The
Space Wail
written
by Warren Martyn
directed
by Gary Russell
featuring
Stephen Payne as the Doctor with Richard Marson as Greg Holmes and
Sally Baggs as Nadia
So
I guess I finally understand how fandom felt in 1994, then. The Audio
Visuals, to me, had a similar legendary stature to the one The
Tomb of the Cybermen had to the average fan back then: great
reputation, huge influence on the series as I knew it, and I'd never
be able to see it. Tomb was junked by the BBC, the AVs were
just plain unavailable since they were fan made cassettes long out of
print and with no clear way to bring them out again. A couple have
been adapted by Big Finish, a company run by several AV alumni, but
that was about all I could hope for.
Then
I remembered that I have the internet and nothing is ever out of
print if you have the internet!
Oh,
shut up, its not like I'm cheating anyone. These things are twenty
years out of print and were not-for-profit in the first place. If
they ever get re-released I'll pay (mainly because an official
release would be remastered a bit and be less scratchy and vague than
these audio tape rips) but that's likely never going to happen. I
really wanted to experience them because they're a bit of an
influence on the new series, even if only through a slightly
roundabout way. The AVs were a bit of a proving ground for several
later “professional fans”, among them Nick Briggs, Bill Baggs,
Jim Mortimore and Gary Russell so this is very much the birth of Big
Finish (and BBV but that's less significant). So, having listened to
the first story, what did I think?
I've
probably given the game away with my comparison to fans watching Tomb
back in '94. Tomb was,
by fan legend, extraordinary. It was a wonderfully dark and
atmospheric horror story, perhaps the greatest loss of the BBC
archive junkings, the absolute pinnacle of the base under siege
format. Then in 1994 pristine copies of all four episodes were found
at a TV station in Hong Kong and it was rush out on video. To say the
least it didn't match expectations: production values were as low as
the rest of Season Five, the Cybermen's plan was as crap as all their
other plans and the plot really doesn't stand up to examination.
Also, the villains are colour coded for your convenience by
comprising the only black man in the cast (who is a mostly mute
strongman) and his two bosses in blackface.
Blackface
aside, listening to The Space Wail
was a surprisingly similar lesson in managing expectations. Of course
Tomb wasn't on par
with the best of Hammer horror and of course The Space Wail
was not as good an audio as Damaged Goods.
Big Finish have a proper studio while parts of The Space
Wail were recorded in people's
bedrooms and gardens.
The acting is... clearly amateur with some painful
exposition early on as a character refers to people he is speaking to
as “my daughter” and “my other daughter” in a way that's as
natural as a formica table. This is not actually the worst aspect of
the dialogue in this story, that's the fact that Stephen Payne as the
Doctor and Richard Marson as new companion Greg have unfortunately
similar voices so sometimes it gets a little unclear who's speaking
when they're together. This is, as it happens, the one and only
outing for Stephen Payne's Doctor as he'll be replaced by Nick Briggs
in the next story and he really doesn't get much to establish
himself. Maybe that's another influence this series had on the show:
perhaps Philip Segal listened to this and thought it was a good
pattern to follow with McGann? Payne doesn't get many strong
character traits, playing a quite generic Doctor: an eccentric line
here, a chummy note there but nothing defining.
There's also the way in which the Doctor picks up his
first new companion, Greg Holmes, which is curiously... I don't want
to use the term “sex offender” but he does wander onto school
grounds, start a conversation with a schoolboy that ends with the
schoolboy walking off with him to see his spaceship. You can see
where I'm coming from with this, I'm sure. Still, these scenes do
their job: establishing the voices, if not the personalities, of our
two leads at a leisurely pace before diving into the story. Its not
great but its not the meat of the story, either.
At the end of the day, though, this is a pilot and
pilots are meant to be ropey and not entirely representative of how
things evolve. This series became legendary for a reason and I'm sure
it'll improve. Why am I sure of this? Well, apart from the series'
general reputation this story does have one thing going for it: the
plot.
Having picked up Greg, the Doctor takes a trip to the
future and lands on an execution ship that's moving into deep space
where the crew will abandon it and leave it to explode with some
condemned convicts aboard. What works is that we spend the better
part of the story's first half switching between the Doctor lounging
about the school field and the spaceship getting to know the
prisoners and guards. It's far from flawlessly executed, the
exposition is terribly heavy handed and the delivery defines the term
“amateur” but its at least interesting watching the world form
and waiting for the Doctor and Greg to land in it and shake things
up.
The most interesting thing about the execution ship is
its computer, BABE (no, seriously, and its voice is female, too) who
operates a “mind drain” which is like a (no not the) mind probe
except the computer absorbs the knowledge and personalities of its
victims, leaving the computer more than a little crazy since mostly
the mind drain is used on convicted criminals. Again, the actual use
of this device leaves a lot to be desired and a lot to the
imagination but its at least interesting. The result is an
interesting but anaemic setting where you can see what could be great
but the gaps leave it being average. We get few details of what Niton
and his family have been convicted of even though the dialogue goes
to enormous pains to make sure we understand how everyone is related
to one another. We're told that the BABE system on the ship is linked
to a larger system back on Homeworld but not how its insanity might
effect the world. Homeworld's government is obviously meant to
unsympathetic since the guards massacre some prisoners, seemingly
acting on orders.
This might not actually have been a problem but for one
thing: from this setting comes our second companion, Nadia, youngest
daughter of convicted family. Whilst the Doctor and Greg might be
generic they're at least easy to grasp: paint by numbers Doctor and
standard template modern teenager companion, stock types anyone
listening to this thing will be fairly familiar with. Nadia, on the
other hand, is from the underdeveloped Homeworld. We only understand
what we're told of her and we're told... naff all, frankly.
The only hook she seems to have is a strange
emotionlessness. Her family are killed and she has very little
reaction to it. Earlier in the play she seemed very close to her
parents but after their deaths she calls her father a fool and her
mother evil, both assertions we have very little context for.
And then there's her reaction to the destruction of
Homeworld. Actually, everyone's reaction to this shattering final
event is bizarrely muted. Maybe its the delivery but neither the
Doctor, who caused the planet's destruction as a consequence of how
he stops BABE, or Nadia who is from there, seem that fussed. Greg
even makes a joke at Nadia, moments after the destruction of her
planet, about the destruction of her planet. Then they go off to have
a holiday. Its really that abrupt an ending.
Being as reasonable as I can about my expectations it at
least has potential. The basic premise is interesting even if
everything interesting about it is painfully under-explored. Any
issues I have with Payne's Doctor have to be taken in the light that
this is the only story he did and he'll be replaced by Nick Briggs in
the next one (this also goes for the problem I have telling the
Doctor and Greg apart). So, not exactly a good start but a promising
one.
Still, next up are Nick Briggs and Daleks, usually a
winning combination.
(This post is indebted to the AV fan site Justyce.org
for technical and background details.)
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