Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

"Edward Grove is the killer, and we are standing in his belly."

This is, quite simply, the best 8th Doctor audio I've heard so far. I fear they'll just go downhill from here. Never mind, it'll still be interesting to see - sorry, HEAR - how it goes. So. A review. Right-ho then.

The Doctor and Charlie have arrived in a Victorian house and are almost immediately embroiled in a mystery. Where is everyone? Suddenly, they know - and there's a murder. Then another one. The staff all know of the Doctor and Charlie, and yet they've never met them before. Suddenly it's back to square one, and another death. And all the while the ticking of the clock continues.

Where to start? Paul McGann has never been better, taking charge and yet not knowing what's going on. His enthusiasm leads him on and it's wonderful to hear him steam ahead. This could well be his best performance as the Doctor - Storm Warning aside. India Fisher, as Charlie, also gives a terrific performance. Her character is given some great lines and she really lives the role, delivering one of her best. The rest of the cast (even the big one) are pretty damn good as well.

It's a challenging listen - you'll actually have to think about it when the stunning conclusion does arrive - but it's one of the best Doctor Who stories I have, or, I believe, ever will, come across. Rather appropiately, it's on BBC7 at the moment, so if you haven't bought it, go listen to it HERE.

Also, here's a little preview of the Christmas Invasion which you might have missed...

Let's Do the Time-Loop Again

So, rather than escape the house the Doctor and Charley find the scullery reforming around the TARDIS; with each scullery within containing an identical TARDIS in an identical scullery, with each scullery…you get the picture. It’s part four and everything’s getting very ‘Logopolis’.

So, Edward Grove is using the energy from its inhabitant’s deaths to give itself some grotesque form of life. Trapped in a loop of approximately two hours, none of the workers has died before, whilst they’ve all been dying forever. And at the centre of it all somehow is Charley; she is the means of Edward Grove’s rebirth, given her connection to the scullery maid Edith. Because following her stint here in 1906, Edith would later be the cook at Charley’s father’s house in 1930; where she would commit suicide, providing the resonant emotional energy that the Grove is thriving on. And given how much this episode - quite literally - runs around in circles, it’s a relief to find that Shearman has at least based the plot on some sort of logic. Whilst tying into this ‘season’ of McGann audios is the theme that Charley - rescued by the Doctor from the R101 airship in 1930 in her debut story - isn’t meant to be alive (a theme which would reach some culmination in ‘Neverland’).

It’s neat how Shearman uses the ‘pointless, circular’ lives of the downtrodden under-classes - the ’nothings and nobodies’ - in this story to give the time-loop aspect added resonance. But, at the Doctor’s urging, even the most ‘meaningless’ of life is revealed to be precious. ‘Choose life’ he says, like the narrator in Trainspotting; and it’s this fundamental Doctor Who theme of standing up for the underdog that makes ‘The Chimes of Midnight’ feel more like real Doctor Who than it perhaps has any real right to. And in the episode’s most heartfelt moment, even the Doctor compares his existence without Charley as ‘meaningless’; in the same way that - without his intervention in 1930 - Charley would never have had the experiences that travelling with the Doctor have granted her.

But my favourite moment this episode has to be Shaughnessy being compelled to strangle the Doctor as it is ‘a direct order from a Gentleman’: a refreshingly macabre moment (of a rather macabre story) amidst what is at heart about as traditionally a life-affirming message as Doctor Who has given.

Perhaps I should give a few more of these Big Finish things a go if Robert Shearman’s efforts are the rule rather than the exception…

(‘The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about Robert Shearman: during conventions, Shearman has been known to wear tasteless Hawaiian shirts and quote the words ‘Stay Tuned!’ to passers-by just to get their goat up).

Edward's New Gro(o)ve

The Chimes of Midnight - Episode Four

There's no escape from the house as it reforms around them, just like Take That reforming - there'll be no escape from them in 2006. Temporal and spatial recursion, the house that is, not Take That, much like Logopolis and Castrovalva bound into one.

Edward Grove is a parasite. Feeding off the death of the little people. Bit like Jimmy Carr in that respect. Wonder if, under profession on his passport, it states "Talking Head on Top 100 Television Shows"? Going slightly off-message, and pondering on his demise, how he would die if his death was in the manner of his profession? Being flattened by thousands of clips of TV shows falling on top of him? Imploding with smug sarcasm? That is if he survives long enough to avoid being beaten to a sticky pulp by a hoard of beached couch-bovines. Could be fun to find out...

Edward Grove only has influence during the chiming of the clock at the top of the hour, forever stuck in Sir Trevor McDonald "bong" hell. Which, unfortunately, isn't a drug reference. The house is alive. Live is wasted on the living. And on the living room. Why should just one room have life, why not a whole house?

The story still stands out as one of the best things Big Finish have ever done. And it's hats off and forelocks tugged in the direction of Rob Shearman. I've been reading up about the production in The Inside Story and I can't believe he had such a hard time writing this as it just doesn't show.

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part four of The Chimes of Midnight: Big Finish received a severe wrap on the knuckles from the Advertising Standards Authority for the blatant product placement of the boxed sweet confection "Poppets".

We Are The Nobodies

Erase and rewind. The Doctor and Charley are back in the scullery and Edith’s dead again. Take a note of those heartbeats in the background: they’ll prove important later on.

There’s a lot to absorb in part three. Not only has time apparently gone back (with Edith now dead-by-sink-plunger (shades of Simmons in Shearman’s later ‘Dalek’ episode?) but the manner of the ‘victims’ deaths is still in keeping with their occupations; as Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser.

While the Doctor struggles to piece it all together, Charley takes another trip down memory lane while eating Mrs Baddeley’s plum pudding (it seems that the - several times now - dead Edith has a connection with her; not to mention someone (or something called Edward Grove)). But before we’re any the wiser, the next victim suffers their suitably apt death; with this time the lascivious Frederick meeting his end under the wheels of his own Bentley (or is it Chrysler?). Again - like clockwork - death takes place on the hour, followed by events all being reset to how they were before (shades of the TV series’ ‘Carnival of Monsters’ here).

As befits the piece, it’s the Doctor who starts to join the dots together. Each of the deaths is sudden and without malice; each of the victims meets their death in a manner appropriate to their custom; everyone in the house has a role to play, creating a rich tableaux against which these macabre events are played out, time and time again. Because - as we’ve been told so many time before - everyone is nothing. And nobody.

The revelation that it’s really the house - Edward Grove (number 30 to be precise) - that’s the killer is both surprising and suitably apt. Those heartbeats have long suggested that the environment around the protagonists is a living thing, growing stronger and more alive as the victims meet their end. And as the Doctor gives a lecture on that long-suggested theory behind supernatural manifestations, ghosts could well be the traumatic events of the past recreated by a house imbued with powerful enough emotions. For here, Edward Grove is alive. And he’s very, very hungry.

This is an exemplary episode in what has rapidly become a very assured example of how Who can work well in this medium. As well as the more than coincidental link to ‘Carnival of Monsters’, I was also reminded of an old DWM strip featuring the sixth Doctor and Frobisher called ‘Funhouse’, in which the time-travellers fought for their lives in an old mansion which had gained malevolent sentience.

The episode also has the unusual occurrence of the Doctor seemingly abandoning the hapless victims to their fate; departing in the TARDIS as though this were episode four, not three. And it’s a sign of how much even the Doctor fears the power of this house that he is willing to do so. But as that cliff-hanger shows, you can’t run away from time.

Because Edward Grove is alive. And waiting.

(‘The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about India Fisher: Despite fan myth, not related to either 80s writer David nor 70s toy manufacturer Denys.  Jury still out on possible connection to recovered drug addict (and Star Wars legend) Carrie.  (Go on, admit it: the original post was funnier (if cattier!))

Groundhog Two Hours

Ah. The Chimes of Midnight. Those who stated that Doctor Who would never work on audio were proved wrong by this. In the same way that those who said Doctor Who would never work on television were proved right by The Twin Dilemma. But, I hear you cry, but, you're forgetting all about Doctor Who and the Pescatons?! No, I'm not forgetting. I've just gone through an expensive course of hypno-regression therapy to erase it from my memory and you've just gone and brought it all flooding back. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

The Chimes of Midnight - Episode Three

Back in the scullery again. Back two whole hours. Back where they started. And Edith's been suffocated by a sink plunger. Could there be a Dalek lurking somewhere between the custard and the mangle? Even more unsettling than that thought is the sound the plunger makes when it's being prised from Edith's mush. That's not all, the cook's back from the dead too. Like the bad TV version of Cluedo they know who and where and how the next murder will take place. Mrs Baddeley. In the kitchen. With the plum pudding. Whatever happened to simple murder weapons like a candlestick or Sarin?

But there's a twist in the story. It's Freddie who dies next, having been mowed down by his own motorcar. He's lying there, complete with comedy tire tracks across his chest, after turning down the chance to take the Doctor out for a little spin in the motor.

Dead Edith is still hanging around and warns Charley that there'll be another death soon. And that she's making Edward Grove come alive. Who is Edward Grove? Shaughnessy has the answer. It's the house. Number 22, Edward Grove. There's no post code. That'll please the postie no end. Now, I've heard of house hunting (in fact I was out the other day house hunting and I bagged myself 3 semi-detached and a bungalow [I actually accidentally winged it and had to finish it off with a jack from the car]) but never a house killing. That's one far from ideal home.

But the Doctor's forming theories about how the house can be doing this. A house can absorb the actions committed within it. And that an event traumatic enough can be preserved for posterity. I'd think that in a few hundred years time all those properties that starred in home make-over programmes are going to require quite some counselling otherwise they too might turn murderous too...

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part three of The Chimes of Midnight: This episode had to be partially remounted after the initial studio recording sessions were found to contain no less than 32 audible obscenities, 8 interruptions from the Crazy Frog ring tone and one extremely loud, and damp sounding, bodily emission.

Knacker of the Yard

The Chimes of Midnight - Episode Two

The Doctor and Charley manage to break into the house and are faced with Edith's suspected suicide. Edith was a very stupid girl, she was so simple minded that she didn't realise that she couldn't drown herself in the sink so she did. Brilliant. Charley says that she's prefer that they were Agatha Christie-style amateur sleuths. And then the staff of the house start referring to them as such. How much more exciting it would have been if Charley had preferred that they were part of Scooby-Doo's posse in the Mystery Machine. Charley as Daphne. The Doctor as the bloke who isn't Shaggy. And K-9 as Scooby ... D'oh.

The sleuths then go their separate ways, Charley tackling the ladies of the staff and the Doctor taking on the blokes. Charley starts first with Mrs Baddeley and I'm left wondering just how much more annoying the already immensely loathsome sub-strata of the human genus, called celebritus chefus, would be if they were all Edwardian-style celebrity chefs. Just imagine an early 20th century version of Gordon Ramsey racing through his entire repertoire of Edwardian cuss words. The dorty rump-splitter.

Doctor grilling first Shaughnessy, then testing Fredderick on makes of cars. Just like an episode of Top Gear, set in a time-deranged house. We can but hope that Clarkson buys it on the next lap. He's got shifty eyes.

But unfortunately it's Mrs Baddeley that's next to go, thre'penny bits on her eyes and tassels on her nipples. It's all very exciting and I think I've worked out who's doing the killin'. It's the plum pudding what's doing it.

A sentient plum pudding.

With gills.

And vestigial limbs.

With its beady, fruity, eyes on world dessert domination.

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part two of The Chimes of Midnight: Big Finish sound effect wizards produced the sound of the ticking clock by training 376 Death Watch Beetles to tap their heads simultaneously on a length of wood. The beetles, to this day, still keep in touch with one another, although they are a little cautious about joining the convention circuit, to talk about their Who experience, for fear of being asked the same question dozens of times, year after year, until one day they either combust live on stage of feel the need to lamp an otherwise well meaning fan who perhaps hasn't got an awful lot going on in his life. Because it would be a him.

Death Comes As The End

So, whatever was keeping the Doctor and Charley out has decided to let them in. If only the Jehovah’s Witness were so lucky.

Part two, and at last the time-travellers join the main action (I was starting to think this was a Colin & Nicola Season 22 homage that Big Finish were doing here). No sooner have they arrived on the scene when - surprise, surprise - they’re standing over a dead body, with seemingly no-one else around to suspect. But rather than follow the tried-and-trusted cliché of a dozen other stories, Shearman turns the concept on its head by having the Doctor and Charley ‘expected’ as amateur sleuths; with the Doctor apparently the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard (by the name of ‘Mackenzie’, by any chance?)

Edith’s death (or, at least at this stage, her apparent death) is something of a shock, leading to two strands for the newly-arrived sleuths to investigate: the scullery maid’s apparent murder, and the time anomalies which seem intent on controlling the house’s occupants. And it’s not just the Doctor and Charley who have their roles to play; each of the inhabitants is seemingly being manipulated into acting out some drawing-room whodunit that Jon Pertwee would have once presided over. There’s a cook, a scullery maid, a chauffeur - all in employ of the distinctly anti-workers-rights Mr Shaughnessy. And to add to the mix we have that phrase again - ‘we are nothing, we are nobody’ - repeating throughout like a more enigmatic spin on the ‘Bad Wolf’ meme.

McGann certainly rises to the occasion, given that most common of opportunities of actors in the role: a Sherlock Holmes-style investigator. And the way he simply asks each of the suspects, ‘Did you kill Edith?’, is charmingly offhand. Meanwhile, there’s a rather surreal moment when Charley regresses to a child-like state whilst talking about plum puddings (whether this is a literal regression, or more hypnosis-like in effect isn’t really made clear). And speaking of plum-puddings, it’s these that give the episode its most macabre moment: when Mrs Baddeley is found dead, stuffed to the gills with her own infamous concoction. Such a moment - like the others this episode - is leavened by some jet-black humour in Shearman’s script; with Shaughnessy bemoaning the increasing loss of his staff at inopportune times.

And if this is all getting a bit too Cluedo for you, the rewriting of history which sees Edith’s death apparently ‘erased’ from all but the Doctor and Charley’s memories remind us that this strictly PJ Hammond by numbers (and none the worst for that). The cliff-hanger’s good too, if a little protracted: the Doctor - having deduced that each of the ‘murders’ take place as the clock strikes the hour - notices how Time itself seems to be speeding the protagonists towards the next death. Having set out the rules from the start, something’s now breaking them just as the Doctor gets close to the truth.

I wonder if he’s next to be ‘erased’?

(‘The Bumper Book of Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about Paul McGann: despite his initial reticence to attend conventions, Paul was in fact a secret member of DWAS during the early eighties; even bidding for a Vanir helmet during the auction at Longleat ‘83)

Vision Off

Well, here’s a new experience. Reviewing a Doctor Who story that I haven’t seen a hundred times before (but then I haven’t actually seen this one, either). As Stripped Down 2 enters the home straight - with ‘The Christmas Invasion less than two (yes, two) weeks away - we’ve reached The Wilderness Years. And having already done Paul McGann’s sole television outing last March (the day before ‘Rose’ to be precise) we’re obliged to consider the Big Finish canon so that all TV Doctors are given at least one outing (personally, I was up for DWM’s ‘The Flood’ myself).

Now, I’ve not been a regular listener to Big Finish’s output for a long time. Sure, back in those heady days of 1999 - when it seemed that an ‘officially licensed’ audio version of the show was our best option - I gobbled up those first few releases like the manna from heaven they seemed to be. Then listened to ‘em once and put them on the shelf to gather dust. Because even then they felt more like a cold, bland fix of methadone when all I wanted was the mainline thrill of a new series. So the enthusiasm - not to mention the monthly purchases - soon dried up.

My other problem with them was how they seemed to be trying to capture the spirit of the show simply by having a few familiar voices to help sweeten the pill. Scripts seemed to be shoe-horned around whichever Doctor and companion was willing and available. And there were seemingly unnecessary attempts to expand certain partnerships beyond their TV lifetimes (with the endless adventures that Davison’s Doctor is supposed to have with Peri between ‘Planet of Fire’ and ‘Caves’ proving particularly irritating; I mean, they’ve even invented a whole new companion to stretch what - on TV - is clearly a non-existent gap). And there’s a certain smugness to the whole Big Finish set-up that rankles of some certain ‘celebrity fans’ (naming no names of course) getting hold of the toy box and having what is, to them, a whale of a time. While the punters spend each month fourteen quid worse off and feeling slightly empty.

So it was with no little underwhelment that I approached the first episode of Robert Shearman’s critically acclaimed story. As, no matter how good people who like this sort of thing say it is, I fear that it will taste to me more like New Coke than the Real Thing. Headphones on, lights suitably dimmed…here’s what I thought:

* David Arnold - who rejigged the James Bond theme for Brosnan’s oeuvre and did a couple of the soundtracks to boot - delivers a theme which falls somewhere between Keff McCulloch and Dominic Glynn in terms of digging up Ron Grainer and giving his remains a good kicking.

* When this TARDIS lands it sounds vaguely like a jet airplane taking off.

* India Fisher - full of tally-ho gumption and Edwardian adventuress spirit (and seriously full of herself on the occasion I met her at a convention. She didn’t like my joke about the UK Gold ads she did at the time one little bit…)

* The Doctor is trying to get Charley back to Singapore 1930 - in the same way Pertwee was always trying to get to Metebelis 3 - which is, I’m guessing, a running them of this ‘season’s six audios.

* McGann - still likes saying certain words at least three times, one after another (like Colin, but not so loud)

* It’s Christmas, everything’s dark and cold and the TARDIS has landed in a larder. Bet the BBC would struggle to make an eye-catching trailer out of that.

* Shaughnessy’s Irish accent - a cross between David Boreanaz and Tom Cruise in Far and Away.

* Edith, the scullery maid - downtrodden, poorly-educated and unwilling to stand up for herself (and nothing like Gwyneth in ‘The Unquiet Dead’, by the way…)

* Yes, as the sleeve-notes say it’s the bastard offspring of Upstairs Downstairs and Sapphire & Steel: class-culture, weird noises and Time acting like it’s had one too many at the Christmas party.

* Frederick (who’s a bit of a rotter by the way) keeps telling us how all the servants are ‘nothing’ and ‘nobody’ (not the best of chat-up lines which he uses on fellow nobody, Mary). Beyond the obvious class comment, I wonder if this will prove significant later on…

* Mrs Baddeley has spurned Frederick’s advances (having spurned his father’s before him). I guess it’s a family thing.

* The Doctor’s solution to ‘breaking through’ the frozen time is a bit like his solution to the Chronic Hysteresis in ‘Meglos’. Or maybe not.

* Needless to say, the scenery is fantastic and the sets never wobble once

* I forked out £10.99 on this just so that I had something to do in the evenings this week. Is there some kind of Tachyon emergency kitty for the chronically skint?

(‘The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about Gary Russell: take one part JNT, one part Dennis the Menace; add a dash of Gary Downie and mix until suitably fruity).

Where's Me Washboard

The Chimes of Midnight - Episode 1

A ticking clock. A little tinkle-tinkle music segues into a heart beat and disembodied moaning. The TARDIS materializes. And the Doctor sends Charley out to case the landing. It's dark, very dark. Oh so dark I can't see any images. None at all. My vision is impaired. I cannot see. Oh, hang on, this one's make for audio. Or, as BBC7 keep maintaining with their current run of Big Finish Audios, made for radio.

Doctor's been getting too safe and predicable these last few incarnations. He, like the rest of us, has obviously expunged his sixth body from the table of his memory. The TARDIS, given a free reign, has successfully managed to avoid Singapore, in 1930, and has plopped the Doctor and Charley down into a Lada. Sorry, a larder. And with only custard and condensed milk in there it's obviously the larder of a single man of the age. Custard and condensed milk being the Edwardian equivalent of a half eaten kebab and green bacon.

We're then introduced to five instantly rich and realistic characters:

• Edith, the singing scullery maid, who can't wait for Christmas, and can't write he name in the dust.
• Mr Shaughnessy, brought to life by a voice richer than a Russian oil billionaire, who showed Edith how to write her name (and it's just as well he didn't show her how to write her name in the snow outside)
• Mrs Baddeley, the rotund cook (you can just hear her roundness in her voice).
• Mary, the lady's maid with a liking for...
• Frederick the chauffeur, who's not too sure what he's driving this year.

The movement between the different aspects of the house works incredibly well, with the mystery starting to build as time begins to piss around. Yes, the notion of time as a force is very Sapphire & Steel, but there's something a little more logical than walls made out of meat here. And for Time's first demonstration, the spilt jam in the larder has reformed - together with Paul Weller and everything.

The way Mrs Baddeley talks about the turkey, trying to cram all it's feet onto the plate, it's as if it has more than just the regulation two legs. A veritable monster indeed. Just like Frederick, who reminds her of Mr Baddeley (with his big thumbs, urges and cravings).

But there are still things amiss in the house that the travellers find themselves in so they start to try and make a dent in this other world, by burning things. First, just a paper had from a cracker, then the person who wrote the feeble gag from the cracker. Charley's the connection here, something is tying her to both aspects of the house and, after they've made enough of a nuisance of themselves whatever was keeping them out has decided to let them both in...

The Bumper Book of Made-up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part one of The Chimes of Midnight: Gary Russell was so desperate to direct The Chimes of Midnight that he challenged Barnaby Edwards to a WWF-style Smack Down wrestling contest, with directorial duties going to the winner. He lost when the red leatherette thong he was wearing, as part of his costume, became ensnared on a passing swan. The resulting melee temporarily blinded Nick Briggs for 4 days.

"You must hunt the dark continent - seek out what you desire."

Before I kick off this review - look at the funky intro! Forget about the music, that's typical 80s synth, and just focus on the CGI. Pretty...

Sadly, that's the only part of the serial that's easy on the brain. Fortunately, that's a good thing. Confused yet? Now you know how I feel! This is easily one of the best Doctor Who stories I've seen yet, despite the fact that I'm not so keen on Mr McCoy. Hard to believe people thought the show had run its course when there were still crackers like this one.

The script is fantastic (even if the music does tend to drown out some minor lines on occasion) and the acting is fantastic, with the Doctor in particular being somewhat more enigmatic then usual, thankfully not being so... 'goofy'. Aldred too puts in a rather impressive performance, although could someone please explain to me why she keeps calling the Doctor 'Professor'? The rest of the cast, small though it may be, also put in some wonderful portrails of Victorian England. Rather makes me wish I was back there, really.

I won't delve into the plot - I have work tomorrow and I don't really want to scare the customers away by having my brain leaking out of my ears - but it really is top class and I almost wish we could have something of this style in the new series. This really was some of the best of Classic Who.