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Released:
February 2007
Cast:
Zoe
– Wendy Padbury
The
Daleks – Nicholas Briggs
Story
Narration and other characters voiced by Wendy Padbury
Main Production Credits
Producer
– Sharon Gosling
Script
Editor – Alan Barnes
Writer
– Patrick Chapman
Director
– Mark J. Thompson
Incidental
Music
and Sound Design – Lawrence Oakley
Recording
– Steve Tsoi at Sound Magic Studios
Title
Music – Ron Grainer, Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
TARDIS
Sounds – Brian Hodgson and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Executive
Producers – Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
Story Summary (SPOILERS!):
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive in a city built into an
asteroid in space. The society is a politically neutral one, and is currently
hosting peace talks between the leaders of two disgruntled alien races, the
Xantha and the Tibari, hoping to avoid an outbreak of war between their two
peoples. However, Professor Atrikar, a mad deluded Tibari scientist, and his
mysterious metallic allies have other ideas...
The Doctor and his friends are kidnapped by Atrikar’s
men, and discover that the Professor has allied himself with the Doctor’s worst
enemy, one which he thought long dead, the Daleks. The Professor has
constructed a technology which enables him to transmit a person’s mind across
space, give it physical form, and allow them to literally be in two places at
once. Atrikar’s plan is to assassinate the Tibari president and join the Daleks
in taking over the combined empires of both races. Atrikar forces Zoe to become
the assassin, and once her consciousness is sent aboard the Tibari spaceship,
is able to control her actions.
The Doctor is helpless to prevent the atrocity, until he
tricks Atrikar into transmitting his consciousness aboard the Tibari spaceship,
whereby he disarms Zoe and resists Atrikar’s control with ease. Atrikar sends
the Daleks’ minds after them to complete the assassination themselves. However,
after the Daleks let slip that Atrikar is just their puppet to abandon and
murder once their plans are completed, the Professor rebels and announces the
Daleks’ presence publically and calls for help. Before the Daleks’ physical
machines murder Atrikar, he transmits his own mind onto the spaceship,
attacking the Daleks telepathically before destroying them. The Doctor and Zoe
are now free to return to their bodies and leave with Jamie, while the peace
talks take place in safety without a hitch.
Story Placement
Between The Wheel
in Space (TV Serial) and The Dominators
(TV Serial).
Review:
I did originally choose Fear of the Daleks to review for the 49th anniversary,
but after listening to how bad it was, I couldn’t bring myself to put out such
a negative review on a day of celebration, so it inevitably went on the back
burner. Weeks later, I’ve finally resolved to take it on properly, and the
audio is sadly just as poor as when I first heard it. After the delightful and
promising first release of the Companion
Chronicles range, Frostfire, Fear of the Daleks is a dire retreat
into amateurish, fairly unimaginative and possibly even lazy writing, the likes
of which I’ve never seen in a Big Finish audio production till now. While the Companion Chronicles is a great and
original audio format for Doctor Who,
listening to the very first series, one gets the impression that Big Finish
were still feeling their way along as to how to get the most out of the format,
experimenting to see what worked and what didn’t, and as a result getting
somewhat mixed results. Judging by the many positive reviews given of some of the
range’s later releases, Fear of the
Daleks appears to be one of Big Finish’s wake up calls as to how to proceed
with and improve the Companion Chronicles,
and listening to the audio itself, it’s not hard to see why.
On the surface, there’s much to look forward to – a
nostalgic celebration of the Patrick Troughton years; a space age civilisation
on an asteroid; hints of a political conspiracy; a machine which can project a
person’s consciousness across space. However, it doesn’t take much exploration
or examination to see that, minus the mind machine, all of the story’s promise
is entirely wasted or realised so poorly as to be completely ineffectual.
Instead of celebrating the best aspects of the Troughton TV episodes – chilling
monsters, quirky characterisation, intelligent and challenging villains (Tobias
Vaughn, for instance), moments of great atmosphere and dramatic tension, and
the occasional sense of pervading mystery during the early parts of a story;
Patrick Chapman decides instead to celebrate many of the Troughton era’s
decidedly naff and poor elements – one-note monsters and villains, weak
cardboard characterisation, dull, corny, or unimaginative dialogue, padding and
tired, predictable storytelling. Sadly, Chapman’s script is guilty of all these
things. While Fear of the Daleks may
work thematically in the context of the era of the show its set in, as season
six of Doctor Who had the most
storylines with these negative attributes, it doesn’t exactly make an enjoyable
experience for the audience. I’m sure there are some Doctor Who fans out there that pine for
the days of The Dominators and The Space Pirates, but I’m not one of
them. Also, I feel that Fear of the
Daleks ironically doesn’t even match the standard of these stories due to
how basic, tiresome, unimaginatively written, and poorly characterised it is.
At least in the poor 1960s TV episodes there was always a comedic, suspenseful
or thought-provoking element that helped the viewer through most of it, but in Fear of the Daleks, even that is denied
to the listener. This is Doctor Who,
not just by numbers, but boiled down to single digits, if you follow my
meaning.
The story mainly boils down to the Daleks attempting to
contrive a devastating war between two aggrieved races who are trying to make
peace with each other, and little else. Any possible complication or mystery
that could have made the story more substantial is neglected at every turn in
favour of sub-standard ‘B movie’-like pantomime melodrama and lazy run-arounds,
highlighted by the fact that the Doctor and his friends are whisked away to a
direct confrontation with the enemy almost immediately after arriving. The
so-called ‘mad scientist’ Atrikar himself is a poor and stupid villain, who is
an incidental plot device at best, used to force the TARDIS crew into their
dilemma, and also to easily resolve it at the end.
Furthermore, this has to be the weakest Dalek appearance
in any official Doctor Who fiction
that I’ve ever experienced. There is no tension, suspense, or even mystery;
they are very quickly identified by the script as the main culprits of this
conspiracy, and wheeled out later on to artificially contrive dramatic tension,
when the assassination plot is stretched too thinly to carry the listeners’
interest. Rather than give the Daleks a big dramatic entrance in light of how
much the script revels in the wake of The
Evil of the Daleks’ climatic showdown, you get the impression that this is
very much business as usual, and the Doctor comes off looking a much weaker and
ineffectual hero as a result, due to how much emphasis Patrick Chapman puts on
the Doctor’s belief in the Daleks’ “final end”. So in effect, Chapman is
choosing to ignore the immediate continuity that he himself chose to
acknowledge and highlight at the beginning of the story, or at the very least,
is guilty of not using it to the benefit of its dramatic potential, beyond the
Doctor going, “oops, I’ve got it wrong again”. If the Doctor himself is a
weaker character, then the villain, Atrikar, is doubly so, just by being
outwitted by him.
However, the problem with the script’s overall
characterisation is far more than just wasted potential for the development of
drama and character; it’s poorly written in general. The characterisation of
the 2nd Doctor feels basic, generic and clichéd. He gets easily
alarmed, shouts out his remembered catchphrases, and makes fun of his
opponents. However, there’s no hint at all of the clever and wily intelligence
that was often a key part of Patrick Troughton’s subtle, yet lively
performance. Patrick Chapman also gives him some slightly bizarre things to say
too, like saying how much he likes another genius aboard the TARDIS, for
instance. I mean who would really say that, let alone the Doctor, and the
humble and sensitive 2nd Doctor at that. I also can’t imagine him
rebuking Zoe for being frightened, by complaining about her giving a “much a
to-do”, both in the style of dialogue delivered, as well as the action.
Zoe too feels dumbed down and erroneous in character.
Sure, we know Zoe is clever, but the script ham-fistedly harps on about it as
if that was all there was too her and all subtlety and complexity is thrown out
of the window. The rest of the time, Zoe feels like as if Chapman is writing
Victoria Waterfield instead, always nervous, and often petrified, without the
strong confidence and bravery that was present during Zoe’s TV episodes. Jamie
however, gets the worst deal of the leading characters. He hardly features, and
gets a few stereotypical one-note lines that do him no favours whatsoever.
Sure, Jamie was mostly a thin character by modern standards, but there was
always more to him than this. He doesn’t even get to fulfil his usual role as
the action man, but then again, I suppose he’s not an easy character to write
for, given his limitations as a simple man, Scottish background aside. Still,
I’m sure could have made more of an effort with him than this.
The villains are handled even worse. The Daleks just trot out their usual catchphrases, and the script even seems to go to great trouble to
show them up as being weak and stupid, rather than the cunning, clever and
manipulative personas that we see in all their best appearances. Atrikar is
also a complete joke of a villain. Assured of success, he boasts of his plans,
and is completely blinded to the Daleks’ true nature, despite Chapman’s obvious
headlining of this in dialogue during a scene that occurs right in front of
Atrikar, which heavily undermines him further. He does come to his senses
eventually, but only after 30 minutes of obvious clues, which is another thing
that makes the audio come across as a dire and painful listen. The narrative
takes ages to go anywhere, and contrives to delay any real dramatic or
character development, so that it can include a run-around in a spaceship, and
maybe even disguise that is a plot that could have been easily foiled in just
15 minutes flat. When the story reaches its final climax, I can’t really care
about the dilemma or dramatic tension anymore, because of both how long it took
to get there, and the fact that both Atrikar and the plot are so contrived,
that I find them utterly unconvincing.
If all this wasn’t bad enough, Patrick Chapman, commits
to audio, some of the most appalling and amateurish dialogue. These include
such scriptural disasters as, “cabal of subversives”, “talking of sartorial
lapses, be quiet skirt boy!”, and not forgetting, “Didn’t they teach you
anything in Universal Domination School?” If I didn’t know better, I would say
this was the writing of a ten year old. Now, if the story had had the imagination of a ten year old too, then
that wouldn’t have been so bad, in fact it may have been quite enjoyable. Unfortunately,
Fear of the Daleks doesn’t, or at
least not in the script. As Patrick Chapman is himself a writer of many
children’s’ fiction and television programmes, so in a way, a lot of this
makes sense, but on the basis of Fear of
the Daleks I dread to think of what his writing efforts for adults are
like. Then again, maybe it was another case of someone confusing Doctor Who as being ‘just for kids’. It
doesn’t take much examination and study of even just the 1960s Doctor Who episodes to discover that
this is not the case, and there always was more to the programme, than more
casual viewers would have you believe.
So, it begs the question “is there actually anything good
to like about Fear of the Daleks?” There
are a couple of things fortunately, even if that isn’t a ringing endorsement of
this audio. Firstly, I like the idea of Atrikar’s mind machine, which can
telepathically transmit a person’s consciousness across space, and allow it to
have a physical presence, so that a character could indeed be in two places at
once. It’s a brilliant futuristic idea, the like of which often sprung up throughout
1960s and early 1970s Doctor Who, and
is probably the only nostalgic element that works and successfully fulfils its
creative potential. The idea of the Daleks trying to trigger an intergalactic
war, to help strategically weaken its opponents, while being an old one, is
still a very strong plot concept that can work brilliantly in the right hands,
and is still far from being tired. Although Patrick Chapman fails to handle it
effectively, it is at least the beginnings of a good storyline, even if it
didn’t work out well in the end.
The other good aspect of Fear of the Daleks is the strong performance of its small cast. Wendy
Padbury holds her own here, even if it ends up in vain, with such a poor
script. The actress puts in a great effort, despite the weak characterisation,
to help give both the 2nd Doctor and Zoe more accurate and
believable personas. Padbury’s Troughton mannerisms are very good indeed, and
she also makes Zoe sound young again. Nicholas Briggs also brings his consummate
vocal skills as a Dalek voice artist to the audio, and definitely livens up the
production a great deal in places, despite the padded script. In fact Nick
Briggs’ Dalek vocals are always a joy to listen to, even when the rest of the
story is an absolute disaster, maybe even more so, in fact.
It’s a great shame then that the rest of the production
doesn’t quite live up to the high quality of the acting performances either.
The direction is ok, but hardly stands out, but what really disappointed me was
the weak and poor soundtrack. There’s very little sound design to be heard, and
the music feels so tired, clichéd and bored, that I’m certain, as an amateur
composer myself, that even I could have done better on this one. Considering
that Lawrence Oakley did a fairly good job on Frostfire, one hopes this is merely a misstep.
In short then, Fear of the Daleks is as complete a disaster as Big Finish audios have come close to since they first begun in 1999. Despite a couple of good ideas, wonderful acting, and a lots of potential, it is an audio full of tired clichés, padding, amateurish scriptwriting and weak characterisation, the likes of which I hope to never encounter again. I can say for certain, that the majority of the blame can be put at the door of the writer Patrick Chapman, given that the script is where all the big problems stem from. Given the usual stellar standard of Big Finish’s work, it seems that Fear of the Daleks was a timely lesson and reminder, in how not to write Doctor Who. For other listeners of Big Finish audios, I would strongly advise them to avoid this release. I certainly will be in future.
Score: 2/10
