The First Doctor Box Set was always going to be four discs long and Farewell, Great Macedon was always going
to take up three of the discs. The
second story used in the Box Set is The
Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance a forty minute example script written by
Moris Farhi just to show David Whitaker what he could do as a writer and was at
the odd length of for a forty minute slot.
It’s a rather self-contained story which details a truly alien society
where instead of having a three part life cycle, they only have two. The first portion of their lives are their
childhood which ends when they fall in love and live the rest of their lives. This is only if the love is reciprocated and
if it isn’t the person who offered the love will go into a boat and sail off
into the sun. Yes this is a weird little
story that has one purpose and that is to show off the society of Fragrance and
how as a society the planet is a utopia.
It opens in media res with the Doctor and company being on Fragrance for
several weeks where Rhythm falls in love with Barbara. Of course his sisters, Melody and Harmony,
played by Helen Goldwyn who are also in a relationship of sorts. The plot is honestly the weakest aspect of
this story as it is simply exposition about the world of Fragrance followed by
the Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara escaping and the story’s over.
Nigel Robinson had to do
very little work to adapt the story from the original script as the plot is
character driven. It’s about Barbara and
Rhythm working off each other and the tragedy of the people of Fragrance. The performances from William Russell and
Carole Ann Ford are of course as good as they were in Farewell, Great Macedon and the direction from John Ainsworth this
time around and again the music and sound design really works well for the
story. Helen Goldwyn is great at making
her characters sound different and she makes the heavy exposition of the story
much more enjoyable.
To summarize, The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance is
really a story about what an alien utopia could be like and what happens if
aliens to that society enter to make things be messed up. The acting is fine and the direction is great
just like it was for Farewell, Great
Macedon in a story that really doesn’t have too much meat to it. It’s a story that I quite like for the vivid
world building on the alien society and has some really good characters but not
much more. 70/100
No comments:
Post a Comment