The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"I don't suppose one game will kill me..."

Darin Henry's debut script for Big Finish's Doctor Who range features at its heart the very familiar idea of violence as a spectator sport where the only rule is kill or be killed. The Game in question is "naxy" where each match consists of the two sides, the Gora and Lineen, battling for the most fatal eliminations in a competition that has lasted for years. While the population of Cray view it as brutal entertainment, their recently-twinned world of Earth sees it from a different perspective. They believe the game is a war and have dispatched their greatest peacekeeper to end the slaughter. That man, Lord Carlisle, is someone the Doctor has longed to meet and as Cray is his last chance he decides to bring Nyssa onto Cray for a holiday...

On the rare occasions when sport and Doctor Who cross-over its almost always about killing for fun or entertainment, and it's the latter that Henry goes for. Initially he takes a very wry satirical look at contemporary competitions by using naxy as an extreme version of the way that team sports can instil a tribal mentality bordering on fanaticism in its supporters. How naxy became the killing game its fans know and love today is merely part of this as Henry explains how the game moved from a civilised sport when the organised fan fights outside stadiums became more popular than the original spectacle, and became synthesised together in a lethal combination.

Perhaps the biggest "gimmick" of this play is that it's structured in six parts, rather than the conventional four. While The Game has had its thunder stolen somewhat by The Next Life adopting this formation (not to mention the earlier adaptation of Douglas Adams' Shada), Henry's script is the first original play to use the extra episodes within the standard two disc format. He talks in his author's notes about how in the past the inherent danger of the traditional six part Doctor Who adventure was "repetition, padding and tedium" - which the Eighth Doctor's recent escape from the Divergents' universe ably proved - and the solution used in here is rather novel, for The Game is a six part story that runs to the length of what has become a standard Big Finish Doctor Who at just under two hours. This gives the play plenty of pace, but it leaves some of the episodes feeling shallow and insubstantial as the plot doesn't move forward with enough momentum.

While Henry is right that the extra episodes often weren't beneficial in the original series, the most successful examples used their broader canvases to tell stories on a grander scale, lending the drama an epic feel that isn't really present here as it feels much like a regular story that just happens to have more divisions than usual. While Big Finish has stuck steadfastly to the episodic structure, the flexibility of how long those episodes could be has been one of the best aspects of their approach. Rather than be constrained by the arbitrary demands of the 1963 television schedulers, by allowing each episode to last for as long as it needed stories of real depth have emerged. While it's true to say that sometimes this open-endedness has led to massively inflated stories which would have benefited considerably from judicious pruning, it also means we've already had stories that have been the equivalent of six part stories. That is why the actually releasing a story such as The Game in that number of instalments feels like a gimmick as it is unnecessary, particularly when Henry's cliffhangers are so unimaginative. With four of them consisting of the archetypal - and inherently predictable - "Doctor/Companion in danger" scenario, this story really gives credence to the idea of dropping the episodic structure altogether rather than increasing the variety of the number of episodes per story.

Henry's plotting is conventional and straightforward, which ensures the play makes sense and flows naturally, but the lack of any real risk-taking makes The Game seem rather uninspired. This is typified by the introduction of a new villain in the last couple of episodes, which was a tactic often used in six part stories to prolong the storyline and inject new life when they began to run out of steam. While this works to a degree here, as Christopher Ellison's Morian is quite entertaining, it does bring the dreary notion that much of what has happened on Cray has been the influence of an outside agent, making it all too clear how the conflict of naxy is likely to be settled. At times too Henry's writing lacks subtlety as some incidents are spelled out far too precisely as Important Plot Points, such as when Nyssa just happens to knock off papers which contain the suggestion that the peace talks might not be all they seem or when the Doctor just stumbles across an alien coin that doesn't belong on Cray. The explanation behind what Nyssa finds in the former is actually quite clever, but by making them seem more important than they should, Henry telegraphs his intent through conspicuous presentation.

While the story that The Game tells is unsurprising and unadventurous, it is redeemed by the script's energetic tone that allows director Gary Russell to get the best out of his cast. Henry's writing credentials are impressive, boasting such noted American comedy series as Seinfeld and Futurama, and while that doesn't make him a good dramatist his comedic background does allow him to impart some wit and banter into how the characters relate to each other that helps to retain the audience's interest in what's going to happen to them.

The Game puts the Fifth Doctor into some interesting situations such as becoming one naxy's teams new hero after his plan to stop the slaughter unwittingly leads to the Gora's greatest victory for sometime. Peter Davison's Doctor has always been reflective, using violence only as a last resort, and so it's intriguing to place him in a lethal game where killing is the only option for survival. Alas, co-star Sarah Sutton gets a bit short changed as Nyssa, who seems very anonymous here. This is a particular shame because the outings for this team have become increasing rare - this is their first appearance together for almost two years - particularly since both Spare Parts and Creatures Of Beauty used Nyssa's compassion to give her character a new impetus. Henry captures the blandness of her television characterisation rather too well which ensures that the plotline of her developing a friendship with Lord Carlisle can't do quite the same thing. Nyssa's peripheral state isn't helped by some acts of supreme naivety, such as realising the traitor must be someone just like the person she's talking to and then being surprised when that person admits it and attacks her.

Making a return to Doctor Who with this story is William Russell, who needs little introduction after memorably portraying one of the Doctor's first companions back in 1963. His character, Darzil Carlisle, is built up as one of the greatest forces for peace throughout the galaxy as a noble negotiator who has successfully concluded over thirty separate peace treaties throughout his time as a diplomat. That sounds like a promising role for an actor of Russell's ability, but the reality is somewhat different as Carlisle is merely a frightened old man who's relied on the assistance of another throughout his career to achieve his goals and when faced with a situation where that person is unavailable finds himself totally out of his depth. Christopher Ellison is a big, colourful villain but he perhaps shows a little too much glee in his role as crime boss Morian, which lessens the character's impact. He's not quite psychotic enough to be a truly crazed madman but not suave enough to bring any sinister side to his actions, leaving him feeling like a two-bit conman rather than a universally renown villain.

Perhaps the most inspired casting is Jonathan Pearce as the naxy commentator Garny Diblick, who - like Tony Blackburn before him in The Rapture - brings a real authenticity which impersonators, such as Daniel Hogath's unconvincing football commentator in The Grel Escape, just can't hope to capture. Pearce, who can frequently be heard on Match Of The Day and Radio 5 Live, is in particular an excellent choice for the part as he has such a distinctively manic style that's just perfect for the intense brutality of Cray's favourite past-time. It's his performance and Henry's use of Diblick to describe the flow of the game, and not simply describe what's happening in the game, that makes the naxy action sequences as memorable and believable as they are.

On the technical side, Gareth Jenkins' sound design is dependable as ever with his work during the battle scenes in particularly evoking the frantic fury of the fight. This is slightly undermined by some intrusive music during these naxy games from Andy Hardwick as it disrupts the realism the script and direction tries to build during these confrontations, making it too clear that this is just a drama after all.

The Game is certainly a mixed success. Aside from the satire of sport at its core, there is no real originality or innovation as to the development of neither the plot nor the actions of the characters which makes it rather predictable. But the play is performed energetically and has plenty of smart, funny moments that ensure it's never dull which is certainly a first for (full length) Big Finish Doctor Who stories released in six parts. The Game is decent enough entertainment, but is far too conventional for its own good which makes it seem like just another story rather than something distinct in its own right.