Big Finish, Special Release
Well, this story starts out in one direction, takes a hard left, then wiggles all over the place! I never know which “side” the president or the alien scout are on, honestly. I guess that’s what you get with good character development. I like the basics of this story – commune vs. city vs. aliens. I’m really amazed at the ignorance and short-sightedness of the humans as they never notice the other aliens on the planet mining the heck out of it. It’s an interesting study of how three different groups can’t really live with each other.
The story starts with the Doctor and Leela landing on a planet, wandering about and getting caught up in the local politics of the humans on the planet. And there’s a suspicious alien in the commune town that the leader trusts implicitly, for some reason, though he doesn’t trust technology. So they have babies “the old fashioned way” while people in the city grow them in vats, which absolutely horrifies the city kids. Most of them, anyway. With Inscape, the colony ship computer, directing their lives, when it is under attack and refuses to respond, the city folk are just lost. It’s quite the realistic portrayal of people without their normal guidance and comforts. As well as their somewhat sadistic leader, DeRosa Janz. With factions inside the city and without, the humans seem doomed when the Doctor shows up. But it turns out they’re just willfully ignorant, really.
The story isn’t bad by any means. The more I thought about it, the more I just felt that it was kind of blah. Meh? So my initial reaction was 4 jelloids but I just can’t garner much enthusiasm for it. And I cannot pinpoint exactly why… Except that the character I liked the most was the computer!
Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Jon Culshaw (DeRosa Janz), Hannah Genesius (Ana Janze), Jemma Churchill (Farla Janz/Inscape), Dan Li (Grillo Clavik), Vernon Dobtcheff (Jorenzo Zorn), Arthur Hughes (Shown), Gyuri Sarossy (Volor), Elliot Chapman (Dack/Loyyo)
Writer: Philip Hinchcliffe, adapted by Marc Platt
Director: Ken Bentley
Release: September 2016