Power Play by: Gary Hopkins directed by: Ken Bently: The World Will Go Up in a Fiery Blaze of Fallout

Power Play stars Colin Baker as the Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri with Miles Jupp as Dominic, David Warwick as Dysart and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.  It was written and adapted by Gary Hopkins, directed by Ken Bentley and released in June 2012 by Big Finish Productions.

 

This one is a wasted potential.  A story for Doctor Who revolving around the dangers of nuclear power, brought into the audience’s minds by the Chernobyl meltdown, isn’t a bad idea.  It could have been the 1980s equivalent of The Green Death as coal power was replaced with nuclear power.  It should be a social commentary on the dangers of nuclear power, but Hopkins falls into the trap of hiding his message too far into the background to allow any sort of effective conveyance.  The closest thing we get to a message is that nuclear waste needs to be disposed of properly, but that really isn’t a problem in the world today and really wasn’t that big of a problem to begin with.  It wasn’t controversial or would have made people lose their jobs so why do it?  The plot really tries to follow the style of The Green Death with a group of protestors doing what they do to a nuclear power plant where there is a conspiracy by aliens to dispose of the waste in the Cambrian Period.

 

The villain, Domonic played by Miles Jupp, has a plan that doesn’t make any sense in the grand scheme of things as the power plant is really a spaceship that can travel through time.  I guess it’s an interesting idea for a story, but doesn’t really have a lot of things to keep the listener interested in the plot at large.  Jupp also isn’t the best as Domonic as he plays the role as a flat villain.  The little inflection used in the performance really makes the villain feel little under a bombastic Colin Baker performance, where Jupp should be trying to outdo Baker to allow us something of note to keep the character fresh in our mind.  The same can be said for the protestors bar one of course, as they blend right into the background for most of the story without any interest in their plight or their characters.  There is a nice pun for Marion Tudor, even if it is extremely cheesy and predictable, but the impact makes them feel almost like non-humans.

 

The story really shines when it is a scene with Victoria Waterfield.  An aged Deborah Watling is reprising her role as the ex-companion in this story as what might be a companion to Jamie’s return in The Two Doctors.  Her performance however is only really heightened if you realize Victoria has already gone through the events of Downtime, so is trying to reform.  As a story is makes a good loose trilogy with Fury from the Deep and Downtime as a way to get Victoria’s character up to snuff after her departure.  A downside is that she has too few scenes with Colin Baker as the Doctor and many of them are spent trying to kill him.  It would have been nice if Victoria worked out that the strange man in the clown coat is the Doctor she knew, but we never really get that in any way.  Nicola Bryant as Peri is also in a bad way as the character has nothing to do as the focus is on Victoria.

 

To summarize, Power Play just doesn’t know what it wants to be.  When it’s trying to continue the story of Victoria Waterfield it does a really good job at getting everything across well.  It however focuses more on a power plant plot that could have had a lot of tension if the characters were in any real way interesting.  50/100