Making a Doctor Who audio
story with the framing device of a news broadcast is such a great idea that is
done perfectly in LIVE 34 which in
essence is the gimmick that makes this story stand out from the crowd. This becomes especially apparent when you
notice that the plot of the story is the basic plot of The Happiness Patrol but told from the perspective of the citizens
of Colony 34 as events are unfolding. As
a listener it gives a unique participation factor as you are a citizen living
through these events as they play out which I think elevates this story to an
almost classic status for just how out there the styling it is.
The main characters of
the Doctor, Ace and Hex don’t actually feature heavily in the story as it is
the supporting characters taking the foreground of the story and telling us
what is going on in the colony’s government and behind the scenes. These supporting characters take the form of
three journalists working for the radio station, LIVE 34. There is the main anchor Drew Shahan played
by Andrew Collins who is naïve to what is going on in the colony, having his
associates do a lot of the work for him, Charlotte Singh played by Zehra Naqvi
who is the proactive reporter wanting to actually report the news no matter
what it will reveal about the government or make the station look bad and
finally there is Ryan Wareing played by Duncan Wiseby who is the weakest
link. Wareing is just your standard
reporter who reports on events and he isn’t as memorable as the other two
characters. This doesn’t mean that he is
a bad character, he just doesn’t come across as interesting as the other two
characters.
The news show format of
the story allows the villain of the story to be described in the background of
the story. The villain in Premier Jaeger
who is the evil totalitarian dictator who promises elections but is secretly
working behind the people’s back for his own greedy purposes. He’s been hiding mountains of dead bodies which
only come across as the news stories develop over the course of the
broadcast. When he does show up the
actor playing him, William Hoyland, gives a great performance as he feels like
your standard politician who has his own interests in mind whenever he is
making decisions and is motivated by greed.
His downfall at the climax of the story isn’t done very well however as
it acts more like an anti-climax with a mob turning against him and the story
just ending abruptly with the Doctor and company leaving the planet with
Charlotte in charge of getting elections going.
That brings us to the
main characters who are shoved into the background in their own story, but
Parsons and Stirling-Brown do a great job whenever they use them. Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor just comes
across as a politician whenever he is brought on to comment on events or make
speeches and there are even some moments where he is using the radio to give
out messages to Ace and Hex commenting on their actions in the story which is a
great idea. Sophie Aldred and Philip
Olivier in turn are great whenever they are on but that is very little with
Aldred getting a very powerful scene near the end and Part Three devoted solely
to Hex’s discovery of mass graves which is great and morbid.
To summarize, LIVE 34 is a classic without really much
to discuss as the untraditional storytelling has a lot of the story without the
main characters. This is not a bad thing
for the story to have as it reflects what it is trying to do, but is actually
flawed in the ending of the story which acts very much of an anti-climax which
destroys a lot of the tension seen in the earlier portions of this story. 95/100
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