Monday, November 7, 2016

Random Ghosts by: Guy Adams directed by: Scott Handcock: A Life in Pictures

Random Ghosts stars Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield and Sophie Aldred as Ace.  It was written by Guy Adams, directed by Scott Handcock, and released in June 2014 by Big Finish Productions in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield: Volume One Box Set.

 

Telling a story out of order and through flashbacks where you can call into question just what happened in the story, is always a risk as the story could become convoluted completely or turn out to be brilliant.  Guy Adams’s Random Ghosts does this style of storytelling doing something close to found-footage on audio drama as the characters are on a planet which wipes everyone’s memory after twenty-four hours.  This allows Adams to write a mystery with a frantic pace as the listener has to attempt to keep track of everything while the characters choose to forget certain events could even have occurred.  Characters have affairs, the end is a twist, and the entire story is a comment on how people get attached to fictional characters in a twisted way and how they obsess over them.  They’re only people whom we see snippets of their lives and we feel as if we know exactly what they’re going through.  It’s an interesting idea to be sure and the short run time actually allows the comment to sink in as you listen and you deal with the characters changing personalities.

 

The planet is actually Skaro of course as this is a Dalek story, but Adams’s writing keeps you guessing through the story.  You want to figure out the mystery, why Ace is so determined to stay away from the city, what is with the expedition, why would the Doctor send Ace here of all places.  These questions are of course asked, but this is merely a lead in to the finale of the set, but on its own it still manages to be another emotional roller coaster.  Now Doc Oho aka Joe Ford often complains of Sophie Aldred’s acting style as she doesn’t really do well on audio.  I’ve never really seen that and I could use this story as an example as to how good Sophie Aldred is and how well she embodies Ace as a character.  She goes through Ace’s sadness and anger which is captured perfectly in the script, she becomes manipulative and deceitful, and does it all with a bit of humor that makes you realize that we’re dealing with a much older Ace.  She’s made it to the Time Lord Academy and it shows.  Aldred has a blast with the role and is really good in this section of the story.  I think it helps that the Doctor is nowhere to be found in this audio.

 

There are a couple supporting characters in this story as part of the expedition team who all work together to make the story work as a full plotline.  With the frantic and choppy style of the audio you see relationships change from happy, to sad, back to happy and then to the destruction of everything they held dear to them.  Klinus played by Matthew Gravelle, is a special case as he is one of the ghosts which is revealed in a twist while falling in love with Benny and toying with everyone’s emotions.  Could I forget how Benny is portrayed in this story?  Lisa Bowerman as Benny actually gets to have a lot to do as we start with her in media res which really makes the hour long story feel like a snippet in something that has taken much longer than we could ever really know.

 

To summarize, Random Ghosts is another piece of emotional turmoil from The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Box Set to bring us close to the tense conclusion.  The acting is perfect, the direction and writing both are effective, and of course the way the story is told makes everything feel a mix of unique and familiar to really bring home the messages the story is trying to tell.  Bowerman and Aldred make a perfect team as companions and strengthen their character dynamics better than any novel ever could and having them without the Doctor has been a stroke of genius for the novel.  100/100.

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