I think Simon Guerrer
should receive an award for the ability to take a villain from an arbitrary
Doctor Who story which really isn’t held in high regard, and turns them into a
terrifying threat as they work on audio.
I am of course speaking of the Vardans from The Invasion of Time who in The
First Wave are creatures of pure energy, travelling through space at the
speed of light as they are only radiation.
Lisa Bowerman gives them a voice that in one moment can be warm and
inviting while the next it can be the voice of a serial killer. Guerrier writes them as stalkers, following
Oliver and Steven around the surface of the planet, biding their time until
their minds are unable to fight back, and then striking where it hurts. It’s because of this writing that allows The First Wave to be a story where
everything feels like it is in flux. The
Doctor, Steven, and Oliver could easily die in this story and while there’s
always that inkling in the back of the listener’s mind that that could never happen
because of what Doctor Who has become, it’s a wonder that Guerrier was able to
create that sort of atmosphere in his story.
The plot actually picks
up from The Cold Equations with the
Doctor piloting the TARDIS to the planetoid Grace Alone because time has determined
that they are criminals from that planetoid.
The opening scenes in the TARDIS are excellently done, echoing The Aztecs in a way that should be done
for someone who finds out about their personal future. They have to be able to go back in time to go
through the events where they become prisoner and accept their fates. Tom Allen gives the beginnings of a wonderful
performance as Oliver Harper as he wants to keep travelling before going to
Grace Alone. He seems to have just a bit
of precognition that this is where he is going to end, which is of course just
what happened. The story then moves to
the base on Grace Alone where it is revealed that the crew are dead, but only
after the Doctor puts their information into the computer, and the Vardans
appear. The story really could have been
told in four episodes as after the Vardans are revealed to be the real villains
behind everything they ‘kill’ the Doctor who goes towards a plan to save
them. The story then goes into a plot
with Steven and Oliver trying to survive away from the Vardans out on the
planetoid’s surface. This drains the
characters energy to resist the Vardans who have the plan of converting the
TARDIS team into radiation and invading time.
It works as a prequel to The
Invasion of Time making that story feel quite better than it usually would.
Peter Purves and Tom
Allen are excellent in their roles as Steven and Oliver. They’re both working together to defeat the
Vardan, but of course the Doctor comes in as a deus ex machina by the end of
the story which really doesn’t work well.
Oliver’s end however is much better than anything in the story as while
Steven tries to give him the chance to escape, he doesn’t take it and
sacrifices his life to save the Doctor.
It’s poignant as the spirit of Oliver lives on in the TARDIS just until
the First Doctor’s regeneration in The
Tenth Planet.
To summarize, The First Wave is an excellent
conclusion to Simon Guerrier’s Oliver Harper trilogy, but unlike his previous
trilogy Guerrier never quite reaches the same heights. The story is well acted by the three involved
and the ending is definitely emotional but a lot of it feels rushed near the
end so we can celebrate Oliver. The
Doctor disappears for large swaths of the story and could easily have his own
version of the story told as he’s planning out how to defeat the Vardan
invasion force. 95/100
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