The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who Unbound

'Rest assured my dear, I'm not the man I once was...'

It seems there are two distinct approaches to the 'what if...?' factor when considering the Doctor Who Unbound series, whether it's to take a specific piece of continuity and show what happened if it played out differently (as was the case in both Auld Mortality and Sympathy For The Devil) or to change an aspect of the Doctor's character, as demonstrated in Full Fathom Five, and examine the implications. Gary Russell's He Jests At Scars... is perhaps unique in that it does both at the same time...

He Jests At Scars... features the return of Michael Jayston as the Valeyard, who was the Doctor's lugubrious prosecutor during the season long story The Trial Of A Time Lord, where it was eventually revealed that he was the "amalgamation of the darker side" of the Doctor's nature. There, the Valeyard wanted existence at the expense of the Doctor's lives by taking his remaining regenerations. This story muses what might have happened had he succeeded.

While there have been many Doctor Who stories that have indulged in the past of the show since it ceased to be a television series in 1989, the Valeyard has often been a character who was conspicuous by his absence. Craig Hinton's novel Millennium Rites (1995) brilliantly examined the Doctor's fear of becoming the Valeyard but the only time the character returned properly, in Robert Perry and Mike Tucker's Matrix, the character's unique situation of actually being the Doctor while not actually the Doctor, was almost totally ignored in favour of making him into a typical stereotypical villain, rather than the intriguing concept that he really is. Ironically, Matrix may even be referenced here in an oblique throwaway comment.

Russell's story features very much on the character of the Valeyard. Here, he has defeated the Doctor by merging with him with his lust for life overcoming the Doctor's spirit. Now the Valeyard is near immortal, absorbing all of the Doctor's future regenerations in one and all of the Doctor's past and future experiences. With this knowledge, he intends to use his life to the fullest and without the Doctor's pesky moral centre he has no qualms whatsoever about obtaining power for his own ends through cavalier means, and the ensuing chaos of his tampering with time gives the Valeyard the anarchy to revel within. .

The image of the Valeyard spitefully lashing out at the universe that denied him existence simply because he can is very entertaining. He thinks nothing of altering time so that the Thals prevent the Daleks from ever leaving their bunker, wiping out a planet there, altering the evolutionary development of a race here. Yet Russell ensures that this is a chilling picture as there is no Doctor to stop this individual as the Valeyard is the Doctor. The Valeyard's presumption that anything can be put right later shows the degree of his irresponsibility and arrogance while he meddles with time.

The question of the Valeyard's identity is at the heart of He Jests At Scars...While he is adamant that he is not the man he used to be, the Valeyard acts in a similar manner to the Doctor because he is shaped by his darker side. He takes a companion in the shape of Ellie Martin, played again by Juliet Warner reprising her role from the Sarah Jane Smith series although she has obviously developed a different moral code than from when we last saw her. Their spiky relationship highlights how sometimes the boundary between the Valeyard and the Doctor can become confused, with him scolding her over her continual calling him 'the Doctor' but mixing the identities is something the Valeyard does himself, when he refers to past incarnations of the Doctor as if they were elements of him, which of course, they are.

While this study of the character of the Valeyard shows the darker aspects of the Doctor, Russell also examines the consequences of his interfering with time. In his travels, the Doctor has often stressed the importance of not interfering with the flow of time significantly and so it seems appropriate that his darker side made manifest should try and do exactly that to indulge himself. This idea is expressed through witnessing the Valeyard's actions in the past and prompts a whole series of small 'what if...?' questions in itself, such as 'what if the Doctor had seized the power of the Doomsday weapon?' or 'what if the Silurians ruled the Earth?' While Russell is indulgent in referencing many past television stories, Big Finish audios and Doctor Who novels, this use of continuity borders on the excessive but is not gratuitous because it adds to the increasing sense that the Valeyard is loosing his grip on his control as the enormity of these events we are familiar with begin to escalate wildly.

Ultimately, the Valeyard is like a child experiencing the universe for the first time and anxious to make his mark. But his arrogant presumption is ultimately his downfall because his complete confidence in his ability to put things back how they were is short-sighted. While he may have absorbed all of the Doctor's knowledge and experience he has not learned anything from them and he cannot anticipate the damage he is doing. His belief that he is superior misses the point that the Doctor understands the way that the universe works and he doesn't as he is too busy being smug at his own cleverness. As he tries to increase his power, he tries to change the past to take advantage of the destroyed city of Logopolis, and as such commits accidental suicide by killing his fourth self before, meaning that his existence itself becomes paradoxical.

To show how the universe has changed, the other main star of the audio is Bonnie Langford, reprising her role as Mel once more and picking off from where season 23 would have left the character had the Doctor failed. In the opening scene, Russell demonstrates how our expectations are to be subverted with its portrayal of a harsh and angry Mel who is determined to complete her mission and thinks nothing of killing someone to get the respect she needs in order to achieve that aim. By slotting this scene in first, and then when Mel reappears she seems more like her television persona, hints at the fact that something has happened which changes her drastically and given the subject matter of the play, we know that it's going to be connected to the Valeyard.

Mel is an unlikely heroine to be the last hope of Gallifrey, but given that the hero the Time Lords usually call in to sort out their mess is the cause of it this time, she is the only option left open to them. The play's title could also refer to her mission to try and avert the Valeyard's interference, because she is essentially being asked to do what the Doctor would do in this situation and she doesn't have the experience or the ability to do that either which is evidenced by the easy way the Valeyard initially defeats her. She still believes that deep down inside he is the Doctor that she knew and respected, which is why she hesitates and questions his identity. Perhaps it is the fact that she acted in this way, allowing the Valeyard to murder his companion Ellie to prove to Mel that he was not filled with the weak moral fibre of the Doctor which gives her the strength to change her own nature and begin to fight back. As the time before the Valeyard sets her adrift in the vortex and her eventual arrival at Chronopolis are not explored, these questions go unanswered but they leave an interesting moral quandary for the listener to decide about what she has gone through in the intervening time.

The final moments of the play are perhaps its most powerful. When Mel finally gets to confront the Valeyard again yet finds him paralysed with fear, hiding away from the power of the web of time that he fears will destroy him. He has learnt the force of causality the hard way, discovering that when something is erased it releases an infinite number of possibilities, all of which seek supremacy over each other. As one timeline falls, the rest collapse like dominoes and the chaos this unleashes drives the Valeyard insane as he fears that by simply moving or speaking he will change the universe further and destroy himself in the process. This realisation that his actions have destroyed the freedom that he wanted so badly shows what a failure his existence has been, but also highlights how significant the Doctor's actions are because he has ascertained how to deal with these difficulties in his fight against evil. Even when he realises how misguided his actions are, the Valeyard still lacks the Doctor's strength because he is so petrified of the potential consequences of interfering with the universe even on a microscopic level, that he is too petrified to even try and put things right. Both Jayston and Langford underplay the last scene beautifully, which means that while the listener desperately sympathises with Mel's fate they can even have the odd pang of compassion for the Valeyard, despite the situation being one of his own making.

It is only here with the revelation of the enormity of the Valeyard's errors and terrors that the true significance and relevance of the story's title He Jests At Scars... can be seen as the full quotation from Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet (Act II, Scene I) is "he jests at scars that never felt a wound" where Romeo chides Mercutio's playful attitude towards the pain of love because he has never experienced it for himself. In the context of this Doctor Who Unbound adventure, Russell has chosen to name the story after this because the Valeyard is the same - while he may have absorbed the Doctor's experiences, past and future, he hasn't learnt from them and that is his failing. He has never felt the wounds that the Doctor has through his years of travel and his naivety combined with his cavalier attitude for time completes his downfall because he simply cannot be the Doctor, which is ultimately what the Valeyard wants.

Russell opts to structure the story with a degree of non-linearity with particular regard to the scenes with Mel set in Chronopolis. This is not entirely successful as while the scene with the Valeyard attempting to warn himself of the actions he is about to commit works, the Mel's scenes are not as effective as we don't actually get to see the events which shape her into the hard, aggressive Mel we witness initially. This makes the dramatic progression of her character, from someone who would have been utterly offended by the idea of killing to an individual who will take life to make her point to ensure the success of her mission, less convincing, despite the strong performance from Langford, because we can only presume as to what her experiences were rather than hearing them for ourselves. The use of continuity does illustrate the effects of the Valeyard's actions well, but it does prove to be a distraction at times to the flow of the drama which is unfortunate because the involved nature of the storyline means that concentration is a must.

Michael Jayston possesses a wonderfully malicious and powerful voice, making the audio medium the perfect place for him to reprise the role of the Valeyard and he does it valiantly. He communicates the Valeyard's potential power with ease, making him a formidable presence throughout the audio and in particular he shines during the conclusion where we see a side of the Valeyard not seen before. Bonnie Langford continues to deliver in her Big Finish performances with a more gritty display than usual, but she too succeeds admirably in making the changes her character goes through seem convincing even if the script doesn't show how she came to hold this new perspective in detail. Juliet Warner was a delight in the Sarah Jane Smith series as Ellie, and she's on form here too, developing a good rapport with Jayston that gives their Doctor/companion relationship a sharp edge which shows the uncertainty and unease that the Valeyard inspires.

The supporting cast all perform well with Anthony Keetch the standout with another appealingly loathsome turn as the self-serving Celestial Intervention Agency Co-ordinator Vansell, demonstrating his old arrogance in seeking to use the Valeyard's new found morality to his agency's own aggrandisement while Tim Preece is the archetypal Time Lord President demonstrating the character's ineffectiveness and indecisiveness perfectly.

He Jests At Scars... is perhaps the most epic of the Doctor Who Unbound series to date, with the wide-ranging scope of the play (emphasised tremendously by Jim Mortimore's imposing sound design and music) contrasting spectacularly the often small-scale and intimate settings of the previous Unbound plays. Russell has a tendency to over-write some of the key scenes, and while the bleak final scene is both emotional and intriguing, objectively it is a scene of nine minutes of exposition resolving the plot in a very downbeat manner. But where Russell succeeds notably is in examining the identity of the Valeyard in a way that hasn't really been done before which illustrates who he is, but also in the process, who the Doctor is too providing much for contemplation. With enjoyable performances from Jayston and Langford, He Jests At Scars... makes for interesting listening and proves again that even when Unbound, the Doctor Who format is still infinitely flexible.