The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"All the answers are waiting for you, waiting in your dreams!"

No one expected the Eighth Doctor to return again so quickly after The Twilight Kingdom but the imminent arrival of the new Doctor Who television series caused a rethink of Big Finish's plans to irrevocably trap him in a strange new reality, and so he's coming home earlier than expected. But not quite yet as there's still unfinished business to attend to in the Divergents' universe. This in itself creates a quandary as the manner of the ending to this arc is now inevitable - the Doctor will recover the TARDIS and return to the real universe - and so the journey itself becomes even more paramount as this fourth and final 'season' will go a long way to justifying the direction of the Eighth Doctor stories post-Neverland.

The first release is Graham Duff's Faith Stealer, a story that deals with the concept of belief and how this can be subverted. The Doctor and companions arrive at the Multihaven, where many different religions all co-exist peacefully with discourse conducted amicably and as the balance of faith is in constant flux, equality is ensured. Yet something is destabilising this status quo as the Church Of Lucidity, led by the charismatic Laan Carder, is somehow gaining an unusually high number of conversions to its order. While Duff is no stranger to Big Finish - having appeared in Nick Briggs' Doctor Who Unbound play Exile - his background in comedy is very influential upon his story which possesses a lightness and sense of fun that has been conspicuously absent from the Eighth Doctor's recent grim appearances.

Past Doctor Who adventures have tended to explore religion in an incidental manner rather than as a central theme and this is possibly because it can be a volatile subject if mishandled. Duff's intriguing setting allows him to explore the idea of belief in a faith through different methods, both serious and silly, with a wide scope of differing religions ranging from the pious Bakoans, who worship their Hymn in perpetuity, to those that deify the versatile product Cabari and also the followers of the Great Neglector in the Serendipity faith, who believe in the beauty of happy accidents. Even the Doctor gets into it with his newly adopted faith of Tourism, needed to enter the Multihaven. Despite this consisting mainly of a ritual cup of tea each morning, it soon finds new followers amongst the denizens of the city. What makes this light-hearted approach to the different religions work is that Duff maintains a respectfully tactful tone to his script which is never mocking even as it gives way to the main story of how extreme forms of belief can be subverted to serve particular interests as Carder draws more and more followers into worshipping the Lucidian god Miraculite.

One of the biggest criticisms of the third McGann season was its lack of consistency as there were wildly imaginative and innovative stories sitting alongside bland rehashes of archetypal Doctor Who adventures. Faith Stealer is perhaps the first story to appreciate the difference of the Divergents' universe setting without resorting to extremely radical contexts. As the Doctor remarks, it's been rare in the course of his travels to find two religions who can exist in such harmony and so that the many within the Multihaven have achieved this demonstrates a subtle change of emphasis which was missing from stories like The Creed Of The Kromon and The Twilight Kingdom. In this respect Faith Stealer has a good claim as the most successful Divergents' universe story to date as it marries new ideas within the recognisable format of Doctor Who without pushing the envelope in the potentially divisive way that challenging drama like Scherzo and The Natural History Of Fear did. By hitting this middle ground strongly, Duff recaptures the style of innovation within the format that made Doctor Who such a successful series in the first place.

Faith Stealer has a fantastic level of pace which is down to a very trim script that knows exactly how much information to impart to keep the listener engaged and entertained. The concession to this conciseness is a certain lack of depth which means some of Duff's own supporting characters are not as well rounded as they could be, but as he mixes his satirical eye with the interesting dramatic premise of a belief that spreads like wildfire throughout a community in such a compelling style that the lightness becomes a positive boon after the run of heavy preceding plays. There are some flaws which detract from Faith Stealer's overall quality which are mainly related to a lack of foreshadowing. Duff brings out C'rizz's insecurities from the play's beginning but the same cannot be said for the doubt the Doctor and Charley express later as its suddenness seems dubious. But the biggest problem is the hasty resolution as the Doctor offhandedly deduces the nature of the entity behind the Lucidian religion but rather than follow this up with a clear explanation of how he reaches this assumption, the clarity is lost in a garbled mess of technobabble which is as unconvincing as it is terse. Despite the Doctor's subsequent actions towards Carder being a good example of how he uses his wits to defeat opponents, it remains an underwhelming way for such an entertaining play to conclude.

There is some improvement in the characterisation of C'rizz here, with Duff examining the emotional impact of his murder of L'da in Kromon, which has been previously ignored. Conrad Westmaas palpably brings out the self-doubt and loathing C'rizz feels over this but it can't hide the fact that the character still lacks depth. This isn't helped either by his positioning as the new Kamelion, both in his chameleonic abilities and his propensity to be taken over by whomever has the strongest will in the vicinity, as shown here by his pitching in with the Lucidians. These constant attempts to prolong the mystery of C'rizz's identity must be going somewhere (as shown by the Doctor and Charley's recognition they know so little about him too) but it's difficult to be interested or even care as the character is so nondescript at this time.

While Paul McGann and India Fisher were once the backbone of this part of Big Finish's range, it's become clear that the character of Charley is increasingly stale. The most disappointing aspect of Duff's script is how utterly redundant Charley is, bounding along after the Doctor like an excited lapdog but adding nothing of substance to the drama. With the steadfast refusal to build upon the redefinition of the Doctor and Charley's relationship from Scherzo, with a return to a more generic friendship instead, it seems as if keeping her on after Zagreus was a mistake. Fisher herself is trying hard but she's just not getting the material she once did and it's undermining the memory of how good Charley used to be.

The defining quality of McGann's Doctor has been his passion. His joie-de-vive made the character come to life magnificently, but lately he's developed into a much more lugubrious and less forceful figure. While there are good narrative reasons why this is so, this jaded version is far less interesting to listen to as he lacks the spark that used to so electrify his scenes. McGann, consummate performer that he is, adjusts his style to match the characterisation and while the Doctor occupies the familiar role as inquisitive questioner as well as ever, it sometimes feels as if his hearts are not it anymore, making the Doctor seem like a pale shadow of his former self. It's good that Big Finish have attempted to evolve the character, as all the Doctor's did in the original series, but only Robert Shearman's Scherzo has achieved it successfully as he fuelled the passion into anger whereas the in-between approach shown here just makes him unappealing.

As Laan Carder, Christian Rodska is extremely convincing as the charismatic leader who works his way through the Multihaven, opening everyone's minds to the benefit of Lucidity. Tessa Shaw is equally effective in her role as the Bordinan who is officious but strongly committed to the preservation of the ethos of coexistence. Helen Kirkpatrick's character Jebdal has the most interesting journey as she goes from a devout Lucidian to someone forced to question her belief when she sees what actions are being committed in its name. Kirkpatrick also shows some good comic timing, particularly with her droll delivery of the line that follows Jebdal's declaration that she's "through with blindly following leaders." The only performance that doesn't quite ring true from the remainder of the excellent cast is Neil Bett's as Director Garfolt, as he invests him with such an unpersuasive over-the-top fanaticism for his work at the Defaith Centre that it's hard to take seriously. Although saying that the script doesn't really give Garfolt a motivation for why he subjects C'rizz to experimentation when the Doctor has expressly asked him not to, so something softer than Bett's display might have seemed bland.

Russell Stone's score captures the ideas of the play perfectly with mellow, reflective music which is not necessarily religious in tone but certainly feels spiritual and the way this can abruptly change reinforces the idea that this is a community where religions exist side by side. This is also true of Gareth Jenkins' sound design which varies well in different settings whilst still creating a consistent feel. Particularly impressive is the way he uses the street scenes to create a genuinely busy and vibrant background which doesn't drown out the dialogue but adds a real sense of colour to the Multihaven.

Faith Stealer is an engaging and enjoyable play that evokes the spirit of Doctor Who well, being a good mixture of drama and humour. It brings some much needed fun into the hitherto humourless Divergents' universe and for that it's easy to overlook its deficiencies in relation to the regular characters, some of which originated elsewhere anyway. This is a fair start to the fourth season and a foundation that needs to be built upon by the remaining releases if the Eighth Doctor audio series is to return to the sort of consistently excellent drama it was once celebrated for.