The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"I don't want your love Charley. I have no use for it..."

There's something deliciously ironic about the way that critically acclaimed writer Robert Shearman chooses to follow up the immensely bloated Zagreus with something infinitely simpler, yet far more meaningful, in the shape of his Scherzo. While the former was massively overlong, crammed with a huge number of ultimately unimportant characters and lacked emotional depth at a fundamental level, Scherzo is almost the exact opposite, delighting in its extreme minimalism, locking the Doctor and Charley together in a starkly empty new world. By offering a two-hander play featuring only Paul McGann and India Fisher, with no other performers at all, Shearman has no choice but to deal with the emotional ramifications of both Zagreus and Neverland and how the recent turbulent proceedings have effected the Doctor and Charley and the strains it has placed upon their relationship. In doing this, he has laid the foundations for something quite remarkable to be created.

Despite his immense popularity, demonstrated by the 2003 DWM awards ranking him as the best non-television series Doctor Who writer, there's something intrinsically formulaic about Shearman's Who work, both thematically and structurally. His central theme of "the horror of isolation" prevails, and his stories follow a distinct pattern where the breakdown of the TARDIS draws the Doctor (and his companion) into a macabre, unreal environment - usually populated by grotesque characters - which as the story is developed, often through repetition, is destroyed and the Doctor can break out back to the true(?) reality. While that is a very general list that doesn't fit all his plays entirely, the sense is true enough. Scherzo operates very much within this loose structure, with the isolation the Doctor and Charley are subjected to being very much at the heart of the play as they realise that their remoteness extends beyond the void as everything they ever knew is gone, apart from each other which ultimately proves their salvation in more ways that one. But Scherzo is much more than a variation upon an archetypal template because of the way that Shearman strongly details these two characters, stripping away everything that is extraneous until all that is left is a very minimal, but compellingly intimate, story of bitter love.

The main intent of Scherzo is to explore closely how the Doctor and Charley really feel about each other, drawing upon both their words and actions made in Neverland and Zagreus to do so. The fact that circumstances have brought them together in such a desolate way only heightens the poignancy. Shearman scrutinises the Doctor and Charley's actions and motivations for their individual acts of sacrifice with such lucidity that Scherzo possesses a real sense of meaningfulness that few Doctor Who stories have because it focuses on the idea that actions have serious consequences which can irrevocably change an individual's attitude and character.

The conclusion of Zagreus showed just how deeply the Doctor was affected by his experiences in that story, leaving it a far more bitter and jaded individual. The benefit of Paul McGann's consistency in his portrayal in his past adventures is totally subverted as the passionate enthusiast, whose joie de vivre was his most endearing quality, is gone to be replaced by an embittered and resentful Doctor who seems resigned to his fate. As with the uncertainty of the new universe, the doubt that the Doctor generates is as genuinely unsettling for the listener as it is for Charley, so when his words drive her away the effect is altogether more startling because Shearman is asking us to question the Doctor's very nature. McGann excels at bringing out the darker nuances of the Doctor, as his quietly sinister tone exudes such menace and fear that he borders on the unlikeable - which given the way he played the part before is quite an achievement in itself, given that there is no conceit to excuse his cutting taunts here. Ironically, this repositioning of the Doctor's personality as a disillusioned character haunted by his past actions is very similar to Paul Cornell's ideas for the "Ninth" Doctor of bbc.co.uk's Scream Of The Shalka, but Scherzo is by far the more successful of the two in achieving this plausibly because of the sheer raw honesty of its leading man's performance as opposed to forced and unnatural cantankerousness. Yet while the Eighth Doctor's attitude has changed, his compassion remains resolute showing that while he doesn't understand Charley's actions and harbours a degree of resentment towards her for them, he still cares about her. When Charley begins accepting their adopted routine as normal, he implores her ardently not to forget who she was and, more importantly, who she still is. She deserves to hang onto life and her identity, even if she has left it behind.

With any play with only two characters, the core of the story is inevitably about how they relate to each other, and the same is true of Scherzo. In both preceding stories there were admissions of love between the Doctor and Charley, which is something that Doctor Who has tended to avoid in the past, with the Doctor's bond to his companion characterised at best by platonic friendship. But what if it was more? What if that bond had become something deeper? By examining this fundamental aspect of Doctor Who, Shearman contemplates not only how the attachment between the Doctor and Charley has evolved into a state of mutual dependency but also the motivation for the Doctor having a travelling companion in the first place, offering the intriguing contention that they may simply be memento mori, whose presence is a constant reminder to the Doctor of his own mortality.

The Doctor of Scherzo has sacrificed his own life so that others might live, so that specifically Charley might live but because she believes wholeheartedly that they need each other, she has followed the Doctor into the divergent universe against his wishes. The Doctor perceives this as a betrayal of his act of sacrifice in giving up everything he knew because he did it for her, as if she were safe it was all worthwhile. But Charley has sacrificed her safety to be with him and she commits this out of love. Having a companion who is in love with the Doctor is a fascinating twist, and by having the Doctor returning this is venturing into deeply uncharted territory. While Charley's love seems to be very much conventional in nature, the Doctor's love for her is left slightly more ambiguous and it'll be interesting to see how this aspect to their relationship effects the Doctor's attitude throughout the remainder of the stories of this new season and beyond.

While there are certainly some implicit sexual undertones regarding some features of the play, the love between the Doctor and Charley is not one based on physicality or romanticism, but of need. The Doctor believes his journey into the new universe is a sacrifice that will herald his death, which is a prospect he relishes as he feels he is redundant within this new universe. Without any fixed notion of time, what use is a Time Lord when there is nothing but a linear passage where time passes and is gone forever. It is the presence of Charley and in particular her spirit that shows him he still has something to offer, that despite loosing everything he still has purpose and must go on - no longer Time's Champion, but truly a champion of life once more. Charley's own need for the Doctor is embodied by her willing sacrifice of her entire past for a dangerous, uncertain future because without the Doctor her life would become humdrum and meaningless. Without the symphony of music-like magic he fires within her through the wonders he has showed her, the prospect of living a plain and ordinary life is unconscionable to her. While the Doctor would sacrifice himself for a universe that could create an individual like Charley Pollard, she would sacrifice herself to be in a universe that contains an individual like the Doctor. It is this symbiosis between them that ultimately proves their salvation.

By using the four part structure to further the drama by setting each new episode some time after the last one, Shearman further emphasises the bleak and barren state of the setting because it blurs the reality of the fiction and ensures uncertainty. Some Big Finish stories have had difficulty in showing the passage of time convincingly because while it's all very well to say that a certain duration has passed, for the listener it may have only been a few seconds. Shearman uses this inherent weakness to show that time itself is irrelevant within the void and that while the break between episodes may only have been a few seconds, the fact that the characters have no sense of it adds to the unusualness of the story as the listener cannot perceive the change either. This is helped further by the relative brevity of the play which reaffirms the correctness of Big Finish's policy to allow stories to run to their natural lengths, rather than committing each episode to an arbitrary length dictated by the demands of television schedules from forty years ago.

Shearman recognises that the very conventions of Doctor Who demand some kind of menace, and introduces a creature into the void who is composed purely of the sounds that the Doctor and Charley have made throughout their stay in the void to fulfil this function. Sound monsters have been used quite frequently throughout Big Finish's range, and are especially appropriate for the medium, but because of the bleak atmosphere of the production and the way the creature is used here, it is arguably the most disturbing and effective because it feeds upon the only way that the Doctor and Charley have left to communicate and so by conversing they are making the creature stronger. By creating a composition of dialogue and noise to form the basis of the entity, the play's two-hander status is neatly preserved whilst allowing a sense of danger to generate as the creature's own evolution begins to leave the Doctor and Charley behind, jeopardising their very existence. Ultimately, it is the presence of this "gooseberry" intruding upon them that forces the Doctor and Charley to come together - quite literally - and confront their fears regarding their uncertain future. By facing fear they can recognise how much they mean to each other and gain confidence in the fact that they can not only survive this new universe, but with each other's help, they can positively thrive within its confines.

Beginning each of Scherzo's episodes is a continuing narrative, read by McGann, of a mythic fable where a King desires total control over everything within his kingdom and finds that music is the only thing he has no power over. However, after he banishes it in an attempt to control it, he discovers that music was the joy that made life worth living and tries to get it back. As with the best of Shearman's scripts, there is a degree of ambiguity as to the significance of this aspect of the story which he leaves for the listener to decide on its importance. Is it simply what it appears? A story explaining the origin of the sound creature the Doctor and Charley encounter? Or perhaps an allusion to the Doctor's situation, showing that Charley and her love are the music of his life which he needs more then ever now he's alone in an uncertain universe.

The script of Scherzo deserves much of the plaudits for its overwhelming success, but like life without music, it would have no soul if it were not for the incredible performances of Paul McGann and India Fisher. Over their previous audio adventures they have developed a phenomenal repartee that energised their stories superbly and it is this solid foundation that enables them to captivate the listener so utterly without the benefit of any supporting performers. McGann in particular is outstanding, presenting an entirely different side to the now jaded Doctor as he teases out his fear at being lost in a universe where he doesn't belong. The sadness in his voice as he feels time passing by him without anyway to recover it is truly mournful. His often disturbing delivery is a deliberate contrast to the more effervescent Doctor of the past, but that is the performance's greatest strength as it is the subversion of expectation that makes the Doctor's darker streak all the more unpredictable and extraordinary. India Fisher matches her co-star with a very deep and heartfelt performance, convincing totally with her substantial emotional display as Charley's own fears begin to conspire against her. Her love for the Doctor is portrayed very genuinely, bringing out the subtleties of Shearman's script well, and not at all like the overplayed obsessive basket case stalker she seemed in the closing moments of Zagreus, which is something of a relief. Particularly impressive is the final scene where Charley draws the Doctor back from his high ambitions, and they both realise that they have a new life together, hand in hand, waiting for them outside. Full credit to director Gary Russell for encouraging such intense and sincere performances from his cast.

Scherzo utilises its medium perfectly, depriving its characters of their senses for much of the play and thus putting them into the same position as the listener with sound the only thing they can experience. This is reflected brilliantly in the story's sound design which emphasises the desolateness of the void through extreme plainness whilst allowing the sound creature to tear through the quiet with its power and force. The realisation of this through the noises inherent in the play, be it something like footsteps or the dialogue of the Doctor and Charley itself, is particularly effective for its simplicity which makes the creature's presence more traumatic and unnerving. Gareth Jenkins and Andy Hardwick's post production work captures the assertion of the script that it is the creatures tone that is important, rather than what is actually being said inventively and by doing this one of the play's themes of the power of rhythm is emphatically demonstrated through the idea that all sound, no matter how mundane, is a form of music. The almost total lack of actual scored music contributes to the sense of unreality of the scenes set within the void, but the few flashes of it are used with great effect and its absence goes a long way to underlining one of the points of the narrated tale.

After two stories revolving around big events designed to spiral the Eighth Doctor audios into a radically different direction, the intimacy of Scherzo is a welcome relief. It is a brave move to release a story so different and so wholly character based, but the bitingly dark tone of Shearman's script combined with such poignant performances allow it to flourish magnificently. While Scherzo is stylistically minimal, the play is full of substance and beautifully crafted to create something astoundingly momentous.