The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who Unbound

"Just remember this, I did everything I could to stop you coming down. I won't be responsible for the consequences!"

The 'what if…?' element of the first two Doctor Who Unbound adventures has revolved around what would have happened if existing continuity had played out differently. For David Bishop's contribution to the Unbound series, Full Fathom Five, he chooses a different course of action by applying the 'what if…?' to the Doctor's character itself. By doing this, Bishop has written perhaps the most unbound of the Doctor Who Unbound plays to date as he uses the freedom to depart from the series' usual constraints with telling effect to create a sinister and unsettling story, which may prove to be one of Big Finish's most controversial releases to date.

Full Fathom Five is centred around the Deep-sea Energy Exploration Project, or the DEEP for short, and the story is played out in two concurrent strands of drama; the first taking place in 2066 where the Doctor is planning a return visit to the laboratory which he believed destroyed, and in 2039 when the Doctor first took a trip into the DEEP. This two-pronged structure gives Bishop the chance to instigate a mystery which he then exposes through the course of the play , which allows the listener to uncover the horror beneath the sea and the extent of the Doctor's involvement.

David Collings takes on the role of the Doctor here and is introduced immediately after the theme music. This opening scene sets up much of the crucial elements of Full Fathom Five by highlighting the Doctor's strong relationship with Ruth and establishing that this is a Doctor who has been around for a long time already, with the last twenty-seven years seeing him stranded on Earth, caring for Ruth's upbringing. Collings' Doctor is determined to protect her from harm at any cost, which he firmly believes she will come to if she is allowed to venture down to the DEEP with him. The fierceness of his determination to prevent her travelling with him seems to indicate that he already knows more than he's letting on and the idea that this is a Doctor with many secrets is something that is supported by the way that Collings realises the role

The relationship between the Doctor and Ruth began when her father - the chief scientist responsible for the DEEP, Professor Vollmer - died onboard nearly thirty years ago. Over that time, their bond has become almost familial and she tells the Doctor that she came to see him as her guardian angel, a description which shows the depth of trust she has placed into him and that he has come to earn from her, in Ruth's eyes. This parental association extends further than that as Ruth has definitely learned ideas and values from him, for as equally determined the Doctor is that Ruth won't accompany him, she is equally resolute that she will go to the DEEP and discover the truth about her father's demise. Throughout this scene, the Doctor seems to care greatly for Ruth with Collings conveying the Doctor's compassion for Ruth brilliantly, yet there's an enigmatic air around him which reinforces the idea he isn't being entirely forthright with her. This foreshadowing of the later elements of the play makes the revelations regarding the character all the more plausible. As the 'what if…?' relates directly to the Doctor's character, Bishop wisely shrouds the difference making the Collings Doctor seem very true to the overall essence of the character, albeit one who seems to draw inspiration from the harsher aspects of the First and Sixth Doctors, but because he is so authentic, the effect of the change when we realise what this Doctor is capable of is altogether more shocking. Certainly, when Bishop reveals the 'what if…?' factor, the Doctor's seemingly jokey response to Ruth's questioning of where he got his highly confidential report on the condition of the DEEP take on a much more sinister overtone…

The Doctor and Ruth's dynamic is quite different from a typical Doctor/companion relationship because it seems much stronger emotionally, as a result of the Doctor being with her for the duration and seeing her flourish into a young woman from a little girl in pigtails. This is shown through their responses to each other, as the Doctor can be as frank with Ruth as he likes, such as when he tells her that even if she discovers the truth about her father, he'll still be dead, but contrast this with the way she responds in an overwrought manner to Hoskins' remarks about Professor Vollmer and it shows how the depth of feeling that she believes exists between her and the Doctor prevent her from lashing out at such a cold and matter-of-fact observation. As Ruth considers the Doctor her guardian angel, she perceives him as a surrogate father figure and it is the fact that she believed their relationship was so close that ultimately leads to her actions in the final scene of the play.

The 'what if…' of Full Fathom Five is 'what if the Doctor believed the ends justified the means?' which goes right to the heart of the character by questioning how far he is prepared to go in order to achieve his aims. Throughout the years in all the media Doctor Who has been created in, there are many instances of the Doctor being shown to denounce this maxim, from Tom Baker's 'Do I have the right?' speech in Genesis Of The Daleks, to Lawrence Miles' New Adventure Christmas On A Rational Planet where the Doctor states that he believes the ends can never justify the means as it's the means that determine the ends, right up until the Big Finish regular Doctor Who audio Flip-Flop where the Doctor rebukes Stewart, telling him that he spent all his life fighting against those who believe the ends justifies the means. Despite this though, there have also been times when the Doctor has used unsavoury methods to achieve a certain aim, such as in The Two Doctors with the death of Shockeye, where it has been necessary to kill in order to save others from immediate danger and death.

But what if that danger was not immediate? What if it wasn't his companions who were in danger of coming to swift harm, but the menace was a very real long term threat? In Full Fathom Five, the genetic experiments conducted onboard the DEEP will have grave consequences for humanity, or so the Doctor believes. When he arrives there in 2039, his intent is to stop these experiments in anyway that he can, even if it means killing everyone associated with the project. That is the difference here, for this is a Doctor who believes he does have the right and the will to take a life, if it serves the higher purpose of doing good. By killing Lee, a mean who also believes the ends justify the means in regards to his unethical and illegal research as it will advance mankind's scientific know-how, the Doctor commits an act of cold blooded murder because he believes it is justified as he has prevented Lee's experiments causing further harm in the future. The moment where the Doctor tells Lee that he has just given him the wrong answer, before unemotionally shooting him dead, is an extraordinarily powerful one, but it has nothing on the effect that Vollmer's final scene has.

Professor Vollmer merely wants to go on living and survive, yet the Doctor has decided that nothing of the experiments that Lee has conducted must be allowed to survive or else others could resume where Lee left off. Despite Vollmer's pleading that he doesn't want to die a monster, and his desire to find a cure for his mutation, the Doctor kills him anyway. It is this death that proves most shocking because, despite his culpability in Lee's experiments through his failure to investigate them fully despite his suspicions as to the nature of his assistant's activities, Vollmer is essentially an innocent victim of the DEEP's hidden agenda, yet the Doctor cannot let him live for the rich and strange being he has become. This action highlights how different this Unbound Doctor is from his regular counterpart. While the approach of this Doctor, that killing is acceptable provided it serves the higher purpose, is morally wrong it is interesting to compare this with the approach often taken by the Doctor in the standard Doctor Who series. In Neverland the Doctor has an opportunity to stop the threat of Anti-Time by killing a single individual, but he can't do it and eventually finds another solution to the to halt the menace. But, that resolution has only postponed the danger and indeed focused it into a single entity (the ramifications of which are to be explored in Big Finish's 40th anniversary special, Zagreus), however if the Doctor had taken the same attitude of the Collings Doctor, the threat of Zagreus would never have existed and whatever carnage is created in his wake would have been averted. The Doctor of Full Fathom Five sees people as a means to an end, they are to be used when they are necessary to him and his goals and when their usefulness expires, they are expendable in the grand scheme with Hoskins being a prime example of this from the story.

The climax of Full Fathom Five must rank as one of the most disturbing scenes ever heard in a Big Finish audio. As Ruth discovers the Doctor's true intent in returning to the DEEP was to destroy it and recover his TARDIS so he can finally escape the world that he has been forced to live in for twenty-seven years, she realises that she has never really known him at all. Bishop writes with a degree of ambiguousness here, but it's clear that Ruth has now come to see that her entire relationship with the Doctor was based on nothing but lies and omissions, as he lied about knowing what happened to her father and failed to tell her that it was him who pulled the trigger on the gun that killed him. This is a massive betrayal of trust from this figure who she came to depend upon, who she saw as a guardian angel and it is because of this that she vents her fury against him.

This is why Ruth acts in the way she does towards General Flint, who is, as the Doctor points out, as culpable as he is in Vollmer's death as it was Flint who instigated the experiments and forced Vollmer to become the subject of one of them. He created the situation which obliged the Doctor to intervene and save the day in the only way he saw possible, by destroying the mutated Vollmer. But Ruth, blinkered by hate from the betrayal, cannot see beyond the fact that it was the Doctor who pulled the trigger and ended her father's life. While Full Fathom Five isn't the first play in recent memory where the Doctor has been killed, it is the most shocking because of the way that it is done. This isn't some grand gesture to save the universe, but simply the result of his own actions and morality. If hearing the creature that Flint has become choking the Doctor to death on his own TARDIS key wasn't enough, Bishop takes it further by showing just how much Ruth has learnt from the Doctor. She knows of his ability to regenerate (the fact of which that the Doctor chose to confess one of his biggest secrets to her perhaps shows that his care for her was genuine) and is prepared to shoot each of his new incarnations until he is finally dead, even though a new Doctor may not necessarily have shared his predecessor's viewpoint. By shooting him in cold blood, she has essentially taken on the Doctor's mantle in that she is prepared to take a life in order for the means to justify the ends, which in this case was preventing the Doctor from causing her - and anyone else he may have deemed expendable in the future - further harm.

Full Fathom Five suffers from some problems, which are mainly down to Bishop's attempts to leave characters' motivations ambiguous. While there's nothing wrong with letting the listener deduce for themselves the reasoning behind a particular character's actions, Bishop perhaps overplays this occasionally and as a result information that should have been included isn't. General Flint suffers from this the most, as it's never explained why he wanted to create a race of experimental genetic super soldiers; he says that these creations are the future and he's only interested in serving his own kind, rather than mankind, but beyond this there's no indication or explanation of what he intends to do with them. While the obvious inference is 'to start a war' we don't know enough about the global situation here to understand why he believes it's necessary. Flint also suffers from some stereotypical characterisation, when he talks about people being opposed to him being 'bleeding heart liberals' and taking about 'men of discipline', but the strength of Ed Bishop's performance in the role helps to compensate for these deficiencies.

But Full Fathom Five benefits from a fast pace and because it feels very much like a typical Doctor Who adventure from it's familiar setting, the effect of the Unbound factor is more pronounced as it comes as a chilling jolt. David Bishop also seems to have learned from his most significant mistake in his last Doctor Who-related audio Sarah Jane Smith: Test Of Nerve where the passage of time wasn't conveyed well enough for a story that revolved around a countdown. Here, where the time the story takes place over is less important, despite the looming threat of radiation poisoning, the drama feels much more natural - even despite the dual nature of the structure - and as a result the drama flows much more effortlessly.

David Collings was perhaps not the most immediately exciting casting choice for the Doctor in this series, but his performance is so strong and so right for this script that he proves himself an inspired choice. His voice is very distinctive and he conveys the sense of hidden depths very well which emphasises the scripts edge this Doctor has perfectly, making his actions all the more astonishing and yet totally believable. Given his wonderful performance, it's perhaps surprising to find he isn't the most outstanding performer within the cast as that honour must go to Siri O'Neal, who is simply amazing as Ruth. She's so full of passion and determination for her cause to find the truth about her father that it makes her emotion so raw and real that it makes Ruth into such an authentic character it's incredible. O'Neal successfully expresses the horror she finds in the DEEP, both in her reactions to the experiments and to her discoveries about the Doctor's past, that it raises the drama to unbearably tense levels. These two standout performances are the rock which the successes of Full Fathom Five are based upon.

Ed Bishop delivers a convincing display as General Flint, but if you've ever heard the power and depth of his performances as private detective Philip Marlowe in the BBC Radio adaptations of Raymond Chandler's novels, then you'll recognise that he isn't on top form here. He does imbue Flint with a determination that makes him a formidable presence, despite the character problems outlined earlier. The rest of the cast all perform solidly with Jack Galagher making his character of Lee into a particularly slimy unethical scientist.

For sound design and music, the dependable ERS team of Andy Hardwick and Gareth Jenkins are back in action and they succeed admirably in creating a dark, confining atmosphere for the DEEP, reflective of its underwater setting and they have devised some very intriguing sound effects which helps to emphasise the horror of the situation well.

This is a brave attempt at using the Doctor Who Unbound idea to produce something truly different. By challenging our central perceptions of who the Doctor is morally, David Bishop has created a Doctor whose character departs significantly enough from the 'real' version to draw his personality into sharp focus. With its uncompromising dark portrayal of the Doctor, Full Fathom will unsettle and disturb, yet that is its intent as it will confound listeners' expectations. By exploring the character of the Doctor this way, through an Unbound version of him who kills for his higher purpose, it speaks volumes about who the Doctor actually is by showing us who he isn't.