MR 022: Bloodtide

The thing I remembered most from this audio is the way that lady says "Devils." Still pretty B tier coded, but at least Colin and Evelyn are here so that's pretty nice. It's also the first use of the Silurians. Unfortunately, it's pretty standard as far as Silurian stories go, especially classic who Silurian stories.

The Beagle is doing its tour of the Galapagos Islands with Charles Darwin, yes, that Darwin. They end up uncovering some Silurians that have been woken up from their slumber and are working on killing all of humanity with a plague. Again. That's really all there is to it. The thing that makes it pretty standard and definitely too long, like a classic who story, is that it has the Doctor get captured... and then Evelyn goes after him with Darwin and they get captured. And then the Doctor escapes and he goes after them. It's just a waste of time. It could have easily been cut down to an hour, again, like a lot of classic who.

That said, there's some good ideas here. I particularly liked Darwin in the middle of having an existential and religious crisis of faith in the middle of being captured by the Silurians. Indeed, juxtaposing Darwin himself with the Silurians is a great idea. The story does the correct thing in comparing natural selection with artificial selection or animal breeding. Darwin talks about the way that animals are domesticated, becoming more calm because of human intervention. And he compares that to the finches becoming more afraid of humans over time by their presence on the islands.

It's particularly interesting because the story says that humans used to be the Silurians' food and that one Silurian decided to advance their evolution and give them intelligence. So humans themselves are a product of artificial selection, breeding by Silurians. That would absolutely send Darwin into a crisis of faith.
I also found the myrka pretty hilarious considering, you know, Warriors. Just don't drop kick it. They do manage to make it feel threatening as an actual giant sea monster rather than two guys in a panto horse costume. It just is pretty superfluous.

The Doctor gets to make some fun jabs at humanity. How can humans be intelligent when they enslave each other ect ect. How is eating humans any different than eating cattle. Stuff you'd expect of Six, which I'm here for. I enjoyed the outraged ship captain trying to come up with reasons to justify why eating humans is wrong and eating cows is ok. It is so good to finally have Colin back. It's been EIGHT audios since we had him. And not coincidentally Holy Terror was the last truly good one. And yes, I do like Paul McGann quite a lot, who doesn't, but his first four audios here left a lot to be desired.