Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Runaway Temp

We start this story with a strange women materialising on board the TARDIS much to the Doctor's consternation. Cue credits. So far, so familiar, and it is even more of a coincidence with this story being broadcast only a week after The Runaway Bride which started in pretty much the same way.

I doubt that it is little more than mere coincidence as I doubt that the people at Big Finish are privvy to the scripts for the current series of television Doctor Who, but it ain't half odd that both stories would start in an almost identical fashion.

It could also be said to be a coincidence that both of these women who have ended up on board the TARDIS don't want to be there and both have a very spiky relationship with the Doctor. That's where the similarities between Blood of the Daleks and The Runaway Bride end however.

It is a refreshing change to have an Eighth Doctor audio with Charley Pollard in it who quite frankly was getting to be a bit boring, they had the right idea with C'Rizz but thankfully he as gone as well as we can have more traditional adventures like the Eighth Doctor had when we first met him in the Big Finish whoniverse and before the whole Zagreus thing and then the tedium of the whole divergent universe arc. Thank god they have gone back to making straightforward stories.

Blood of the Daleks is a pretty good opening two parter for this mini McGann series and it set ups the mystery which is sure to be carried on over the next six episodes such as why was Lucie beamed on board the TARDIS? What has she seen? Who is The Headhunter? and Why are the Timelords interested in a girl from the north of England in the year 2006?

These are questions which hopefully will be answered over the course of the series but are not much to do with the plot of this story which is a reasonably good story set on an alien colony in the far future called Red Rocket Rising where there has just been a war that has virtually wiped out the population of the planet with a few exceptions.

The first part is a little bit slow in my opinion and it does take a while to get going but once the Daleks make their first appearance at the close of episode one then things start to get going and the second part is far better and is much better paced and is more enjoyable.

I guess that the first part was necessary to set up the storyline but I do wonder if this would have worked better as a single episode like so many of the episodes in the current television version of Doctor Who.

This type of story would certainly be popular with the fans who hate the fact that the majority of the new television series is set on present-day Earth as it features a proper alien planet, albeit a human colony and it is also paced like an old four part story of Doctor Who from the original series rather than the two parters in the new Who which seem to be rather faster paced that what we have here.

Like Stuart said in his review this story sounds like it could have been made in the 1970’s but what sets is apart from the Doctor Who output of that era is that the characterisation has taken a leaf out of the new series, certainly in the character of Lucie anyway who is virtually a gobby, northern version of Rose, who, at the moment, at least seems more like an old style of companion, as there is no mention of any boyfriend or family, but with the attitude of a modern day companion, if you get what I mean.

Paul McGann was excellent as usual as the Doctor and shows what a shame it was that he never got to play the Doctor on television more than just the tv movie and at least now he doesn’t have to wear that stupid wig, although that does make for quite a good joke for Lucie who actually asks when she first meets him if that is his real hair at all. I still think that McGann’s Doctor would have suited the more stripped down costume that Eccleston wore in Doctor Who than what he wore in the television movie, not the same as the Ninth but something less flouncy and old fashioned.

Blood of the Daleks was a good opening to this new series of 8th Doctor audios and it will be interesting to hear the single episode stories to see if Big Finish can do good stories within a time limit of just 50 minutes rather than the usual 2 or so hours that Big Finish normally spend on stories.

'Brain transfers are a really stupid idea.'

Unsurprisingly, this review contains a few spoilers so don't read it unless you've heard 'Blood of the Daleks' first.  I'll just reassure you that once again, it's really, really good and you should go here and listen to it here if you haven't already or you're waiting for the cd.

Who is the mysterious Mr. Halburt and what does he want with Lucie Miller?

Unlike the television versions, Doctor Who spin-offs have always been good at plot arcs.  Whereas the Key To Time Season was handstrung by telling essentially the same story four or six times, in the first few seasons of the McGann audios, the problem of Charley Pollard become heart rendering and in the books the amnesiac Doctor, stuck on earth for nearly a century was a fertile ground for stories and mysteries and cultural investigation.

The arc in this new BBC7 series has begun.  Lucie and The Doctor are very much stuck together by the timelords, he apparently hiding or protecting her after she's witnessed something unknown - that much was apparent from Part One.  Now, a Mr. Halburt has engaged the services of someone called the Headhunter (played with a sinister professionalism by Big Finish stalwart Katarina Olsson), an apparent bounty hunter with the facility to travel all time and space, to find the reluctant companion. 

It's all very mysterious, all very Lost, but unlike the Bad Wolf scenario were anything was possible and the reveal was inevitably going to be disappointing, this has very specific parameters, and turns this whole season into a chase and it's going to be really fun as the clues are revealed over the coming weeks as to what the Northerner saw, why the timelords want to hide her, and the connect with their antagonist.

But that's for the future.  Tonight's concluding part of Blood of the Daleks was an eclectic mix of traditional and nu-Who, authentic enough to have the announcer give a recap beforehand (which if this had been television would have no doubt featured on-set photos of the cast looking at something far off) but with the contemporary spin on the Doctor's arch foes seen in the new series - they fly and say 'Elevate!' as they're doing so.

After the setting up of the world and the tragedy in the opening part, this was the Dalek heavy end of the story, with Nick Briggs doing over time on the ring modulator to create a cast of hundreds.

After the setting up of the world and the tragedy in the opening part, this was the Dalek heavy end of the story, with Nick Briggs doing over time on the ring modulator to create a cast of hundreds.  Perhaps knowing that this story was to be heard by a much wider audience than something like the Dalek Empire stories, writer Steve Lyons concocted a straightforward meat and potatoes plot riffing on Genesis of the Daleks or Spare Parts, in which a proto-Davros, Martez (a chillingly clinical Hayley Atwell, pictured), living beyond his own execution in the body of one of his young female lab assistants was employing a crashed ship from Skaro to breed a new race using the inhabitants of his world, Red Rocket Rising, as fodder.

Unsurprisingly, the classic Daleks decided that these new boys weren't pure enough and set about trying to eradicate them, and in a twist I loved, the Doctor was helping them.  Seems that he always regretted not using the right all of those centuries ago and wanted to nip this genesis in the bud, "I had chance like this before", he says, "and I chose not to take it.  Big mistake."  This was catharsis for him and it revealed a much darker streak in the Eighth Doctor than we've seen before (well since the whole Zagreus thing), deciding that it's a perfectly viable option to use one evil to destroy potentially an even greater one.  Even after all these years, the Daleks still have the capacity to push buttons -- whenever they talked about racial purity, a chill went down my back.

If this had been made for television the result would have been Dalek porn

If this had been made for television the result would have been Dalek porn, as the two factions went to war, with the tiny human colony jammed in the middle, their ravaged world becoming a shell.  If last week the story resembled the BBC's Day of the Triffids, this had all the hallmarks of Spielberg's War of the Worlds with the Doctor and everyone else dodging in and out of buildings trying to escape the carnage.  The atmospheric sound design here has a much greater depth than most Big Finish production, with one scene in which the Doctor and Lucie viewed the first meeting of the two factions from the top window of a building being particularly potent.  The score too was far more apparent, with a lovely use of the strings to punctuate the catastrophe.

Inevitably, comparisons can be made with the new television series, with the mass Dalek army flying through the air, despite apparently being the classic models according to the cd box of the first episode, probably looking exactly like similar scenes in Doomsday.  The resolution too smacked of The Age of Steel, but the final end to the conflict, fittingly for audio, was more to do with the Doctor's persuasive powers rather than some massive explosion.  The theme of parallel development was repeated here too.  I remember wondering, watching that mid-second season two parter what it would be like if the Telos Cybermen actually ever fought the parallel Earth versions and I imagine the results would have been something like this - although given that the former frequently couldn't walk or shoot straight and took ages to build a bomb the contest might not have been as even handed as this.

In this month's Doctor Who Magazine, in reviewing the opening episode, Matt Michael noted that unlike Rose, there wasn't much time set aside for the listener to get a handle of Lucie, for us to love her.  I'd dispute that this is actually too important, and that unlike Rose, we're seeing the adventure largely from the Doctor's point of view - she's actually part of whatever the problem he's dealing with.  Lucie had less to do in this episode and yet she was still given that moment which all companions seem to have, when dealing with Tom Cardwell (whom I'd marked for death but turned into something of a heroic figure)  and his explosive batteries, when they realise that whatever the Doctor is doing must be right and they should be doing everything they can to help him.

I'd love to know what the kids listening to this are making of this version a character, so huggable on screen, so aggravated on radio.

The reason I like her, apart from Sheridan Smith's delicious performance is that she's actually bringing out a new side to the Eighth Doctor.  I'd love to know what the kids listening to this are making of this version a character, so huggable on screen, so aggravated on radio.  I don't think he laughed for this entire fifty minutes except in mockery, and he's no doubt got a permanent scowl which says 'the timelords have bloody gone and done it to me again'.  As I said last week, and I'll probably to continue to keep saying, the chemistry between the two actors and so characters is brilliant - it's like someone has taken Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert's characters from Frank Capra's It Happened One Night and dropped them in a Tardis together.  Sort of.  The Doctor's less charming than Gable, but you get the idea.  Screwball.  As in comedy.

But what I really love about this is that it isn't afraid to drop in continuity references - it fits within the classic series more fluidly.  In one exchange, the Doctor wonders if the Daleks were fighting the Movellans, the Mechanoids or each other and there's a lovely twist at the very end, in which Anita Dobson's vacant President Klint reveals that the woes of the Red Rock Rising aren't entirely over - some change from an arena in which just saying G-word is a major event.  Only a fan though would also still be stressing about were in the Eighth Doctor's timeline this is set; according to the Gallifrey spin-off the Doctor was still in the divergent universe in the closing episode in which case the timelords are all but destroyed.  In which case this might be happening before Storm Warning, but that doesn't seem right either.  Any ideas?

Next Week:  The Tardis lands for the first time properly in the year of my birth.  Scary.

'Come back here, dome head!'

A figure, an intruder, appears in the Tardis.   The Doctor doesn't know who she is and for now doesn't know where she's come from but as time passes it becomes apparent that she doesn't particularly want to be there and with her behaviour, he doesn't want her to be there either.  She's from England in the early twenty-first century so he sets the co-ordinates of his ship as close to home as possible and dropping out of the time vortex materialises and ... mysteriously bounces back into the time stream.

Whether by coincidence or design, the first story of this brand new series of Big Finish made adventures for digital radio BBC7, The Blood of  the Daleks, began in much the same way as The Runaway Bride except over and over it flouted expectations and Steve Lyon's script appeared to be a reaction to all of the excepted norms of the television set-up.  The reason the ship doesn't appear in the contemporary Northern England is because of a forcefield bounces them off it (nice); the timelords are alive and well; The Doctor is far less huggable and as Paul McGann pointed out in the pre-publicity a bit cantankerous; the companion Lucie Miller really doesn't want to be there, and she and the Doctor spend most of their time bickering, but unlike Donna the Bride neither are really in much of a position to do anything about it.  And unlike Sixth and Peri, the bickering is funny.  For the first time in ages I've wanted to re-listen to an audio adventure simply to enjoy the dialogue.

Even the story is somewhat darker than the current television series might attempt.  A human colony on the alien world of Red Rocket Rising is in its death throws after a devastating impact from an unknown object from space.  A random selection of humans have been sent into space looking for help; the remainder have worked through their remaining resources and are about to start turning on each other when a rescue ship arrives flown by the Daleks.  As usual the Doctor is in the middle of it, no one is listening to him and the colony's deadly secret is slowly revealed.  Far from being two standard, twenty-five minute episodes rammed together in the middle, this revealed the story slowly over its running time and even with an initial 'action sequence' it's quite a shock to be back in the territory of hearing quite length scenes and time being spent to create a world.  But at no point did it feel as though Lyons had stopped the action to describe the scenery, which is quite rare.

If this had been made for television it would been in the seventies in the cold war and would have looked like the tv adaptation of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, the scorched landscape, the acid rain, the hopelessness.

If this had been made for television it would been in the seventies in the cold war and would have looked like the tv adaptation of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, the scorched landscape, the acid rain, the hopelessness.  The only levity is in the brilliant charactersation of the Doctor and Lucie.  Elsewhere, everyone is dying and things can only get worse with the arrival of the pepperpots.  And these are the Daleks at their most sinister, absolutely passionless and deadly and with a dribble of cunning.  Nick Briggs has a wail of a time here and when he says 'Dok-tor' for the first time and I actually sat up in my chair wide eyed (although that could also have been all the caffeine I'm drinking to keep me awake this New Year's Eve).

Perhaps understandably, there's no real indication of when chronologically this Eighth Doctor story is set to keep it independent of the other strands, the novels, the comic strips and the other Big Finish stories in particular; as far as some listeners know it could be directly after the television movie.  That's good, I like that none of the McGann stories are fixed although it's a shame he didn't have a grander re-introduction, Storm Warning style, working his way through the TARDIS library.  That's the only concession to the new way of things.  Bang and they're into the story, landing the Tardis is really the wrong place.  Pleasingly, the David Arnold mechanical mix of the theme tune was all present and correct when I'd expected the Murray Gold special.

It features Paul's most effervescent performance in years.

It features Paul's most effervescent performance in years.  For some time, the Eighth Doctor has been a bit subdued, lacking the passion that was so enjoyable in the first couple of seasons of the audio stories - which seemed to be a mix of new writers not being able to get a fix on who he is and the actor looking for the darkness.  The magic really does return here, and although some of the Byronic romance is missing (perhaps because of something that may yet be revealed or just his age) the bluff is all there. 

Spot the amazing, slightly Pythonesque scene when he agrees with everything rebel leader Lowell is saying in order to gain more insight into the situation or the chilling moment when he tells the acting President that the question she should be asking is 'How am I going to save you from the worst mistake you're made in your lives?'  That's a very Eighth Doctor line and McGann plays it beautifully.  But really I think he's just loving the challenge of playing opposite Sheridan Smith who is on fine form.   Lucie is a really, really promising companion even though she's exactly what  a contestant on a timelord only episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? might suggest as the world's worst person to be sharing a type-40 with.

Lucie is a really, really promising companion even though she's exactly what a contestant on a timelord only episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? might suggest as the world's worst person to be sharing a type-40 with.

She might be cut from much the same jib as Sam, Izzy and Rose, she really doesn't want to be there and says so, a lot.  But unlike Donna she know who the Doctor is, what he is, and what she's doing there and that makes a difference because it also means she can undercut his authority at every turn telling him really, really amusingly what she thinks of him.  The most polite description is 'frock coated ponce' - which as you can see also makes her a great audio description device.  It's quite fun to have the image of this Doctor, threadbare after all these years being made fun of in this way (and apparently, according to Beyond The Vortex, the short Confidential-style making-of programme that closes out the hour slot, McGann really loved these sections having had to wear the stupid wig during the filming of the movie).

Smith's delivery is excellent and there's a real chemistry with Paul.  Don't expect any declarations of love between these two though -- this is going to be a union born of grudging respect.  I'd imagine that some will be slightly annoyed by her constant quipping and sarcasm, but I thought it was refreshing.  It's just a shame that just sometimes Lyon's writing loses the shock of the real for family purposes.  It just doesn't seem right to me that a northern lass from 2006 would be saying Blimey.  My other reservation is the confusing spelling of her name - what is wrong with simply 'Lucy'?

It's just really refreshing to have a Doctor and companion team were you're not entirely sure what the next move will be but you know it won't be what you expect.

It's just really refreshing to have a Doctor and companion team were you're not entirely sure what the next move will be but you know it won't be what you expect.  Lucie and the Doctor don't yet have that connection yet in which they each know what the other is thinking.  At one crucial moment, she makes a particularly wrong decision, and although it is with the best of intentions it's the kind of rookie mistake the Doctor simply doesn't expect. 

For once, the shoe is on the other foot because Lucie is the one with the big secret and the pretty potent potential plot arc - why she's been put in the 'witness protection programme'.  I like that there will always be the nagging feeling that not everything is being revealed and that at some point in the future something really big is going to happen.  Especially since she thinks, as she shouts to the timelords 'This Doctor of yours is a bit rubbish.'

I like that there will always be the nagging feeling that not everything is being revealed and that at some point in the future something really big is going to happen.

The episode was a textbook example of how well a story can be told with very few characters and cast members.  Anita Dobson's Klint and Hayley Atwell's Asha spend most of the episode in their own two handed story naively misunderstanding the Dalek's intentions; both are very good with Atwell (who played Rosa in the BBC's recent adaptation of The Ruby and the Smoke) in particular showing an authority that'll become really important across the story.  The other major character is skeptic Tom Cardwell, played dependably by Kenneth Cranham, whose guttural tones provided the sad background to the colony's problems.

It's with some relief that I can report that this is a good an opening for a new incarnation of Doctor Who the franchise as you'd want and even if, and I hope this doesn't give too much away for those who are listening again or waiting for the cd, the story isn't as original as it could be, for me the familiarity works in its favour since for much of the time it works against expectations.  Even with its slightly generic music, like The Runaway Bride, this has been put together with real heart and an ambition to push the franchise forward, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series. 

Oh and look - a real old fashioned cliffhanger!