The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"Zagreus was a nursery rhyme but now Zagreus' life is mine!"

This review contains significant spoilers...

Zagreus is a conscious attempt to deviate from the typical romps which have tended to characterise the anniversary stories of Doctor Who in the past. While the set up from Neverland gave plenty of potential to offer a traditional style adventure with a twist, the old Doctors versus the Eighth Doctor-become-Zagreus that the cover seems to suggest never materialises. Instead, Alan Barnes and Gary Russell's script delivers something wholly different and unexpected, focusing on questioning the Doctor's own identity. As Zagreus is not only a celebration of Doctor Who but of Big Finish, marking their fiftieth regular CD release (sort of) it is also about embracing evolution and change by defining a new direction for their Eighth Doctor series, stepping into darker and uncertain territory whilst deepening the layers of the Doctor's characterisation in the process. Its status as an anniversary spectacular is cemented by gaining an extra CD to tell its story, meaning that with a near four hour running time Zagreus makes other big Big Finish hitters like Davros and Minuet In Hell seem positively concise!

Zagreus picks up immediately after the conclusion of Neverland, which saw the Doctor consumed with Anti-Time strike down his doting assistant Charley Pollard, declaring that he had become the mythical figure of Zagreus. It was a shocking and brutally unexpected ending which created enough tension to sustain interest in what happened next over the year and a half hiatus the Eighth Doctor range endured whilst waiting for the fortieth anniversary. But as the first disc, Wonderland, begins it soon becomes clear that the Neverland ending wasn't entirely truthful as while the Doctor is consumed with Anti-Time, the Zagreus infection is not complete and the struggle between his true self and his corrupted part manifested as Zagreus is raging within his consciousness. The search for his true identity, of discovering who the Doctor is now is at the heart of Zagreus which asks are our heroes really who we perceive them to be? Alongside this are Charley's attempts to try and help the Doctor by exploring a series of unreal projections which may contain the solution to his problem - or may reveal a far greater and unexpected threat…

As Zagreus is told over three discs, Barnes and Russell have resurrected Doctor Who's long-forgotten tradition of giving each episode an individual title - in this case Wonderland, Heartland and Wasteland. The first two discs concentrate almost wholly on developing the Doctor's identity crisis and unveiling the significance behind Charley's adventures in the matrix-like projections. The idea of projecting these situations she encounters immediately enforces the idea that nothing is what it appears, with the increasingly surreal dialogue and the Alice In Wonderland influence takes hold as Charley finds herself in a Harley Street doctor's office with her mother demonstrate the artificiality of the construct perfectly. By using Anneke Wills to voice the Lady Louisa Pollard and introducing "the Brigadier" as Charley's guide the writers state the case for involving as many different actors from the past of Doctor Who as possible with the justification that the projections are created out of the TARDIS' memory of individuals it has encountered. Using the Brigadier's form proves a clever idea as it has the same effect upon the listener and Charley. When she met him in Minuet In Hell, Charley found one of the Doctor's oldest and most trusted allies so it's only natural she should take comfort in his reassuringly familiar presence when everything else seems to be spiralling out of control.

While this approach does enable the creation of some excellent scenes - such as the Doctor's meeting with Schrodinger's Cat - the fundamental flaw in the scripts to both Wonderland and Heartland is the ultimate isolation of the Doctor. While he's struggling to cope with his own personality clash, the Doctor is almost always the only person present which leads to the type of descriptive dialogue that Barnes has shown a penchant for in the past (think the opening of Storm Warning…) and leads to the sense that the authors have not developed the Doctor's inner turmoil as far as they perhaps should have done in the play's first two and a half hours. There's a real sense that the star of the show is being deliberately kept to the sidelines purely to facilitate the development of Charley's scenarios so that they can be long enough to include Zagreus' huge cast.

The three main projections visited by Charley offer the chance for the three other Big Finish Doctors and their companions (both television and audio) to play against their usual characters. Peter Davison takes on the role of the Reverend Townsend, a man so obsessed with finding out why all life is fundamentally the same that he conspires to use a 1950's experiment to rip a hole in time and space to discover the answers. Colin Baker stars as the vampire Lord Tepesh, seeking to destroy Cardinal Rassilon on ancient Gallifrey while Sylvester McCoy depicts the resurrection of Uncle Winky - the man who put a smile on the galaxy with his Winkle Wonderland! While each of the three scenarios presented are diverting by themselves, particularly in the way in which the true threat of the story is gradually uncovered, they come across as an indulgence in that so much of the time is devoted to them despite the fact that their unreality ensures the listener cannot readily come to care for the characters because their fates are already pre-determined. Like Charley, we are merely observers and we know that they are not who they seem.

While it is appropriate for Zagreus to boast such an inflated cast - the biggest ever heard in a Big Finish production - for the anniversary celebrations, many of the characters only serve perfunctory roles with little significance to the plot. The worst example of this is Bonnie Langford's first character Cassandra from the ancient Gallifrey. Her sole purpose in the story seems to be to inform the listener precisely where the projection that starts Heartland is and that it takes place soon after Rassilon has instigated major political upheavals. As well as being a character with no purpose save exposition, the role of Cassandra also robs the drama of some of its suspense and mystery. How much more fun would it have been to have been surprised by the revelation of where this incident was taking place than simply being told in such an annoying manner?

While these projections prove a distraction, the most significant aspect of the first two instalments is the revisionist thinking demonstrated in the portrayal of two significant characters. The TARDIS is one of the mainstays of Doctor Who, and despite often being said to have a mind of its own (such as in the scenes set there in The Holy Terror for instance) very rarely - outside the context of original Who novels - has it actually been shown manifestly. The TARDIS is arguably little more than a literary conceit, designed to move the Doctor from one story to another, and so it's fitting that in an anniversary tale such as Zagreus that this often overlooked aspect should be given a greater depth as Barnes and Russell present an intriguing change of perspective of the finale of Neverland. While the ending to that story showed the Doctor containing the Anti-Time within the TARDIS, there were no hints that it had been effected by the explosion in the same way that he had yet that is precisely what happened resulting in a TARDIS that considers its own loyalty to a master who was willing to sacrifice it. While the Doctor needs the TARDIS more than ever, does it need him any longer?

And then there is Rassilon himself, played again - as in Neverland - by Don Warrington. The unmasking of Warrington as the Time Lord's greatest leader and the shadowy figure who haunted the second season of McGann audio plays was one of Neverland's most emotive moments and the gallant portrayal confounded the expectations that Rassilon's myth was overstated. In light of this perception, the repositioning him as the villain of Zagreus is so unexpected and yet in context it makes perfect sense.

The Big Finish stories prior to Zagreus were all about changing the listener's perspective to certain villains, who could have been more than they were seen to be on television and here it is Rassilon's turn to be revised. It has been long established and accepted that Rassilon created the society of the Time Lords, and several of the original Doctor Who novels have examined how he did it, but Zagreus seeks to answer perhaps the most important question of why? While there aren't any Omega style flashbacks to the youthful Rassilon (a missed opportunity given that Conrad Westmaas who took the role in Omega again features here), Warrington's assured performance allows us to see Rassilon's thinking and his justifications for establishing the one true Time and how his intolerant fear of the unknown caused him to act in terrible ways to protect the Time Lords' legacy. By using his power over time and space to anticipate and prevent future threats to Gallifrey from coming into being, Rassilon has defied the laws of evolution as he has attempted to ensure his race remains dominant and in the process has created a Divergent universe where the Divergence that he prevented existing lies.

The final part of Zagreus is also significant for the way that it deeply probes the relationship between the Doctor and Charley, showing that the inconsistent ways she acts towards the Doctor are born out of something more intense than simple friendship and suggesting that when they declared their love for each other, her idea of love may not have been the platonic non-romanticised affection the Doctor seemed to mean, in the same way that he declared his love of Evelyn in Real Time.

Charley's uncertainty towards the Doctor is demonstrated throughout several scenes which question the nature of their friendship, all stemming from the closing moments of Neverland and the opening sequence of Zagreus where the rules and boundaries of who she thought the Doctor was change. As Zagreus, the Doctor struck her and then threatened her with more violence which to Charley was something inconceivable given her knowledge of the Doctor's character. While she's scared of him, she also feels for his predicament, lamenting the unfairness of the Doctor's burden when she is living on borrowed time anyway and wishing she could shoulder it for him somehow. This shows how genuinely she cares for the Doctor as she's essentially saying that she would sacrifice her own life for him, if she could. Yet, when she's faced with a situation where the Doctor has seemingly recovered sufficiently enough to speak with her without chasing her menacingly around the console room, her attitude changes. When confronted with the Doctor she sees only the man who struck her down and finds that she can no longer trust him. In her eyes, his unprovoked attack upon her was a betrayal of their friendship and because of this she rejects him because although she knows that the Doctor isn't Zagreus, he rejected her first. This is why she feels justified in placing her faith in the projection of the TARDIS more than she could in the Doctor himself, despite the fact she doesn't know that the former is acting on its own agenda.

Her tumultuous emotional state leads Charley to commit one of the most powerful acts in the entire play towards the end of Wasteland where the situation in that scene of Neverland is replayed with the Doctor and Charley's roles reversed. This time it's Charley who is given the choice to act and the Doctor begging her to kill him. In an extremely emotive scene, it's almost inevitable that she'll be able to do what he could not, Charley's own reasoning for her actions is interesting because it confirms the idea that she feels he is no longer the man she first met and fell in love with. His growth into a harder, more aggressive individual named Zagreus is a personal betrayal and yet it is Charley's act of aggression, created out of the rage and hate that this creates, which enables the Doctor to come to a restoration, to choose between life and death and embrace his rebirth. Actions such as this fundamentally change relationships, and the Doctor and Charley's will never be the same following this. He in turn rejects her again despite everything they've been through because he knows he must leave everything behind him if he is not to endanger the universe further - and that includes Charley. But given that her own feelings have developed beyond mere friendship, it isn't something that Charley can accept, as demonstrated by her blind and total belief that he still needs her to bring out the good in him again.

Previous multi-Doctor anniversary stories pitched the various Doctors together into the plot, almost haphazardly, and watched the sparks fly. This isn't true of Zagreus because Barnes and Russell are very aware of the limitations of that type of adventure and have chosen to bring the other Doctor actors in, but in more secondary supporting roles and not actually as their own Doctors. As their individual influence extends only to specific points of Wonderland and Heartland, it allows the writers to focus predominantly on how Charley develops her investigation without becoming full of the archetypal type banter between the Doctors usually associated with these celebratory romps. In many respects, Zagreus is very evocative of the structure of Big Finish's very first release, The Sirens Of Time, as the three individual scenarios featuring Davison, Baker and McCoy all hint at the greater purpose of the story whilst they are goaded by a girl who isn't who she appears to them, before their characters are brought together in the final part, ostensibly to try and defeat the uncovered menace. While the script is good at suggesting that there are more similarities between the Doctor and the characters of Townsend, Tepesh and Winkle than it initially seems, mainly through the use of familiar dialogue, it never totally convinces in demonstrating their oneness.

While the structure of the script is flawed, it recovers from the problems of avoiding dealing substantively with the Doctor's condition while it indulges in the projections to provide a rousing finale in Wasteland. It builds layers over its clues as to its true intentions well, with the "saviltride" anagram being particularly effective, as well as an excellent scene early on where Charley's explanation for her own potential condition in the doctor's office having a far greater resonance than it appears initially. As with his contribution to the Doctor Who Unbound series, Gary Russell's love of continuity is evident here but in a lot of cases it's done quite sneakily which makes it less intrusive than it may otherwise have been. This approach is embodied in a scene where the Doctor sees various realities which are representative of the different directions that the various media the Doctor's differing stories have spread into, reconciling them as separate yet co-existing universes. While this is a noble sentiment, it's somewhat extraneous to the plot and Auld Mortality already did the same thing in a far more majestical manner earlier in the year anyway.

One of the great benefits of recording Paul McGann's plays in blocks was that he - and India Fisher also, for that matter - developed a great consistency in the performance and the benefit of this is reaped here as our expectations of who the Doctor is, so carefully built up over the last ten stories, are torn down as McGann demonstrates a completely different side to his ability as the Doctor struggles with the battle between his instinctive personality and the Zagreus infection. McGann has already shown before in Minuet In Hell how well he could portray inner torment brilliantly, but here he takes it to the next level by contrasting the Doctor's amnesia and vulnerability with the power and anger of Zagreus, shown perfectly by the helplessness as the Doctor pleads with his ship for help which degenerates into a raging fury as Zagreus lashes out at his makeshift prison. The only thing that slightly undermines the quality of his performance is the isolation enforced upon the Doctor which leads to him soliloquising to himself in an unnatural and terribly affected way. While it may be more instinctive for a madman to talk to himself, the telling difference comes in the contrast between these solo scenes and those where McGann has someone to work with, be it the voice in the Library or Conrad Westmaas' cat, as it instantly shows how much he delights in having someone to work with rather than pontificating to himself. When he is brought fully into the drama during Wasteland, McGann is simply sensational as a shows a Doctor Who has been broken down to his lowest ebb and realised that there is no other way to stop the madness than his own death, yet out of this despair he shows hope and a resurgence that is a joy to hear as McGann breathes life into the dialogue. He is particularly effective during the final minutes of the play as the Doctor realises the full implications of recent events and what must now be done as McGann demonstrates how these events have effected the Doctor superbly.

With McGann sidelined for the bulk of the first two episodes, much of the success of Zagreus lies with India Fisher, whose character Charley Pollard effectively becomes the star of the show. Fisher has built such a sparkling repartee with McGann that it's almost a pity that they spend so little time together here but she conveys Charley's confusion and ultimate desire to help with such conviction that as the one constant throughout the audio, Charley is the listener's rock to hold on to as they venture with her into the unknown. As Charley gains the confidence to move out of the Doctor's shadow, you get the impression too that Fisher is savouring the chance to take the limelight herself. Throughout Charley's investigations into the mysterious Divergence, Fisher brings a great deal of levity which balances well with the gravity of the situation but where she really delivers are in the powerful dramatic scenes. As with McGann's performance, Fisher's finest moment is the scene where the Doctor implores Charley to kill her and she gains defiance in the face of his pleading and realises that she has the power and the strength to actually do it whereas he didn't when the situation was inverted before. It is a defining moment for both characters in the context of the play, and one that is sure to have profound implications upon the future of their relationship.

Peter Davison's Reverend Townsend is a fascinating character, a man of God driven by his desire to know and understand the foundations of the universe that he will overlook the needs of all around him to satisfy his own curiosity. While it's quite a different part from the Fifth Doctor, there are distinct parallels which can be drawn as Townsend can be seen as almost an embodiment of elements of the Doctor's character taken to extreme levels, so that curiosity is literally Townsend's downfall. As Tepesh, Colin Baker gets to show a much more quieter, sinister side to his range by playing this vampire lord and yet there are also similarities to his brash Sixth Doctor as Tepesh possesses an abundance of hatred towards Rassilon which fires his passion and Baker conveys this tremendously, injecting a real sense of malice towards the Great Time Lord and begins the process of questioning the perception of Rassilon's character. Of these three returning Doctor actors, Sylvester McCoy's Disney-like figure Uncle Winky is perhaps the closest to his onscreen persona, with the manic Seventh Doctor of old brought out in the comedy of his performance. But as he realises that there are no children left to share his vision with, the comedy turns to sadness as Uncle Winky becomes a tragic figure who needs to share joy with others to live, something which is emphasised by a supreme moment of sorrow as he admits that Goldilocks was based upon his deceased daughter which McCoy brilliantly understates. But as Uncle Winky has anticipated the situation with his animatronic creations and already possesses the means to stop them, this further emphasises the fact that there are elements of the Doctor in all of these characters which sets the scene for their final appearances in the third part Wasteland brilliantly.

The greatest surprise contained within Zagreus is the presence of a most unexpected individual as the voice the Doctor encounters within the TARDIS library. Or rather it would have been a surprise had the name of Jon Pertwee not been featured so prominently to catch the eye in the cast list immediately as the Zagreus digipack opens, regardless of the large picture of him behind the Heartland disc. It would have been incredible to hear Pertwee without any foreknowledge, but from Big Finish's perspective, this is something they want to be proud of and feature it prominently so it's easy to understand the justifications for crediting him in this way. Seemingly gathered from dialogue Pertwee recorded for a fan produced video before his death in 1996, its effectiveness as an aspect of the past resurrected to help the Doctor is extremely poignant given the circumstances and the already surreal edge the scene where the Doctor encounters the voice because of the distortion applied to make Pertwee into this spectral and sepulchral figure. It has the side effect of making him sometimes unintelligible but this is helpful in making the scene work as something that was obviously written to accommodate out of context dialogue could have been dreadful but it's a credit to McGann's performance, Barnes and Russell's script and the sound design that it doesn't blatantly stand out in the way it might have done with less attention paid to making it a success.

The ever dependable Nicholas Courtney delivers an impeccable performance as the embodiment of the TARDIS, although the effect of the reassuring Brigadier turning sinister is ever so slightly diluted thanks to the fact that the last time Courtney donned the mantle of the Brigadier it was the embittered failure of Sympathy For The Devil, the knowledge of which prepares the listener subconsciously for the worst. Courtney revels in playing against type, making the cruelty that the TARDIS channels at others supremely cutting in its intensity. As Rassilon, Don Warrington lives up to the promise that he showed in Neverland and expresses intensely the irrational hatred and fear of change and evolution that has consumed this legendary figure and unmasks him as the petty and pitiable person he really is.

Lalla Ward and Louise Jameson both reprise their roles as President Romana and Leela respectively. Although Zagreus attempts to differentiate itself from other forms of post-television Doctor Who continuity, it's a pity that Barnes and Russell didn't note the earlier meeting of these two characters in Marc Platt's Lungbarrow as the way their introduction is handled - as if it was their first time - seems vaguely ridiculous in the broader context that two individuals who previously travelled with the Doctor living in the same part of the planet would never have met each other before. And that's not even considering the amount of time that must have passed since Leela's arrival on Gallifrey in The Invasion Of Time which would likely be so much that, as a mere human, she should have died centuries ago! But, nitpicking over these unimportant continuity issues aside, Leela and Romana make an interesting chalk-and-cheese team with their contrasting approaches and outlooks that bodes well for their forthcoming Gallifrey spin-off series and Louise Jameson's more mature voice gives her character a fearsome presence.

With the entirety of Big Finish's regular Doctors and companions popping up in the cast their time is very limited even despite the fact that the scenarios they appear in all last around thirty to forty minutes each, and so they do not necessarily get much of a chance to impress. While the parts given range from fleeting cameos - Elisabeth Sladen is sadly the briefest and doubly so considering this is her first appearance in the Doctor Who proper audio range - those who get the more substantial roles generally perform well but because of the cram-as-many-actors in as possible mentality there is no time to add any real depth to most of these characters. While it is quite fun to hear all of these familiar actors in unaccustomed roles, some do badly stand out as misguided with the usually excellent Lisa Bowerman in particular going hideously over-the-top with her comedy Sergeant Gazelle.

One area of Zagreus which it is an unconditional success is in its production. Gareth Jenkins' sound design provides many different layers to the drama, suggesting the unreal scenarios evolving throughout the story brilliantly whilst demonstrating a sense of ambiguity obliquely hinting at the play's theme that nothing is what it appears. Complimenting this flawlessly is Andy Hardwick's score which is quite exceptional, ranging from the dark, ominous turmoil through to stirring and inspirational mixed in with a tinge of magic reflecting the influence of Alice In Wonderland that brings a striking impression of amazement to the epic tone of the play and sure to provoke an emotional response in the listener.

The most redeeming feature of Zagreus is how it achieves its goal to move the Eighth Doctor audio series into a different direction, which it does spectacularly. Despite blatant parallels with the change of emphasis brought about by The Ancestor Cell in the BBC's own Eighth Doctor novel range - a Doctor changed drastically by his experiences venturing into a new, darker and uncertain universe - Zagreus wisely defines its new direction with clarity, clearly marking the boundaries of the new setting and not hiding behind a mask of ambiguity. As Romana states, no Daleks, no Cybermen, no Earth, no Gallifrey and no time travel. While the loss of the latter is disappointing as it is essentially narrowing the vast flexibility of the Doctor Who genre, the prospect of a total lack of familiar elements is a hugely exciting prospect as Big Finish now have the chance to take the Doctor into truly unexplored realms of space.

The tragedy at the heart of Zagreus is that the Doctor has brought everything upon himself, as if it had not been his nature to search for another way other than killing his best friend and was not willing to sacrifice his own life to save the universe in Neverland, he would never have found himself infected with Anti-Time and Zagreus. While the situation was manipulated, it was the Doctor's actions that allowed the circumstances to exist where he is ultimately forced to give up everything he knows and loves for a self-imposed exile into a universe where Zagreus can never be a threat again. But what is perhaps even more electrifying than the potential of the Divergent universe is the way in which the events of Zagreus will affect the Doctor's character. We hear hints of this in the final moments of the play through the weariness McGann shows combined with his anger at what has happened as he coldly turns his back on his own people and his universe. The Eighth Doctor's most recognisable traits on audio have been his passion and enthusiasm for life, and while the final scene in the TARDIS shows he still retains some of his wanderlust, it is tempered by the effects of Zagreus and there is a great sense that this will provide a rich vein of drama to exploit for future adventures. It's certainly arguable that in making this fundamental change Big Finish are moving Doctor Who far closer to Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel style territory where heroes have dark pasts that affect their present as they are forced to seek redemption. While there has been a degree of foreshadowing for this change - albeit rather clumsily in the preceding 'villains' release Master - it does seem to make the Doctor too much of a stereotypical contemporary genre hero, but providing future Eighth Doctor writers use this darker and deeper version wisely and inventively, the familiarity of his situation should not be a problem.

Zagreus was written as an epic and ambitious story to mark two distinctive occasions, but it ultimately ends up as a victim of its own intentions by trying too hard to be special. While Barnes and Russell demonstrate a sense of self-depreciation to show they recognise the faults of the story (melodramatic, overlong and derivative they suggest) these concerns are still valid criticisms. While Doctor Who has long been influenced by outside sources of fiction, the extreme length of Zagreus hinders its success because the writers don't use their extra running time to its fullest potential, as you could happily loose an hour or so from the combined first two episodes without undermining the overall structure and leaving the strong finale of Wasteland intact and lucid. But the biggest disappointment of Zagreus was keeping the Eighth Doctor as almost a peripheral player for two thirds of the story. With no disrespect to the other Doctor-actors who appear in the story, Paul McGann was the one we were waiting for and when he is unleashed in the final episode he's phenomenal. It is the combination of the strongly written and performed Wasteland that ensure Zagreus is not a total disappointment but it should have all been this good.

As a celebration of both Doctor Who and Big Finish, Zagreus succeeds through clever invention which doesn't pander to tradition. It also succeeds at offering an exciting new direction for the Eighth Doctor with the changes to his character and his relationship with Charley at the foremost of these prospective pleasures and Barnes and Russell have certainly given Rob Shearman plenty to work his unique magic upon in his two-hander Scherzo. But, along the way the individual story of Zagreus looses its way and while there are many individual moments of charm and layers which shine through on repeated listening, as a whole Zagreus lacks the scope and the drive of the epic it aspires to become yet only manages to achieve in Wasteland. Given the attention lavished upon it, Zagreus should have been Big Finish's crowning glory within a creative and exciting year of audio Doctor Who drama but in comparison to the best of the experimental and genuinely innovative releases produced alongside it, Zagreus seems very average.