But the reason I was driven to churn out these four-part love letters to John Nathan-Turner's Doctor Who - rather than, say, drinking cider in Lanarkshire country pubs like my contemporaries- was because of Andrew Smith. He was the teenage Who fan from Rutherglen who had actually been commissioned to write for the telly. His story, Full Circle, had been shot like a Hammer film and featured his version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and (clockwork) crab-spider-things that attacked Romana. After a year of Douglas Adams' university whimsy on tv, it was amazing.
Last year, Big Finish, in their series of Lost Stories adapted Andrew Smith's unproduced tv script The First Sontarans and I finished listening to it last week. Without blowing my own trumpet, it's pretty much what I would like to have written in the mid-80s: a Mummerset period piece with two warring alien races and a romance featuring tragic, noble space refugees.It's also exactly the kind of story that would have pleased most fans of the series in the Eighties:a return engagement for the shrill, blobby Rutans from 1977 and a predictable, uninspired origin story for the militaristic, troll-like Sontarans. The warm relationship between Colin Baker's Doctor and Nicola Bryant's Peri lends the play much-needed charm but it's overlong and not very engaging. Two out of five Talmars.
Last Saturday, I also listened to the latest Fourth Doctor adventure, The Sands of Life. This story has an environmental theme with a race of spawning Space Manatees endangering the Earth. John Leeson guests as the loveable, chirpy K9 but the two leads sound a little disinterested. It's also a continued story, which is frustrating. The villain, Cuthbert, is played by the legendary David Warner which gives the play some credibility but I wasn't won over on the first listen. Again, two out of five Talmars.
Cuthbert and the Conglomerate, the cosmic business concern he fronts, originally appeared in the Eighties fan recordings that preceded Big Finish. Justyce Served is a Christmas read of mine that tells the story of this alternative Who series, Audio Visuals. All the work done by Nicholas Briggs and his chums on these home recordings laid the groundwork for the Big Finish imprint. It's a rather inspiring story of creativity and optimism. If I had known about the series at the time, you can bet that's what I would have been doing in the golden summers of 1982-1983.
Coming soon: DC: Dead Children Comics?
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Glad to see you out and about again, Dougie. I think part of the problem with these audio productions, as far as the leads sounding disinterested goes, is that they're reading from a script rather than learning the lines. Unless one is an extremely experienced radio actor, I'd imagine it's hard to infuse the same kind of enthusiasm into it as a part one knows back to front, so to speak. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteMary Tamm was terminally ill so it's perhaps an inappropriate comment. But I think it's the tone of this particular play: it attempts to deal with environmental and animal welfare issues through the lens of space opera with a rather pantomime villain.
ReplyDeleteIf I had been singling her out for attention then perhaps it would be. However, I was speaking in general terms about the nature of such productions. I once heard Kathleen Turner in a radio dramatisation of V.I. Warshawski, and it was obvious that she was reading her lines rather than performing them from memory. I think that's the problem with quite a few of these Big Finish audio dramas. They sound a little 'artificial' to me.
DeleteOh no, I wasn't implying YOU were making an inappropriate comment- I meant that I was, perhaps. Apologies for being imprecise.
ReplyDeleteSome of the audios do sound less "natural" than others. I often feel Sylvester McCoy sounds like he's reading, so I do see your point.