30 Discs Hath November #23: The Barnacled Baby

Audio Adventures in Time and Space #30:

The Barnacled Baby

written by Anthony Keetch

Its back to the world of unlicensed Doctor Who spin-offs for another adventure featuring a well-known one-off monster from the show. This time its the shapeshifting fetus people the Zygons and... well...

Okay, to put it mildly there are times when BBV landed on the wrong wide of good taste. There was Only Human that took a hard swerve into trigger warning territory in the middle of what felt like a lightweight Doctor Who adventure and some seriously insensitive material about child loss in The Rani Reaps The Whirlwind. By comparison inflicting the mental image of a Zygon beastfeeding is mild by comparison but still not entirely pleasant (due to it being a Zygon, not the act of breastfeeding itself, you understand). The idea is that the Zygon is weak because he doesn't have a Skarasen to drink the milk from and this woman has offered to sub in.

Anyway, the situation is this: the Zygon is alone and cut off from his spaceship and because he landed in Victorian England he's ended up in a freakshow. The owner sees “the Barnacled Baby of the Sea” as his meal ticket, a wonder that Queen Victoria wants to view and PT Barnum wants to exhibit. There's also a wealthy doctor, Sir Frederick Maltravers (played by Clive Merrison, to my great surprise) who wants to purchase the Zygon in the name of science.

Talking of surprising voices, this is the first time I've heard Deborah Watling perform since her death. Its always a funny feeling, that voice from the past you know is no longer around. I sort of dread listening to the final Jago & Litefoot box set for this very reason. Watling appears only briefly but gets in a corker of the final scene where she gets to deliver the twist punchline I'm starting to get used to from these monster-led audios.

Bizarre breastfeeding scenes aside, this is actually a good take on one of the classic science-fiction situations. Bobby the Zygon (who has an alien name but one the internet refuses to tell me how to spell) is in a weak position and proceeds to manipulate or murder whoever he needs to in an attempt to locate his ship. Running alongside the Zygon's story is tale of typically squalid Victorian family drama with the freakshow owner Jethro and his much abused daughter Doris, her former lover Toby and the financial problems and opportunities of all three. Its actually a lot better written and performed than the last couple of these monster audio I listened to. Quality-wise its much more like The Quality of Mercy was: well-acted and atmospheric with a well-realised historical setting.

Sadly, TARDIS Wikia credits Anthony Keetch with only three other pieces of Doctor Who fiction, all of them prose Short Trips and he;s mainly an actor. In fact, he's Coordinator Vansell from the early Gallifrey-set Big Finish audios which I didn't realise under the thick jolly Cockney accent. Pity, I would rather have enjoyed hearing some more full-length audios from him. 

30 Discs Hath November #18: The Green Man

Audio Adventures in Time and Space #33:

The Green Man

written by Zoltán Déry

Its back to the world of semi-legal spin-offs for one of those later run BBV audios where they licensed the rights to monsters and wrote stories about them. In this case its the Krynoids, a vegetable creature that takes over humans and turns them into Krynoids.

In this case the Krynoid has landed in darkest Mummerset sometimes in medieval times. In theory I see the thinking. Medieval times and an alien that possesses people and takes them over. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work out like that. As with in the original story there are two Krynoid pods, the first one takes over a herbalist called Osbert but he's dispatched in pretty short order leaving us with Pod #2 which has possessed a wolf and therefore isn't much conversation. This being an audio drama, an enemy that isn't much conversation is a pretty bad thing to have.

Zoltán Déry tries, bless him, to deliver on impressive visuals but, again, this is an audio and so having people telling me that the Krynoid has got bigger again is just a little underwhelming.

There is some investment to be had with the human cast even if the local (and non-speaking) lady's fever is a pretty bad attempt at raising tension seeing as we never get to meet her and her illness is never really defined. The character of Moses, a Jewish doctor and scientist brought in by the earl to heal his lady, is interesting though his allusions to losing his family during the crusades (and at European hands) serves as little more than a reason for the earl to feel uncomfortable and stop calling him “Jew” to his face.

All in all, I'd say this was a better story in concept than execution. There are some neat ideas like Moses trying to reverse engineer Greek fire using limited resources and a templar knight scientifically proving the Krynoid isn't a demon by dipping his sword in holy water and discovering it does nothing to make the sword more effective.

Oh well, they can't all be winners. 

BBV's Only Human: a bit extreme for what it is

[Content Warning: I'm going to discuss in pretty horrible and potentially triggering detail a fictional portrayal of child sexual abuse and its psychological aftermath. Please read the following post with care.]

Audio Adventures In Time And Space was a range of unathorised Doctor Who spin-offs produced by BBV in the late-90s and early-2000s. Long out of print they're mostly forgotten except as the range where the Faction Paradox audios began and being the reason Big Finish didn't use the Sontarans or Zygons for about half a decade due to a gentlefan's agreement between the two companies not to pursue the same third party monster rights. Plus, they were a mail order thing before internet purchase was reliable or entirely trustworthy so they were hard to get hold of and not many secondhand copies circulate.

I stumbled across a few at a local charity shop and last night I slipped Only Human into the player... and...

… good grief, I was not expecting what I got.

Let's be clear about one thing before we start: Sophie Aldred is playing Ace, the character she played in Doctor Who from 1987 to 1989 and reprises to this day for Big Finish. “The Time Travellers” were originally billed as “The Professor & Ace” until the BBC got a bit cross about it. After that, BBV rebranded the Professor as the Dominie (a terrible name almost never used in the audios) and revealed Ace's birth name as Alice.

So, once again, Alice is 100% absolutely meant to be Ace McShane. That is something the listener is meant to actively assume.

Ace, every version of Ace, has significant issues surrounding her family. Usually, these issues revolve around her mother and is portrayed as a sort of generalised neglect. In some versions they reconcile, in others they don't but usually Ace finds a way to deal with those feelings with or without a confrontation with the woman herself (both of which are, of course, perfectly valid approaches).

Only Human decides to go in a rather different direction. Through a complicated set of events involving a telepathic shapeshifter, Ace is confronted by a perfect replica of her stepfather who, it turns out, repeatedly sexually abused her starting when she was seven years old. He accuses her off enjoying it, tells her that her mother knew it was happening, continues to call her pet names even as she screams at him.

It is absolutely chilling and I can't fault the actors for how they play it, the impact of the scene is undeniable. It has immense power.

And no resolution. Its not the point of the story, neither thematically nor in terms of the story. The story surrounding it isn;t bad, either, in fact its one of the most interesting and varied stories the Audio Adventures told. The two sides of it just never marry up and it leads me to wonder if this powerful, disturbing scene is just there for shock value.

Also, whilst it doesn't come out of nowhere (there's a precursor scene close to the beginning of the audio that pretty well signposts where its all going) it is a shocking place for an unlicensed audio based on a 1980s kids show to go. I don't know if that's a good thing.

I strongly believe these are issues that need to be discussed both in fact and in fiction. The last couple of years have proven very powerfully that these things have to be brought into the light. My only question is whether or not this does that or if it just offers a sly opportunity to trigger people who were just expecting a run-of-the-mill Doctor Who by any other name audio drama, which seems to me the most textbook definition of escapism.

Sometimes, I think, it is possible to challenge your audience too much.