The Song of the Space Whale began its life as a prospective comic script for
Doctor Who Magazine’s Fourth Doctor strip before editor of Doctor Who Magazine
told Pat Mills and John Wagner to take it to the BBC for an adaptation into a
television script. Wagner dropped out of
the project and a script was adapted for the Fourth Doctor, but John
Nathan-Turner and Christopher H. Bidmead had Mills rework it for the Fifth
Doctor. Once that had been done it had
already been decided that Peter Davison would be leaving the show so
Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward asked Mills to readapt the script again for the
Sixth Doctor and Peri this time for Season 23, before the season was dropped
and the script forgotten about until it was remembered by David Richardson and
John Ainsworth when compiling the scripts for the first season of the Lost
Stories with a title change to The Song
of Megaptera. It’s an interesting
case to study as the story is a strange case of going through four different
sets of adaptation before seeing the light of day which is a disadvantage to
the story going in as making leaps from medium to medium is already hard
enough, but doing it twice is even harder and can often have problems. That’s why a lot of movies based off musicals
fail as they go from being adaptations of a staging which are adaptations of a
script, all with often varying tones.
This is mainly where The Song of
Megaptera fails, it doesn’t know what tone it wants to have. It is a story that has a scene where Peri,
who is under the influence of a hallucinogen, sing the Star Spangled Banner
while the story tries to be an eco-thriller set on an intergalactic whaling
ship.
The premise reveals that
this started out as a comic storyline as intergalactic whaling ship capturing whales
a mile in length is not something you would normally see on television. Pat Mills is first a comic strip writer and
in the way he plots the story, it really shows as the cliffhangers work as the
bigger reveals for the story. This isn’t
a bad thing as the style is able to keep the listener engaged in the story
through all what really is a mediocre plot.
It may have worked in the 1980s when whaling was an actual issue, but in
2010 there really isn’t much reason to tread that ground except for the ecological
messages, but those were done much better in The Green Death and Invasion
of the Dinosaurs. There are nice
ideas that people are living inside the whales and the Doctor’s solution to the
computer, played by John Banks, is really funny but other than that the story
really doesn’t have too much going for it.
Nicola Bryant steals the
show as Peri gets to be proactive as the companion and the extras note that
Peri was supposed to be the one to shoot the villain. It’s an interesting idea and I could see it
working, but as the story is she still shines more than she ever did on
television. Bryant also gets the chance
to flex her comedy muscles as she has to act affected by strong drugs which is
the best scene in the story. Colin Baker
is also good as the Doctor, but another flaw in the adaptation is that his
actions feel much more like Graham Williams Era Tom Baker. Mills goes into detail that he did rewrite
the script with Colin in mind, but that process is rarely perfect and here
there are definite moments where the original characterization bleeds
through. The Chief Engineer is an
interesting character as she was originally meant to be a male and Mills shoots
himself in the foot by admitting this fact.
This is a problem because it shows just how much of a stock character
she was. Susan Brown can play the
character extremely well, but it really isn’t the best performance of the
story.
John Ainsworth directs
this story and made the choice of splitting it up to the original four part
structure which was the best thing you could do for the story. Ainsworth is able to keep his actors on cue
while they are playing multiple roles which really works. He did make an odd casting choice by having
veteran voice actor Toby Longworth in a bit part as a guard which really
doesn’t do much service for Longworth who deserves better.
To summarize, The Song of Megaptera is a look at what
happens when a Doctor Who story goes through development hell. It is a story routed solidly in the politics
of the 1980s and brought into the twenty-first century with several flaws that
have to be looked at when determining the quality of the story. The acting and production is still top notch
but it is the writing and adaptation that really lets the story down. 60/100
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