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| There was a time when this was considered high drama. That time was in the producer's office, not on transmission. |
(SPOILER
WARNING for Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor Box Set: Psychodrome and, I
suppose, Earthshock).
Last
night I listened to Psychodrome, the first story in Big
Finish's The Fifth Doctor Box Set, and it really drove home
how much Big Finish and others have done to actively rehabilitate the
Fifth Doctor era.
In
a way this has happened with every Doctor Big Finish has worked with.
Their Sixth Doctor is less abrasive to his companions than he was on
TV whilst still retaining his hard edge; with the Seventh Doctor
stories push the boat out on his scheming and questionable morals;
their Eighth Doctor has darkened to flatter Paul McGann's talents;
and their Fourth Doctor series benefits greatly from a less arrogant
Tom Baker who doesn't feel the need to steal every scene.
A
lot of that is character, though, whereas with Peter Davison I feel
what's being rehabilitated is the whole era.
Take
Psychodrome: the elevator pitch on this one was to create a new
second story for Peter Davison. The story is set right after
Castrovalva and a lot of it is about the four regulars and
their impressions of each other after having been together a very
short time. As Tegan points the two stories she features in before
this point take place over less than two days and she hasn't had a
moment to stop and mourn the death of her Aunt Vanessa. Nyssa's whole
world was destroyed and the Master is walking around in her father's
corpse. Adric has seen “his” Doctor die shortly after Romana left
them and the TARDIS is no longer the same environment he “signed
up” to travel in.
None
of this was dealt with on-screen. These four characters skipped from
Castrovalva Part Four to Four To Doomsday Part One with
little continuity. Nyssa does have another encounter with the Master
in Time-Flight with no mention is made of the whole “Dad's
corpse” business and Tegan meets several members of her family over
the years with no mention of poor Aunt Vanessa's fate.
This
is the era, lest we forget, that sold itself on its “soap opera”
elements and continuity yet never really invested in a sense of
character. The season this story is set in ostensibly has one “focus”
story for each companion but they aren't focus stories as we
understand them: Tegan's story sees her possessed by the villain;
Nyssa's has Sarah Sutton playing another character more than she
plays Nyssa; and Adric's story gives him little to do beyond die
dumbly.
Psychodrome
makes liberal use of elements from the stories it takes place
between: the unreal environment of Castrovalva gets the added
twist of being influenced by everyone's perceptions rather than being
under the Master's control. The opening scenes are also reminiscent
of the exploration phase of a Hartnell first episode that was used in
Four To Doomsday and this is really my point:
With
the other Doctors characters get reworked using modern techniques but
for the Fifth Doctor stories from his era are actively re-written.
One of the most acclaimed Fifth Doctor audios is Spare Parts,
in fact it was (very, VERY) loosely adapted for television as Rise
Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel. Spare Parts used the same
basic idea of Earthshock: a Cybermen story hugely bound into
their on-screen history but instead of re-enacting old set pieces its
a story about the history of the Cybermen, even going so far as to
re-use the singsong Cyber-voice from The Tenth Planet.
Its
not only Big Finish, either, one of my favourite Doctor Who novels is
David A. McIntee's The Lords Of The Storm. This book is very
much Warriors Of The Deep but done with Sontarans and done
well. McIntee uses elements from every Sontaran story, including the
fan made VHS story Shakedown, but does it with fidelity and
also thinking about how the concept could be modernised. Like
Warriors, Lords features a future society but McIntee
gives it far more depth than the one from Warriors and uses it
as more than a background for the monster story to happen against.
(The
actual ultimate example of this pattern I would love to recommend but
since the villain of the piece and therefore story it “replaces”
is a huge revelation I really, really can't because the internet
would hate me forever. It really is one of those twists fandom swears
you to secrecy over. Its one of the Fifth Doctor Lost Stories, that's
all I can say, and don't read the copyright blurb on the back cover).
Now,
I love the Davison era but I have to admit it is one of Doctor Who's
most flawed runs. It crackles with potential but that potential never
truly breaks through. Turlough is a great idea for an untrustworthy
companion but aside from Barbara Clegg and his creator Peter Grimwade
everyone just writes him as a coward; killing a companion was a good
dramatic idea but using it as an excuse to get rid of the unpopular
one was cheap; the Black Guardian trilogy was a good idea but needed
a middle story that actually said something relevant to the
overarching plot; and why the hell does it matter that the robot prop
doesn't work properly when the robot is a bloody shapeshifter?
So
I'm grateful, is what I'm saying. The wasted potential of those three
seasons is a huge bugbear of mine. You can point to just about every
regular character and say they were wasted and that we can finally
see how Turlough and Tegan and Nyssa and Peri would work if written
well and directed patiently can only be a good thing.
And
yes, if Psychodrome is anything to do by, there's hope for Adric yet.
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