The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who Unbound

"It's the only thing I ever felt truly passionate about. I used to burn with ideas, to put things down on paper, to say something new, to change the world just a little. I'd have given my soul for it. Sometimes I think I did!"

Martin Bannister was once voted the seventh most promising writer by the Times newspaper, yet now he languishes in a nursing home, alone and forgotten, a bitter and cynical man. His writing consumed him to the point where he pushed everyone away, destroying his marriages because they bored him and abandoning his son in the process. While his fourteen episodes of Juliet Bravo are a controversial subject of discussion on the Internet amongst that particular series' fan community, the only thing that Martin has left are his memories of a science fiction series he was due to write which never got made in the early nineteen-sixties. A series called Doctor Who…

Robert Shearman's Deadline was always intended to close the Doctor Who Unbound series until production delays for the remaining story Exile forced it to be brought forward and you can see why as it is very much an exploration and celebration of the effect Doctor Who can have on the imagination. But Deadline is not a Doctor Who story in any traditional sense, as Shearman embraces the freedom of Unbound to abandon the traditional trappings and conventions to present a narrative more fundamental and much more in the down-to-earth style of his radio plays rather than his fantastical work for Big Finish. The premise behind Deadline's story is 'What if Doctor Who had never been a television programme?' which mean the ideas behind it exist solely in the mind of this failed writer, Martin, played with meticulous thought from Sir Derek Jacobi. The influence of Doctor Who on Deadline is thus used very much as an allegory for escapism in that the adventures of the Doctor provide an exit from reality, even if it is only for twenty-five minutes per episode, to many of its fans.

The opening scene successfully sets the tone of the play, an effect enhanced considerably by the aptness of the original theme music, used here instead of either of the alternative Unbound arrangements, as a familiar scene of two Coal Hill schoolteachers discovering the secret of their student, Susan, and the introduction to her mysterious grandfather, in a old police box in a desolate junkyard. But it's a scene subtly different from the version of An Unearthly Child, which when combined with the way that the cast of Deadline don't attempt to mimic their onscreen counterparts, enforces the idea that this is a rough unfinished version, which is also demonstrated again through the name of the ship being blanked out, to be filled in later when Martin thinks up a fitting name. As the scene progresses, we hear Martin's authorial voice intruding upon the drama as he directs his characters in showing which emotions should be emphasised. While this doesn't introduce us properly to Martin, we can begin to understand his character as while he's fantasising himself into the storyline as the hero, as Doctor Who himself, he still recognises that the whole scenario is a construct of his own making which he can direct at will showing his true writer's instincts.

By introducing Martin in this manner, Shearman demonstrates that, like Auld Mortality before it, Deadline is a story which blends fiction and reality together but whereas Marc Platt's masterpiece did this through a fictional device, the possibility generator, Shearman utilises the human mind as his catalyst, ensuring that the resulting drama is darker and the effect is more stark and provocative as Martin seeks refuge within his own fantasy to escape the harsh inconsequentiality and emptiness of his own life.

When we first see Martin, we can glimpse in the way that the nurse, Miss Barbara Wright, treats him some of the quotidian aspects of his daily life in the nursing home. She treats him as if he were a child, scolding him as a 'mucky pup' - a phrase that gets repeated ad nauseam - for the mess that he's made of his room. The way that he falls into line shows a degree of routine and that her presence is not unusual, but the fact that he has a visitor is. It is this meeting with his son, Philip, which draws out Martin's chequered history but it also illustrates his character. The standoffishness between them is a result of Martin abandoning his wife Amy and Philip, when he was only six years old but their uneasy reunion is because Philip wants to tell him that she has died. When Martin shows that he knew Amy better than Philip believed, it opens up Philip's biggest flaw in that he wants desperately not to be his like his father. He has his own son now, Tom, and is adamant that he is a good father.

This is one of Shearman's most prevalent themes in his plays that men that protest their good intentions are doing it to compensate for their inherent flaws, be it Clovis, Rochester or Philip here, and it's no surprise that Philip is exactly like his father in that neither of them pay attention to what their sons really want. As Philip opens his heart about Tom and how proud he is of him, Martin is so consumed with the idea that he has a grandchild and a new opportunity to make things right which he hasn't already ruined, that he is oblivious to his own son's pain which he is struggling to hide. Philip says that he would die of shame if his own son felt the way he does about Martin, yet the irony is that Tom does hate his father in that very way, because he tries too hard but Philip is too intent on being what he perceives to be the 'good father' that he lacks the insightfulness to see that he too has failed as the paterfamilias. It was Martin's writing that divided him from his family, but Philip's division came because of his over zealous approach to parenting.

When Martin slips back into fantasy again, we can see further parallels with Auld Mortality as Doctor Who is intent on going back in time to see Hannibal and his elephants, just as the Doctor did in the earlier story. But while Shearman cleverly works in elements that refer to the production of Doctor Who as a series, it becomes clear that the gap between reality and fiction is growing closer as Martin's voice is more intrusive than before, wanting desperately to be intricately involved, to the point where one of the characters has to tell him off about it so that the drama can continue. When the travellers come across a green stain in a petrified forest, the reaction is the same as when Miss Wright found it originally in Martin's bedroom. This merging of fact and fiction continues throughout the rest of the play and as a result Shearman is keen to keen the listener uncertain as to what is real and what isn't. It's significant to note that Martin looses his authorial voice and his objective sense of detachment as it's symptomatic of his growing confusion between what's real and what isn't as he no longer sees himself observing but he's wholly taking part.

By transplanting the current state - or at least the state it was before recent announcements - of Doctor Who fandom to Juliet Bravo (even though it's not on anymore, the fans still enjoy it through the videos and spin-off books and CDs with some of the members of the original cast!) Shearman takes a gentle swipe at it through Martin's cynical attitude, by pointing out that those fans who analyse the story in detail miss the point that it's simply meant to be escapism for the whole family. Ian Brooker is brilliant as journalist Sydney, reporter for the official Juliet Bravo Magazine, coming to interview the man he describes as 'the Holy Grail' of all interviews as Martin is the only writer from the series whose story hasn't been told before. The scene of the interview is perhaps Jacobi's best in the play too as he speaks so eloquently and with such passion about how he wanted to write something meaningful and important, yet ended up as a hack on a show with no imagination like Juliet Bravo, and all the time apologising to Sydney, saying that he intends no offence for denigrating his beloved show, when he clearly is intending to be insulting. It's hard not to sympathise with Martin at this point, even despite his intrinsically unlikeable character.

Shearman examines Martin's loneliness from another angle with the further development of his relationship with Miss Wright, whose first name is indeed Barbara. While she seizes on the discovery that Martin was a writer to see some kind of connection between them as she too used to write poetry in her younger days, Barbara's loneliness is perhaps more pronounced given the sense of melancholy underlying Jacqueline King's performance. It is through her poetry that the word 'TARDIS' is first mentioned and it is this remark that triggers the urge to write once more within Martin. Now the opening scene of the play had the name of the Doctor's ship deliberately censored, so what does the fact that it is revealed in Barbara's poem mean? The implication is that the recurring footprint marks and the gouging of Martin's bed in the same style as witnessed in the petrified forest on the alien planet, is that reality and fiction are becoming even further blurred as they now affect what appears ostensibly to be reality. When Barbara investigates the contents of Martin's wardrobe, because he believes that there is a bug-eyed monster in there trying to kill him, she finds nothing of the sort but notes that it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Her non-plussed reaction to this, telling Martin to keep it a secret or else all the other residents (which are curiously absent from the drama) will want one too and that he has no more excuses for being such a mucky pup, are not the reactions of a real character, suggesting that she is part of the fiction too.

Shearman continues to explore Martin's struggle between these two imposing forces by introducing him to Susan who comes out of the wardrobe, or the TARDIS, which she named after Time And Random Destinations In Space, because she tells Martin that he is needed and they can't start without him. By tempting Martin with the idea of being wanted somewhere, Susan draws him back into the Doctor Who scenario despite initial resistance shown by his clinging to the hope of meeting his grandson Tom. As the realities collide, even the bug-eyed monsters (sounding at times suspiciously Dalek-like) criticise Martin's skills as a writer, mocking his recurring theme of the horrors of isolation as the only worthwhile part of his writing because he couldn't create realistic characters as he doesn't understand real people, which may explain the inconsistencies regarding Barbara's attitude towards the fantastic.

While at times the omission of a reason, beyond the simple fact that he is human, for Martin's total failure seems to be lacking at times, the drama progresses to the point where he has built up his expectations so that his whole second chance depends on establishing a relationship with his grandson. If he can make that work, then things will be all right for him. Through clever parallels between the fantasy elements and the so called reality in the way the scenes between Martin and Barbara and himself and Susan, who then transmogrifies into his wife Amy, both sides make their case for which reality he should choose. At this point, Martin seems to be choosing life because he feels he has a real chance if he can become great friends with Tom and that gives him the courage to say goodbye to Susan. All his hopes are on being able to love and be loved once more.

The scene with Tom is perhaps the most crucial of the whole play because Martin has invested everything into it, yet Tom is completely uninterested in him. He's more focused on a computer game he's playing where he has to destroy the monsters before they destroy him. What's ironic about this is that when Martin questions what the monster's motivations are, he's showing his writer's instinct to seek out meaning but he's oblivious that Tom finds his escape from his overbearing father in the mindless slaughter, just like Martin finds his release in his own fantasies of Doctor Who. This final rejection by the grandson, the failure of his last chance, pushes Martin back towards his fantasy world where he now wants to take Tom so he can see the magic too. When it's clear that his actions have destroyed the entire situation, Martin too escapes into the place where fantasy and reality become one - the wardrobe become TARDIS…

In effect, Deadline is all about control. In the real world, Martin has lost control over all elements of his own life, which are now dictated for him by the needs of the nursing home. He no longer has his writing to consume his mind, he drove his family away and failed in his last chance with his grandson. But in the fiction of Doctor Who, he can make everything right. He can make everything perfect. In loosing everything, he is free to move entirely into the unexplored relative dimension of imagination. Without the uncertainty of knowing whether the fiction or reality is real, Martin gains a degree of control back, shown by the fact that he can now choose who to write in or out of the story in the final moments when he excludes Philip, Tom and Barbara, leaving him alone with Susan.

Shearman's past work almost always involves a subversion of reality, with both his pseudonymous BBV play Punchline and his Big Finish debut story The Holy Terror in particular featuring unreal worlds and fictional characters where the monotony of routine is eventually broken and reality restored. Deadline is, prima facie, an inversion of this with the protagonist escaping into his unreal world of his mind, leaving behind all traces of realism with him. But does it really? Deadline is perhaps the most ambiguous of all the Doctor Who Unbound series to be released, and nowhere is this more true than in its ending where Martin departs in the TARDIS, believing himself to be Doctor Who, taking Susan with him to explore strange new worlds. Is this Martin's final descent into madness? Does the exit of the TARDIS signify his death from suffocation in the wardrobe? Or is it the start of a fantastical adventure? Or all of these?

The idea that Martin may be, in fact, the Doctor and his final act is his release from some fictional construct is perhaps the most intriguing of these possibilities. While the script leads the listener to assume and accept Martin's life as a writer is the real universe and Doctor Who is his fantasy world, there are more than enough hints that insinuate otherwise and the fantasy may have more substance than it appears. In the opening sequence, the Doctor's ship is unnamed as Martin has yet to fill in the blanks regarding this and he gains inspiration from Barbara's poem. She herself is a woman who bears the name of one of the characters too, and harbours resentment towards an individual named Ian Chesterton who she was once engaged to, who simply vanished as if he had disappeared from the face of the Earth. When she protests to Martin that she is real, is this merely a form of persuasion she is exerting on Martin to try and convince him to accept that the supposed reality is the true one? Deadline doesn't really answer these questions, with Shearman leaving the ambiguity deliberately unclear so to encourage the listener to respond to the drama in their own way.

Supporting the imposing Jacobi, the remainder of the cast perform beautifully and help create a real sense of reality through their earthy characters. Peter Forbes is extremely adapt at conveying genuine emotion and he imparts the fragility of his character Philip, breaking down dramatically from the man trying desperately to hide his pain at failure from the man he blames as the cause into a gibbering wreck. Genevieve Swallow recognises that Susan, as initially presented, is a slightly stereotypical character and plays up to this with stilted delivery and unconvincing screams, yet in the final moments she is utter convincing that she needs Doctor Who to go with her and be her grandfather and it's a delicious inversion of how the Susan of Doctor Who itself progressed from a strange, alien girl to a screamer who would fall over unconvincingly ever week.

Jacqueline King brings a faux sense of happiness to her part of Barbara which makes her aching loneliness, which she hides so poorly, so much more sincere. We can see how hopeless she wants company by the way she imposes herself on Martin due to a frivolous connection that they are both writers, notwithstanding that he is clearly bored with her. Ian Brooker, who unfortunately doesn't get to reprise Surrus as may have been expected given several mentions of taking the Doctor to see Hannibal, is generally excellent in all his roles here, but it's as the Juliet Bravo Magazine reporter where he shines best. Adam Manning completes the cast as Martin's newfound grandson, Tom, and he's very good as the sulky, sullen teenager who clearly wants to be anywhere but visiting this strange old weirdo who wants him to get into the wardrobe with him!

Nicholas Briggs' direction is accomplished and his sound design and score for Deadline are also notable. In creating the atmosphere for the drama, Briggs ensures the settings feel bleak and empty and show the sterile nature of Martin's existence which contrasts the more stylised fantasy based soundscapes. His music is evocative of Doctor Who with fragments of the theme suggesting themselves at opportune moments which help emphasise the play's theme of the show as a form of escapism, giving the impression that it is waiting in the background to be realised.

While the harsh critic in me wants to dismiss Deadline as a showier, more ambiguous retread of Shearman's previous work, that would be churlish as it would ignore the fact that Deadline is a superbly executed piece of drama in its own right, in how it's written, directed and performed, full of passion, anger and pathos. Unlike the main character, Robert Shearman does have a strong skill for characterisation and Martin Bannister comes across so vividly and real due to the writing and Sir Derek Jacobi's performance. Deadline is a celebration of Doctor Who without really being it and this gives Shearman the freedom to use his considerable talent for dialogue to good effect, blending in aspects about the series seamlessly to further blend the boundaries between fiction and reality. But the fact that the play is at times, both thematically and structurally, so similar to Shearman's previous Doctor Who audio adventures (especially Punchline) undermines its success as it becomes predictable as it moves towards its inevitable conclusion. Hopefully Shearman's next adventure in the world of Doctor Who, the forthcoming Eighth Doctor adventure Scherzo, will provide something more inventive.

As the remit of the Doctor Who Unbound series is to take the series into "a new dimension" Deadline is certainly the release which has taken this idea most to heart, with Shearman offering something that is stylistically different and truly Unbound, but while it is an excellent play, it is sure to prove a little too unbound for some.