The original Season 23
would have ended with The Children of
January by Michael Feeney Callan, and Big Finish did intend to adapt the
story as finale to the first season of the Lost Stories. The rights deal however fell through when
Callan didn’t have time to adapt the script and refused to allow anyone else to
adapt his work for them. David
Richardson had to find another script to serve as a finale and they came across
The Macros written by Ingrid Pitt and
Tony Rudlin. A deal was made and the
story became the finale for the Lost Stories Season 1. Interestingly enough Big Finish did not
include Pitt as an actor in the story to play the villain instead going with
Linda Marlowe. The story takes the
historical mystery of the Philadelphia Experiment and explain that it was caused
by a micro-universe draining the energy from our universe and must be stopped
by the Doctor and Peri. Ingrid Pitt is
most famous for being an actor without any real writing experience and The Macros really shows her
inexperience. The ideas behind the plot
are great, taking Planet of Giants
one step further and having the Doctor shrunk down to the size of this universe
and overthrowing the government. The
story’s main flaw is that it is poorly paced over the course of two hours. Part One is a slow burn to the reveal of the
reveal of this universe where Peri nearly dies and Part Two has a way to end
the story halfway through, but then drags it out for thirty more minutes where
it really should just have ended with Osloo stepping out of the TARDIS and
dying. It had set up Chekov’s gun at the
end of Part One, but did nothing with it.
This isn’t a good twist, it’s just lazily ignoring the obvious solution
of letting Osloo out of the TARDIS which would kill her.
The story also suffers
from a really lackluster supporting cast.
Osloo played by Linda Marlowe is decent enough as the villain due to her
over the top performance. She’s got this
high pitch to her voice which gives off an air of royalty, but at points that
really feels off to the dictatorial state that Pitt and Rudlin write her
in. Vincent Pirillo as Professor Tessler
is interesting enough as the man at the end of his wits due to the effects on
the U.S.S. Eldridge. Those effects are a
green mist and rust which makes the rest of the crew stuck in a time loop a la Carnival of Monsters which is really an
interesting way to stage a time loop but no way original. The other characters are the inhabitants of
Capron who are just your standard stock characters out of your typical star
crossed lover’s story. Colin Baker and
Nicola Bryant are even a little flat in their acting skills although the extras
do lead you to believe they are entranced with the idea of the Philadelphia
Experiment, but just can’t get their heads around what is going on in the
story. Peri of course gets a really good
scene where she pretends to be a singer for Osloo, but of course fails
miserably because she simply cannot scene.
The comedic timing is perfect as she tries to pass off “Row, Row, Row
Your Boat” as a piece of orchestra music.
To summarize, The Macros is an awful season finale for
the Lost Stories as it’s almost impossible to get through without feeling bored
by the awful pacing of the story. The
plot is nothing that we haven’t seen before and is taken off a story that wasn’t
that good to begin with. The characters
fall really flat at almost every turn and even the acting happens to be off
from what should be generally good actors with Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker
feeling a bit towards the meh side of the scale. There are quite a few good ideas present, but
nothing really to give anything above 40/100.
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