The Scorchies by: James Goss directed by: Ken Bentley: Jo is Making a Thing

The Scorchies is performed by Katy Manning as Jo Grant with Melvyn Hayes as the Scorchies.  It was written by James Goss, directed by Ken Bentley and was released in March 2013 by Big Finish Productions.

 

While I reviewed Doctor Who and the Pirates in the style of an advert to the play if I was to do that for Big Finish’s other musical effort, The Scorchies, I would have to do it in the style of a commercial for a television series which I just cannot find a way to spin without including some sort of video and clips.  This is because instead of doing a pastiche of an opera in the public domain, it does a pastiche of the work of Jim Henson with evil Muppet like aliens invading the Earth through television.  “The Scorchies Show” is on the surface the friendly colorful show for the whole family to watch except as with all Doctor Who stories they want to take over the world, killing humanity, and then burning the planet hence the name Scorchies.  The plot sees Jo infiltrating the television studio and ending up as a guest star on this week’s edition of “The Scorchies Show” and like all guest stars she has to make a thing, sing a song, and tell a story.  The writing from James Goss is full of extremely engaging characters, all of them being Scorchies, which really does do well to emulate the style of shows like “The Muppet Show”.  We open with a pre title sequence that is essentially an introduction from Mr. Grissfizzle, the leader of the Scorchies, to the Scorchies Show before Jo is brought in as the Magic Mice found her in the ventilation shaft.  The first part really has Jo and a Scorchie just be the ones to make a thing after this sequence and the announcement that the Scorchies have killed the Doctor dead.

 

Katy Manning as Jo Grant carries the show especially as the Doctor doesn’t at all appear as the Doctor but inhabiting the puppet of Professor Baffle, who is always baffled.  Manning gives Jo this almost descent into madness over the course of the story.  She’s told that the Doctor is dead halfway through which is her breaking point and after this she’s almost giving a performance of a woman who is unhinged through the second half of the story.  Manning is just great as Jo Grant in every scene she performs in and shows that she’s got a pretty good singing voice.  Yes Katy Manning sings quite a bit in this while playing multiple Scorchies and does it excellently.  Her best voice has to be the one for the Magic Mice who have this innocent voice of a child, but are spouting things about killing and death.  It’s just a good portrayal and they’ve got death rays so that’s got to account for something.  Melvyn Hayes is credited for playing the Scorchies, but he’s really just playing two of them, Mr. Grissfizzle, the leader of the Scorchies, and Professor Baffle, the bamboozled professor who created the Scorchies and became one himself.  Hayes, while not as versatile as Manning, if he was he’d be playing more of the Scorchies, he does an excellent job as Mr. Grissfizzle and Professor Baffle which could easily have been printed on the cover.

 

It’s important however to notice that this was the second musical episode that Big Finish did with Doctor Who, but the first to be done with all original songs.  Richard Fox and Lauren Yason do an excellent job with the couple of songs that they write for The Scorchies.  “Jo is Making a Thing” is the catchy beat used for the trailer for the story and is the main song for the first episode of the story.  It feels like something that would be written for a show like this and seems to be used in different episodes of the fictitious “The Scorchies Show”.  The other song written for the story is “We Killed Him Dead” which the Scorchies sing about how they killed the Doctor.  It is as continuity fest for the Third Doctor’s era of the show with reference to the Master, the Axons, Silurians, and many other villains which are hilarious.

 

To summarize, The Scorchies is a perfect musical episode for Doctor Who taking something simple like light evening family entertainment and turns it on its head filling it with evil aliens overall.  Katy Manning and Melvyn Hayes are excellent performers as they make all the voices feel like different characters.  The ending of the story is extremely poignant and James Goss’s writing makes the stories puppet villains be sympathetic even if they’ve already destroyed many worlds by this point and have killed people on Earth at this point.  100/100