Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Probably Not the One You Were Expecting #10: Original Sin by: Andy Lane adapted by: John Dorney directed by: Ken Bentley

Original Sin stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Lisa Bowerman as Professor Bernice Summerfield, Yasmin Bannerman as Roz Forrester, and Travis Oliver as Chris Cwej with Philip Voss as Tobias Vaughn.  It was written by Andy Lane, adapted by John Dorney, directed by Ken Bentley, and released in December 2016 by Big Finish Productions.

 

December 2016 brings the two final novel adaptations for Big Finish, at least for the time being.  The range as a whole has been excellent at adapting novels into audio dramas.  Even novels that are just mildly good like The Highest Science have been turned into great audios.  Now this trend has to be kept up with the final two and Big Finish picked some great novels to adapt.  What surprised me when the Novel Adaptations were announced to be continuing past the initial Love and War was that they were adapting Damaged Goods with Chris and Roz, two companions whom I hadn’t been introduced to yet in prose form and this story takes place pretty deep into the time they’re travelling with the Doctor.  I was excited when it was announced that Big Finish would be adapting their first adventure Original Sin for release in December 2016.  That feeling of wary anticipation set in once I read Original Sin and fell in love with just how good it was.

 

These reviews have been not on straight adaptation and loyalty to the book, but on how well the audio adaptation tells the story, be it changing it for better or for worse.  This adaptation by John Dorney has been written as a labor of love for the Virgin New Adventures and in an interview with Vortex Magazine Dorney mentioned how easy it was to adapt.  All he had to do was to turn the book into a script and to be honest it really works.  You get the same characterization of the novels characters from Lane’s original manuscript and as much depth all crammed into some exposition dumps.  Now I usually would be the first to complain about using an exposition dump as they are often unnecessary, but as this was a novel that featured quite a bit of world building in scenes that would see them killed off the way Dorney wrote around this was a stroke of absolute genius.  He takes the newsreader character in the novel and not only allows her to have a largely expanded role from the novel, but allows her to be reading out news stories of all these people’s deaths.

 

There are two major deviations from the original novel that while usually I would be annoyed with because of how it isn’t representative of the original story, but if the subplots were kept in the pace of the audio would have been dragged down.  The first is in the way Chris loses his body bepple, in the novel he is treated by a Doc Dantalionn, who erased Hith memories in the novel, but in the audio is there with a diminished role.  Second is actually the scenes with Chris’s family which again could just be cut out completely without having to miss anything.  I sure didn’t the first time listening to this audio which is a testament to how good John Dorney was at adapting Andy Lane’s original novel.  The pacing of the story is really good as well considering that the novel was already pretty long.  Dorney mentions he may have had to adapt it into a three disc release, but that isn’t necessary with the trims and cuts.  The pacing is also in two part hour long episodes bookended with the theme used in Damaged Goods.  It really makes this and Damaged Goods set out as later adventures with a completely new team for the Doctor and company.

 

This point on will have extreme spoilers for the audio so please go listen to the audio before continuing.  Philip Voss was credited on the front cover for playing this story’s villain who is a classic villain from the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who.  Yes the twist is that after The Invasion Tobias Vaughn has survived as a brain in a computer and has been corrupting the Earth with his own influence throughout history.  Doing this story is interesting considering Kevin Stoney, who played Vaughn in The Invasion, passed away and people usually would have an uproar if it was a recurring role.  The good news is that Philip Voss, through his already chilling voice and a bit of voice modulation actually makes it sounds like this is Kevin Stoney playing the character.  Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor works as a great foil to Vaughn and the rest of the cast especially Andrew French as Provost Major Beltempest who is also translated right from the novel.  It makes a lot of interesting parallels to the rest of the plot when the Doctor and Beltempest go to investigate the murder victims and the conspiracy though the Adjudicator’s Guild.  The character of Pryce also survives the adaptation unscathed and even better as Jot Davies plays him as a madman in a way that is chilling.

 

The other grouping of characters starts with Lisa Bowerman’s Bernice Summerfield.  It’s a great performance as Bowerman always gives and allowing her another story to play the character is great.  From the opening lines of the story which are chillingly depicting the death of one of the Hith in the arms of Bernice Summerfield throws you right into the action of the story.  She’s just got this way with her that makes everything interesting.  Yasmin Bannerman as Roz Forrester is great at portraying the nuance in the character.  This novel’s arc for Roz from the beginning was to establish her as a cop and have her world shattered with the betrayal of Fen Martle whom she ended up killing which makes her break.  Her sarcastic comments towards Chris and at the end of the story are a highlight for the character who gets to be much more energetic.  Travis Oliver as Chris Cwej allows us to see right into the character’s motivations even without the subplot with his familial relations.  Oliver and Bannerman work off each other and by the end they have begun the relationship that would make so many of the later novels.

 

To summarize, Original Sin is the perfect way of adapting the originally lengthy novel down into a manageable two hour story.  The cast is all great, but the amount of actors used can get a bit confusing at times as characters can blend down to each other.  McCoy, Bowerman, Bannerman, and Oliver all do great work and makes it really sad that they’re other novels will not be adapted.  95/100

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