Saturday, June 18, 2016

Singularity by: James Swallow directed by: Gary Russell: In Soviet Russia, Aura Kills You

Singularity stars Peter Davison as the Doctor with Mark Strickson as Turlough.  It was written by James Swallow, directed by Gary Russell and released in November 2005 by Big Finish Productions.

 

After listening to the awful Scardey Cat I really needed a break as that story left me emotionally drained.  Luckily James Swallow’s first Doctor Who audio drama is miles better than that tripe story that draws you in with an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers style story that sees the Doctor and Turlough arriving in the middle of the twenty-first century Moscow where they get embroiled in the mystery of the Somnus Foundation which promises to know the future of mankind and promises to read your aura, but because it is a day ending with the letter y, not all is well.  The Doctor and Turlough save Lena Korolev, a woman whose brother Alexi has disappeared into the Foundation and it is up to the Doctor and Turlough to save him.  They find not all is what it seems as people who submit to the Somnus Foundation have their souls ripped from their bodies and put into alien bodies in the future on a dying planet.  The first thing that strikes me about Singularity is the fact that it feels very much like an espionage thriller for the first half until it morphs into a traditional science fiction B-movie thriller which is honestly some great stuff.  The idea behind the plot is nothing new and we’ve seen it before, but Swallow’s writing just draws you in to the story which is great, but by the end it does become a bit predictable and after the villains are defeated there are still fifteen minutes which are rather boring.

 

Swallow is a man of characters and he nails the dynamic between Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor and Mark Strickson’s Turlough.  They are both antagonistic to each other because of their differing philosophies and Swallow uses this to show how close in thought they actually can be as they both will help out wherever they can, even if Turlough doesn’t want to admit it.  Peter Davison while closer to the wet noodle we saw on television mixed a little bit with the characterization of Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, still gives a really effective performance in this story as he plays the Doctor very much in the background of the story.  Mark Strickson actually gets to shine more in this story than he did in any other story as he plays in the foreground for most of the story.  He gives very much the same performance seen in Loups-Garoux and it really works here with a few exceptions, mainly when there are winks to the audience that he has a dark side which just takes you out of the story, making it harder to enjoy fully.

 

The supporting cast don’t really stand out as individuals, but that really isn’t much of a problem in this story as most actors and actresses are playing double roles due to the rather easy to guess premise of bodies being stolen.  The performances often have to compensate switching from a Russian accent, to an English accent to a voice modulation to sound a bit more robotic throughout the story.  One of the perks of audio is that this can be recorded out of order so to have a continuity of accents to stand out much better.  The music also really feels like the story is taking place in Russia and I can’t really tell why.  It’s probably the choice of instruments to realize the score that does it.  There are problems with the story however as some of the Russian accents are really stereotypical and some performers just slip out of them at times when they really shouldn’t be.  The plan of the Somnus Foundation also could have been fleshed out much more than it actually was.

 

To summarize, Singularity author James Swallow really knows how to balance between two different genres and write compelling Doctor Who.  He fails however at keeping the pacing consistent throughout the story with the ending coming out at you for being dragged out to the proportions of The Web Planet while some of the early material just goes by really quickly.  The acting is also not really that good in comparison for some actors who have problems sustaining their different accents and Gary Russell doesn’t fix it when he really should have.  65/100

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