Filling in the third slot
for the Season 27 adaptations for The Lost Stories was always going to be a
tricky task as the original ideas for the story for that slot were Night Thoughts, Transit and Illegal Alien which were already adapted
in the Main Range, the Virgin New Adventures and in the Past Doctor Adventures
respectively. They could have adapted Alixion by Robin Mukherjee or even Avatar by future Doctor Who novelist
David A. McIntee, but McIntee already used Avatar
in his debut novel White Darkness and
Mukherjee never got back to Big Finish for adaptation rights. Then of course the team at Big Finish noticed
that Andrew Cartmel actually had a different idea going into the writing of his
novel Warlock. It was essentially the same story but safer
for television, so this is what they had decided to adapt for the audio under
the original title Animal. The plot is very similar to Cartmel’s novel,
but with quite a few key differences.
First the drug storyline is taken out of the audio drama completely and
the villains of the story are actually the Numlocks, an alien race of beings
that make sure we will come to know harm if we eat meat. It is still a story about animal activism and
veganism which is really interesting for a story. Second the story’s setting is moved to
Margrave University where UNIT has a research lab testing on plants which have
become animals and Brigadier Bambera is in control of the situation.
Third the story includes
Ace and Raine instead of Ace and Benny which gives the story a completely
different dynamic. Raine played by Beth
Chalmers gets a real chance to shine here as we delve into a lot of her past. She went to university and can easily fit in
to university life which is hilarious as she has to be the one to investigate
some of the underworld workings going on at Margrave in the first half of the
story. In the second half of the story
however she reverts into more of a companion role where there isn’t much for
her to do. This isn’t as big of a problem
as a lot of them can be, but it still presents a problem. Ace as she never got to university has a more
difficult time and here it is even funnier as she has to act like she is a
vegan for the majority of the story. It’s
hilarious and Sophie Aldred pulls it off brilliantly. She also is interesting because she is
written very much like the Ace in the Virgin New Adventures as this feels very
much like it was written off an early draft of Warlock. It really does come
across that way.
Angela Bruce returns as
Winnifred Bambera which is a great move on Big Finish’s part as if there were
more UNIT stories, she would be brought back.
Bruce gives a great performance in this story as she doesn’t take
anything from her subordinates. She has
an operation to do here and she is going to do it and finish everything that
she starts. Sylvester McCoy as the
Doctor is actually great as he works with the Numlocks, even if he doesn’t have
any sort of master plan to get everything to go back to normal and really it
lets the story down in quite a few ways.
The wordplay is good though.
To summarize, Animal is pretty much a toned down
version of Warlock which quite a few
of the same problems to boot. It does a
good job of making itself a really good villain and some creatures that may as
well be the Krynoids if the Krynoids weren’t as scary as they would usually
be. Most everything is good, it just
feels like a copy with some shaky characterization in quite a few places and
things that really just feel out of place.
80/100
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