Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Unregenerate! by: David A. McIntee directed by: John Ainsworth: Until Now Uniquely Underrated

Unregenerate! stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor with Jennie Linden as Professor Klyst and Bonnie Langford as Mel.  It was written by David A. McIntee, directed by John Ainsworth and released in June 2005 by Big Finish Productions.

 

David A. McIntee while nowhere near a bad author has always struck me as a traditional Who author with his novels highlighting periods of history.  This I must emphasize is not a bad thing by any means as it has allowed for the emotional rollercoaster that was Sanctuary, but his one and only audio drama for Big Finish Productions, Unregenerate!, is anything but traditional.  Taking the form of the Seventh Doctor’s second ever adventure he is barely in it as he has been captured by a group of Time Lords basically doing the plot of The Doctor’s Wife because they are basically the equivalent of animal rights activists thinking the TARDIS’s deserve to be free souls inhabiting humanoid bodies.  This was six whole years before Gaiman’s idea reached our screens and honestly McIntee pulls it off almost better as he has a whole two hours to flesh out the story and characters.  The thing that makes this story stand out is also just how little it is ever mentioned among fans and when it is the reception is usually an oddly negative one.  Now I will admit that the story is nowhere near perfect.  The plotting is rather predictable and every twist can be guessed around every corner and of course the title just sounds plain silly.  I mean considering the plot it makes sense but it’s got an exclamation mark on the end for no reason except to know you are supposed to shout it.

 

Bonnie Langford as Mel Bush acts as the main character and pretty much the Doctor for most of the story which I honestly think works well.  Mel has taken a vacation after the events of Time and the Rani to recover but the Doctor doesn’t come to get her as he is stuck in an asylum.  It’s up to Mel to unravel the mystery of what happened to the Doctor and the story behind the asylum.  Langford is able to pull it off extremely well showing just how diverse she is as an actress even if Mel can come across a bit out of character as you can’t really imagine her solving some of the larger leaps at least this early on in the plot which just ring untrue to me for some reason.  Of course with Mel in the form of the Doctor she gets a companion in the form of the Cabbie with No Name played by the brilliant Toby Longworth who is there to ask questions and that’s about it.  Longworth should be wasted in a role like this but somehow he really makes the Cabbie extremely memorable a character.  He’s extremely witty and there are hints that this character may be more than he seems, but nothing conclusive is revealed throughout the story.

 

Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor actually gets to have that developmental leap from Time and the Rani to Paradise Towers as he is left insane, but it is revealed all to be an extremely well thought out master plan much like the later Seventh Doctor would be doing.  There shouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that McIntee doesn’t do it at all subtly and stops the plot dead in its track to reveal how it was done.  This breaks the rule of show don’t tell as we only need the hints and not the entire plot.  Other than that McCoy does a great job in the background which really works for this story.  The supporting cast however are really stereotypical mad scientists and don’t necessarily stand out too much from the rest with a few exceptions.  Louis is one of these as he is the ruthless Time Lord who of course is allowed to regenerate in the story and both actors really rub off the performance.  This comes off especially in the opening scenes where he lures people to agree to come to the asylum and give up their lives.  Jennie Linden, famous for her portrayal of Barbara Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks is the head scientist, Professor Klyst who actually has a morality in this project.  It is nice to actually have someone moral in a story like this to offset everyone else.

 

To summarize, Unregenerate! is a pretty underrated story with some great ideas and an atmosphere expectant of David A. McIntee.  It has several problems with the way its plot predictably plays out and has side characters that don’t really make too much of an impact on you in the long run.  Mel is out of character for some of the run time and the Doctor’s explanations for how he did what he did took up way too much of the run time for my liking to be perfect.  65/100

No comments:

Post a Comment