she is our Emcee analogue and just an all-around fun
villain. She wants Iris’s remaining
regenerations and is ready to go to any real length to get them as she loves
the lifestyle of entertaining guests and getting drunk, while unaware of the
presence of the Nazis and the many crimes she is committing in the club. Her story is a touching one that allows for a
lot of sympathy even if she is in the wrong for most of the plot.
This is another story
that is told through a frame story which is where we get the larger diversions
from the homages to Cabaret. Many years after World War II and the events
of the night in Berlin tapes of Bianca’s survive and bartender Mickey is
showing them to a mysterious and silent Mr. Ashcroft to whom we get an
interesting twist with at the end. The
frame story allows Magrs and Cole to point out just how good the ideas around
how Doctor Who works on audio. This is
also an interesting way to work around copious amounts of technobabble in this
story as we learn about the worms and how they work with Mickey filling in the
explanations. I also have to point out
the music by Jason Loborik who uses a piano score in the background of every
scene which really helps with the transitions from the frame story into the
story proper as we get to hear the piano play as the tapes start with Mickey’s
narration.
To summarize, The Wormery is a story from Paul Magrs
who has some great ideas and if he was writing this all on his own everything
would most likely be perfect but Stephen Cole writing in a homage to Cabaret just cripples my enjoyment of
the story. The homage hits every beat Cabaret his yet Cabaret hit them better as they were unfettered with an older
audience. That doesn’t mean this story
is bad as the stuff Magrs is responsible for is brilliant and shines through
the homage for most of the story which could have gone terribly wrong. 80/100
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