The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"You talk about Burke and Hare as though you're looking forward to meeting them!"

When dealing with historical stories, Doctor Who has almost always favoured playing with context over accurately reproducing history, often by depositing some alien vagabond in the past where they can distort the web of time to further their own ends. And it's this time-honoured scenario that writer Robert Ross chooses as the basis of Medicinal Purposes, which sees the Doctor and Evelyn arrive in Edinburgh, 1828 where the notorious body snatchers William Burke and Billy Hare are plying their deadly resurrectionist trade to supply fresh cadavers to Doctor Robert Knox, on the pretence that it's all in the name of advancing medical science.

These genuine events seems a perfect foundation for a Doctor Who adventure with an atmospheric locale at a grisly time in its history with plenty of potential for the instinctive horror that works so well in audio drama. It's always been more difficult for purely historical stories to succeed because the Doctor has to leave the story without altering the established past, but, perhaps realising this, Ross rejects the possibilities of his chosen setting and goes for the familiar and more generic story of a time meddler (not that one) manipulating the people of Edinburgh where the macabre activities of Burke and Hare simply provide an easy cover to work behind. This means that the body snatchers' gruesome methods are less prominent than the reasons why an interloper is using them to obtain bodies which renders the drama rather tame as the onus is on pointlessly drawn out conversation rather than blood-curdling terror.

Like many of his contemporaries in this year of new writers, Ross' intent is to create an "old-style Doctor Who romp" and stylistically he succeeds as Medicinal Purposes never aspires to be anything beyond spooky escapism. Where he fails is in the substance of the play as there is no real originality and therefore nothing to really distinguish his work from all the other old-school romps, but worse still is the lack of depth within the plot itself. Beyond the central question of what the villainous Knox is actually doing in Edinburgh, there is little attempt to cultivate subplots to support this which exposes the thinness of the narrative, already needlessly stretched out over a running time of approximately two hours and twenty minutes. That length makes this the longest Doctor Who release since Zagreus but there's absolutely nothing in this story that justifies such a protracted duration and this poor pacing results in a torturously slow rate of development which destroys any hope of generating suspense and only emphasises how repetitive and uneventful the play is. With a stronger focus on characterisation, scenes overburden with dialogue - some of which is actually quite witty - could have held the attention far more than they actually do. But as most, with a couple of exceptions, of the characters are underdeveloped, much of the play comes across as dull and uninteresting.

Arguably Medicinal Purposes most significant flaw is its unfocused structure, which means there's no backbone for the drama to be built around. The script meanders languidly without purpose through inconsequential scenes as characters move endlessly between Knox's house and local boozer The Last Drop. Despite the disorderly plot, Ross succeeds in keeping the script unpredictable with the revelatory first cliffhanger a genuine surprise (even if it's similar to one in another Sixth Doctor audio) and Knox's method of departure when he prepares to receive the Doctor is definitely unforeseen. There is also a tendency to over-emphasise key elements through repetition, but other aspects are slipped in with such a subtle touch that the clues only become clear through hindsight and it's a shame this finesse wasn't more liberally applied.

Ross is also keen to recognise the clichés Doctor Who has built up over the years, but much of this comes across smugly rather than the ironic effect intended - Evelyn's declaration that "When in a cliffhanging situation always go for the cliché, that's my motto" is a particularly risible example. Other instances, such as the Doctor's remark to Evelyn that "it's wonderful to be able to halt a self-centred conversationalist in his tracks, you can't imagine the reactions I get when I historically name drop," betray their origin as general perceptions of the character as Evelyn surely can imagine such reactions as she's been travelling with the Doctor long enough to be exposed to this character trait - even commenting on it in Doctor Who And The Pirates.

A strong finish can often revive a faltering play, but the resolution offered here is as insipid and unimaginative as can be. After Knox generously gives the Doctor enough information to work out how his hold can be broken, it's a quick trip in the TARDIS that draws everything to a tidy end. After such a drawn-out story, this can only reinforce the disappointment. The actual final scene of the play is quite sorrowful and touching, but it is just one moment in a dramatic wasteland.

The inception of Knox as the villain of the piece is more successful, but much of this is down to the casting of Leslie Phillips who brings all the raffish charm you'd expect of him with his instantly recognisable voice and debonair demeanour. But even here Knox is not as an effective adversary as he should be given the conflicting motivation for his presence. Is he an altruist, out to save an alien race, or simply an opportunist, exploiting the situation to feed his base greed? The script doesn't really answer this, opting for an unhelpful murky in-between position and this approach stifles questions about whether the ends are justified given the unsavoury means Knox is employing to achieve them through a lack of insight into his character. Ultimately the question of who he was working for is irrelevant, but how he managed to acquire "centuries of knowledge" about time travel when, if the Doctor's supposition is correct, he's a mere human is a more fundamental concern. Ross seems wholly indifferent towards this and it's likely the only answer we get - how he acquired time travel capability - was an addition from producer and director Gary Russell, given it ties into his recent Gallifrey series. While it can be dramatically justified to leave ambiguous questions open, featuring a character who claims to know more about time travel than the central character and giving no rationalisation for this shows tremendously poor judgement. As the script is actively angling for a rematch between Knox and the Doctor, these loose threads may be solved if it ever happens. Certainly the return of Phillips would be a welcome prospect but Knox really needed more thought into his raison d'être to make him the worthy adversary he has the potential to be.

Another significant problem for Medicinal Purposes is the way the Doctor is used. While Colin Baker features in most scenes, his Doctor seems an impotent figure as he doesn't begin to have an impact upon the storyline until halfway through the final episode whilst the rest of the time he spends fruitlessly searching for answers and clues and not realising the obvious. There is some very strange characterisation here too, which begins with the Doctor's mawkish cooing over "The Woman" in his first scene and continues on and off throughout the story. His hesitancy over departing the TARDIS because it was too smooth a landing and the scanner displays nothing but darkness betray a lack of adventure which this Doctor is usually never without and his foundation of the one-man Burke and Hare Appreciation Society is extremely perplexing. While this particular Doctor has always been a realist, to hear him express such enthusiastic admiration for mass murderers runs contrary to the character, no matter how justified the historical context makes it seem. The moral stance taken by the Doctor is another evocation of the "can the ends justify the means?" debate but Ross doesn't use the drama at all to try and illustrate whether he was right or wrong, preferring instead to use it as a means of re-emphasising his alien sensibilities. This, and scenes where he coldly informs Mary the nature of her destiny, make the Doctor a less sympathetic figure than we've become accustomed too which, whilst not the subtlest point in the play, does remind the listener of how abrasive the Sixth Doctor can be even if he remains the mellow fellow he has grown into in this medium.

If the Doctor has little to do, then pity poor Evelyn Smythe, who, as in The Sandman and Project: Lazarus, is reduced to her clichéd position of offering wry comments but never truly taking a significantly active role. Her participation and subsequent arrest in a bar room brawl just seems like a token effort to have her do something even if it is utterly redundant. It's always disappointing when a companion is so completely tangential to the plot but even more so in a story such as this where the main narrative is so sorely lacking in incident and would have profited from their increased participation.

Of the guest cast it is the urbane Phillips who impresses the most but the consistently excellent David Tennant, taking time out from saving the universe in Dalek Empire III, demonstrates yet another side to his versatility with a delightfully endearing performance as Daft Jamie, a simple young man who befriends the Doctor unaware he will be forever remembered as one of Burke and Hare's victims. The bond he develops with the Doctor over the course of the story is very believable and it's all thanks to Tennant's emotive performance that the final scene has the resonance it does as the Doctor is forced to leave the trusting Jamie behind to fulfil his place in history. Just about Jamie's only other friend is feisty local prostitute, Mary Patterson played by Glenna Morrison. She provides the right mix of pride and playfulness to convince and while she's ultimately quite a tragic character her first meeting with the Doctor provides one of Medicinal Purposes most memorable comedic moments.

Kevin O'Leary and Tom Farrelly portray Burke and Hare respectively and both bring an authenticity to their roles as the Irish body snatchers. Ross' script tries to cast them in a more sympathetic light than might be expected but it's undermined by Burke featuring in only a handful of scenes and O'Leary's harsh, aggressive presence which convinces the listener that Hare enjoys his terrible homicidal work more than someone who's just trying to atone for the death of his children by improving the state of medical knowledge should.

It seems to be a more frequent occurrence these days that the weaker Big Finish stories are redeemed in the performance, but the valiant efforts of this play's cast aren't quite enough to make this bare bones story into something memorable and worthwhile. Medicinal Purposes is a wearyingly overlong and undeveloped release that scorns the intriguing potential of its historical basis in favour of a traditional formula that's been done to death time and time before. What's left is a plodding and undisciplined drama that would have been best left to rest in peace...