Audio
Adventures in Time and Space #26
I Scream
written by
Lance Parkin
So, back in
the day before Big Finish there was BBV, a fan-run company that made
independent audio dramas using whatever bits and pieces of Doctor Who
they could license from non-BBC sources (monsters owned by writers,
for instance) or casting familiar actors in strangely familiar but
not quite copyrighted roles (such as having Sylvester McCoy playing a
time traveler called “The Professor”).
Some of
these releases got a little obscure.
Take this
one, for instance: the I are an alien race from a single Eighth
Doctor novel, Seeing I by
Kate Orman and Jon Blum. I remember literally nothing about them
except that they were the running the world from behind the scenes
types. In the case of this story the world is Glaspar, a planet given
over almost completely to ice cream production, the best ice cream in
the galaxy.
Out
POV character and narrator is played by Lisa Bowerman, the manager of
the largest ice cream restaurant on the planet. On Galspar the
company runs everything (a running theme of Doctor Who books at the
time) and everyone, ultimately, works for the company. They run the
media as well with a sort of Orwellian brainwashy thing called the I
Screen interrupting the narration from time to time to tell you how
great the company is.
Bowerman's
character (who is either never named or I wasn't listening) meets a
group of dropouts let by the pretty and charismatic John. She goes on
an astral projecting joyride with him and his telepath friend and
encounter the I.
There's
a lot of pop psychology stuff about teenage rebellion and
counter-culture as an aspect of culture. Its a bit dull, to be
honest. The dull ice cream-themed dystopia turns out to be run by
bodysnatcher-style emotionless managers, the main evidence for this
conclusion being that the one we encounter speaks a bit stiltedly and
doesn't get off on having picture of Bowerman's character naked.
There's a nice twist where Bowerman's character thinks the dropouts
are part of the system, secret police.
She's
wrong, sadly, but it was a nice twist while it lasted.
After
that Bowerman's character descends into complete paranoia about being
watched by the I. The narration is, to be honest, a little
overwrought. She finds herself in hospital after an apparent suicide
attempt. Naturally, she doesn't help herself by just plainly
describing her belief the world is being controlled by insect people
to the doctors in the hospital. Paranoia is a hard thing to convey
only in sound and I'm not sure everything Parkin does works but there
are some cool moments as Bowerman's narration becomes more and more
frantic.
Ultimately
its a bit like one of those short 2000AD
comic strips: a big high concept with an ending that has a nice punch
but isn't meant to go further than it does.
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