The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"You are an arrogant fool, Doctor. This is another universe. It contains forces you've never dreamed of, pain you have never imagined!"

Caerdroia may be Lloyd Rose's first Doctor Who audio play, but she has firmly established herself as one of the best writers in the BBC's Eighth Doctor novel range with her stunning debut The City Of The Dead (2001) and solidified that reputation with the equally magnificent Camera Obscura the following year. With her background including scripts for such seminal American drama series such as Homicide: Life On The Street too, the prospect of combining her dynamic interpretation of the Eighth Doctor with Paul McGann's performance is a very enticing one.

It becomes clear within the opening minutes of the play that Caerdroia's position as the penultimate story in the current "arc" places some limitations upon what Rose can do as her story must draw some long-running plot elements to a close in readiness for the conclusion next month's The Next Life will bring. By demonstrating immediately that the previously untouchable malign hold of the taunting Kro'ka is not as strong as it appeared, Rose places the Doctor in the position of being able to use his ingenuity to uncover some of the truth behind what has been happening to him since his arrival in Scherzo, and in the process learn a little about the Divergents, those ever-so-mysterious beings who are supposedly the dominant force within this universe. This reversal of fortune is extremely quick and its abruptness highlights just how rubbish a villain the Kro'ka has been up until now with his constant goading the Doctor through "petty adventures" and by tackling this conflict head on, Rose says more about this mysterious character in five minutes than all of the plays before put together. By putting the Doctor into the ascendancy so quickly, she subtly foreshadows that the time for games has passed...

The bulk of episode one is dominated by this battle of wills between Doctor and Kro'ka, and by setting the theatre of war as the Doctor's own mind gives the play a surrealistic feel which extends throughout into the later phase. Rose's novels were distinguished by the way she vivaciously evoked her setting, be it the seamy side of a city drenched in the occult or the dark heart of Victorian England, but she wasn't afraid to venture into the dreamlike (indeed one of Camera Obscura's most astonishing scenes was the Doctor's descent into the underworld to meet Death herself) and this is what most of Caerdroia is routed in as once the drama leaves the Interzone, the Doctor and companions find themselves in an almost Shearman-esque unreal environment where little is what it appears. The definition of the play's title given here is "the fortress of many turnings" which is immediately suggestive that the story is built around the idea of a labyrinth and the plot is primarily about the journey to the centre, where the Doctor hopes that the truth about this universe awaits him.

In truth the obstacles Rose's script puts before the Doctor's challenge are less interesting than the concept itself because the problems faced in the journey are all rather small and easily overcome. The puzzles - such as improbable giant clocks, mythic creatures and the perils of officialdom - are quite fun by themselves, but they don't really add up to much. It's reminiscent of the problems which plagued Medicinal Purposes with lots of running about but little significant plot development but as Rose is such a talented writer she keeps the pace quick and her greatest weapon is the story's salvation as the deficiencies of the narrative become almost irrelevant as Caerdroia is essentially a character piece which examines the Doctor's identity with great skill and clarity.

Since Neverland there has been little consistency to the portrayal of the Doctor, with some plays featuring a darker, angrier version and others featuring occasional flashes of the passionate man he once was while most have settled for a rather dull, grumpy incarnation which has made him a far less appealing character than he needs to be. This has sometimes shown through Paul McGann's performance where he has seemed less interested than before and the contrast has been clear (in stories such as Scherzo and The Natural History Of Fear) when he's been required to do something more challenging. One of Rose's stated aims with this story was to test the actors to have fun and show off their skills and this is certainly evident in the part she deals McGann, which requires him to be witty, clever, intense, devious and a whole range of other emotions which he seems to relish getting to grips with.

The resourceful development which allows her to do this is by contrasting the Doctor with the extremes of his personality - the quixotic dreamer who takes immense pleasure from the smallest things in life and the blunt, less forgiving side of his nature. One of the most inspired elements of this is that it allows the middle (nominally the "responsible" one) version to normalise and he comes across far more Doctorish than he's been for some time. The character needs to evolve and change to survive (much like the series) and the confused approach which has dogged the Divergents' universe storyline to the Doctor's character has undermined several of the stories, so it's good to see Rose bringing fresh ideas and strongly defining his personality. While three Doctors might usually lead to lots of arguing and bickering, having them as aspects of a single incarnation neatly sidesteps this and McGann is entirely convincing in all three parts. Thanks to the subtleties of deviation (and some inventive use of positioning in the excellent sound design) it never becomes confusing as to which Doctor is which as while they are the same person, they have different facets that distinguish them. It's almost a shame when they inevitably get rolled back up into one.

The slender plot is less interested in the companions' role because of the heavy focus upon the Doctor, but irrespective of that Rose's presentation of them is better than average. This is helped by both Charley and C'rizz being teamed up with different aspects of the Doctor and through this she can examine their overall relationship. C'rizz accepts the idealistic version's idiosyncratic nature with good humour and it allows a lighter side of this alien companion to emerge when usually he seems very solemn and dry. Rose's take on the Doctor's "flaky" side is very much an exaggeration of the exuberant person he was in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie - he even pauses dramatically mid-sentence to recognise just how much C'rizz misses his home - and there's some droll wit at recognising how he's developed since then into a more complicated individual. Conrad Westmaas' performance is quietly impressive as while there still isn't much substance to the character beyond being a thoroughly decent chap, at least he's becoming likeable now rather than provoking little more than indifference. His view of himself as a safety net, keeping the Doctor and Charley out of trouble, is an interesting one.

This play is arguably India Fisher's best for a while, but it doesn't stop contributing to Charley's increasing status as the serial whiner of the group in the style of Tegan Jovanka. She gets teamed up with the "nasty" side of the Doctor and takes great delight in arguing with absolutely anything and everything he says although mercifully her antagonism gets dropped quietly after the second episode. Where Fisher shines is in her scenes with Westmaas as their banter is a lot of fun, even if it still seems a little questionable that Charley would be so pally with C'rizz so soon after he trying to kill her on two separate occasions. There is a very vague allusion (and one that's a back-pedal at best) to the deepening of the Doctor and Charley's relationship in Scherzo which gives hope that it hasn't been entirely forgotten as every other story since has done, but what's really needed is for her character to regain some of that spark she's lost and step away from the generic companion number one she's become in the stories that have followed Shearman's script, which have featured the character.

It was perhaps an odd choice to cast Stephen Perring as the Kro'ka, given he previously played the Eighth Doctor's most memorable audio foe to date as Sebastian Grayle in 2002's Seasons Of Fear, but as Rose gives him a more substantive role that the sneering cameos the Kro'ka had before the wisdom of it soon shows through. With no explanation for why he was pushing the Doctor and company through these "experiments", the Kro'ka came across like a bad pantomime villain, popping up to offer the hero a hiss sporadically but little else. Caerdroia gives strong clues about his motivation and this allows Perring to make him seem more rounded as his previously unassailable position comes under threat revealing that beneath the exterior of the calm manipulator lies a desperate creature whom the Doctor manoeuvres into causing his own downfall. Perhaps the only disadvantage to Perring's performance is that because his voice is both so distinctive and recognisable - even accounting for modulation - it's easy to see when he's taking on minor roles (such as the bureaucratic pen-pushers the Doctor encounters in the information office) within the middle episodes and it's even easier to anticipate that they are simply part of the Kro'ka, trying to point the Doctor in the direction he wants him to go again and regain some control over the situation.

The play's pacing is excellent which prevents the middle episodes from dragging given their problems, while Rose's use of the three Doctors means she has three instruments to examination the foundation of the environment from different angles - which cleverly becomes important to the conclusion. Where Rose's script does go astray is in the dialogue which is both one of Caerdroia's best and worst features. When Rose is using this between characters it really sparkles - the Doctor's confrontation with the Kro'ka at the start and the end in particular - but too often she delves into unnecessary exposition with characters describing their surroundings in too much detail or the actions they're about to take which comes across as very unnatural. As a lot of this takes place in a clearly artificial setting this might have worked had the characters themselves been artificial but the Doctors, C'rizz and Charley should be the most real elements there. With fantastical scenarios some degree of description is required but not to the level that Rose takes it here. It comes across as an attempt to compensate for the lack of prose and visuals to give an impression of the setting when she should leave it to the sound design really. This is compounded by the decision to feature only the four 'season' regulars as there are rarely any new characters to interact with and draw out the concepts of the play through an outside influence.

Series producer Gary Russell spoke in this story's Doctor Who Magazine preview about there being a four season outline for the alternate universe arc and you have to wonder whether Caerdroia would have closed the second season had the new television series of Doctor Who not thrown a spanner in the works. Caerdroia doesn't feel like a penultimate story as it's ending (for the Doctor at least) is remarkably upbeat and filled with optimism but the fleeting appearance of the series' current uber-villain makes it seem his plans are a long way from completion and unlikely to be resolved in the next story, which they evidently will. Rather than a sense of building to a climax, Caerdroia's conclusion offers the promise of a new beginning. The recovery of something which has been missing from these adventures is a strangely muted affair though - perhaps because its return was always inevitable and with all the talk about having a new universe to explore, the Doctor is essentially back in the position he was at the end of Zagreus - only there's no longer any time left to discover its wonders...

Caerdroia is certainly a strange beast. Its plot is too rudimentary due to the necessity of having to resolve a large number of ongoing plot elements in time for the big finale yet it works thanks to Rose's immense control of the characters, especially the Doctor. Paul McGann takes up the challenge admirably, with his performance certainly turned up a notch, and through his charismatic display he commands the drama magnificently. Caerdroia may not be the most exciting and eventful play but as character studies of the central character go it makes for compelling and thoughtful listening.