Doing a fish out of water
story for Doctor Who has been done before in The Power of Three with the Doctor, but the type of story hasn’t
been done with companions from time periods different from their own. Matt Fitton’s An Ordinary Life actually takes place in between “The Feast of
Steven” and “Volcano” from The Daleks’
Master Plan off the idea there is a story gap in between the parts. It’s a fish out of water story for Sara
Kingdom and Steven Tayler as the TARDIS crashes in 1950s London and halfway
through the first episode, “An Ordinary Life”, the Doctor disappears along with
the TARDIS. Sara and Steven have to
adapt to the new situation of 1950s London with the Jamaican Newman family,
during a time where racism is rampant in London. The writing highlights Sara and Steven’s lack
of racism towards the Newman family because they’re both from post-2000 where
most people don’t judge based on race, unless you’re a Dalek.
The first two episodes,
“An Ordinary Life” and “The Unalike”, are the higher points of the story as
they do the Hartnell historical story, but with a period too close for the time
on the show when Hartnell was the Doctor.
It’s a study of the atmosphere of 1950s London and some of the types of
people who are living through the time period through a diverse, both racially
and intellectually, group of characters.
Fitton’s best part of the story is something that people will often miss
as they only feature in one or two scenes in the entire story. It’s how Fitton writes a group of young
children which makes the era apparent to you.
They appear and throw some bricks into the window of the Newman’s flat
and jeer at them because they are different.
It is the musings from Steven and Sara, placing the blame of
indoctrination into this intolerance on the parents who have kept them in the
dark on how nice these people actually can be. It perfectly sums up the point
of these first two episodes as a morale about injustice towards others that is
without reason.
Fitton’s script wouldn’t
work however if he didn’t provide any nuance of the time period. It could have easily failed if everyone who
wasn’t Jamaican was totally racist and just awful people, but Fitton is smarter
than letting that happen. He makes the
characters have varying degrees of racism as some hate the Newmans, but hire
them because they need work. The most
nuanced character has to be Billy Flint played by Stephen Crichlow. Flint is an interesting character as he
conforms to society’s standards of racism sure.
He doesn’t really like the Newman’s as a family, and does many things
that are unfair to them, but he still does business with them. They are paying him for lodgings however and
he has a glimmer of sympathy for the family, letting them stay and giving them
somewhere to at least slightly belong.
Crichlow does a great job with the character.
The members of the Newman
family are also varied and it is Ram John Holder’s Joseph Roberts, Audrey
Newman’s grandfather, who steals the show in the first half of the story. Roberts fought in one of the World Wars so is
helping out with the money through his pension and cares for his granddaughter
and grandson-in-law. He takes life as it
comes to him and knows that things will change, so he puts up with all the
problems as long as he knows things will eventually turn out to be
alright. Sara Powell as Audrey Newman is
also well done as she is a mother who hasn’t seen her husband in months. She’s nervous as her husband has changed
since he’s arrived in London, becoming more distant and tight with his
life. She wants to see her baby safe
more than anything in the world.
Let’s talk about where
the story really falls down and that’s for the second half which is an extreme
flaw to get through. While the acting
especially from Peter Purves and Jean Marsh both breathing life into their
characters with Steven adjusting perfectly to London while Sara has many
moments with protecting Audrey’s baby.
It is revealed that Sara is infertile due to her dedication to her work
and feels a connection of motherly proportions to the child. They’re both really good in the roles and
just make the second half bearable. The
problem is that an alien threat of shapeshifters is revealed. They are basically the Chameleons from The Faceless Ones and I can see that
Matt Fitton is trying to write a message about how prejudice and racism is
wrong, but it doesn’t work. It just is
done too subtly compared to the first half of the audio to really be of any use
for the story. The pacing also goes down
to a snail’s pace making episode three and four, “The Sleeping Army” and “The
Enemy Without”, both go on with too much exposition to be interesting.
To summarize, the first
half of An Ordinary Life is the set
up to a great historical story that suddenly shifts into an alien invasion
story. The second half has everything
fall flat having only good ideas, some great acting from Jean Marsh and Peter
Purves, the writing for their respective characters, and the picture of a
setting to hold things together.
Individually they make a great story, but the whole is not as great as
the sum of its parts when it comes to the realization of this story. The message gets extremely muddled in the
middle. 70/100
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