The Monthly Adventures #061 - “Faith Stealer" by Graham Duff

The Divergent Arc could’ve been great, it really could. It surprises me because less than ten audios before the series’ debut, Big Finish was releasing stuff like Flip-Flop and Creatures of Beauty on a bimonthly basis and yet we end up lumped with some of the most generic Doctor Who stories when it comes time to dedicate ourselves to the weird and the new. Faith Stealer is a good story, undoubtedly, but it could’ve come from anywhere, any era and from anyone, which, frankly, I think defeats the whole purpose of the Divergence. However, it still boasts some fantastic ideas. A great setting but still no acknowledgement to the nonexistence of time, is Faith Stealer worthy of praise despite its involvement in Doctor Who’s most disappointing arc?

The Multihaven: a nexus point of faiths and worships, where everything from fanatics to religious tourists go to pray. Arriving in the hallowed city, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz hope to escape their recent string of bad luck, only to run into a new faith that’s recruiting just a little too fast.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I’ve heard other reviewers compare this story to Terry Pratchett’s series Discworld before and, whilst I have yet to dive into that gargantuan (41 bloody books) series, I am familiar with that Pythonesque brand of British humour adopted by the likes of Douglas Adams and, on this occasion, Graham Duff. Duff is not a name I’ve heard before and, unfortunately, that’s because this is his only script - something I find disappointing because Faith Stealer has a genuinely fantastic sense of humour to it. It’s quick, it’s witty, it’s charming and it’s fun. Humour on audio can often be really hard to sit through but this is subtle enough to just provide a nice tone rather than try and make the whole script a bad comedy. Not only that but it nails our characters; we really needed Eight and Charley to get on again after The Twilight Kingdom tried and failed to give them some tension and Faith Stealer delivered. And as for C’rizz, I don’t love the stuff they do with him, it certainly feels in character.

As for the rest of our cast, I think they all do a great job. Laan Carder is an excellent villain with a steely, sinister air about him, the Bordinan is a wonderfully curt equaliser in the chaos and as for all the minor characters that come and go one after the other, all felt decently real and were entertaining. It’s not all-time great (I probably won’t remember many names) but it’s a good helping of side characters. 

The Multihaven itself is a wonderful idea and brilliantly creative locale. For all this story could’ve done with format to make it more unique, the individual ideas within the script work tremendously. Chief among them is our setting but you also have all the hints of different religions occupying the space, such as one that worships paper or one that worships accidents. Each bit of information we get about the world is delightful and I only wish we got more of it.

However, Faith Stealer begins to struggle when it comes to plot. The biggest problem here is pacing, this story feels weird to me, a little misshapen, nothing hits quite as it should and I think it’s because Duff doesn’t know how to control the rate of his script. It’s too fast when it needs to slow down, when it should pick up the pace, it crawls to a standstill. This makes the whole thing very stop-start and the audio becomes a somewhat clunky listen because of that. The Lucidians’ rise to power feels too quick, character arcs happen too conveniently, everything is allocated the wrong amount of spotlight. On top of this, we’re practically being smothered by subplots here. Very often, Faith Stealer feels more like a collection of tangents than a real story, and very few of those tangents lead anywhere. Concepts and ideas will come and go, characters will be introduced and then disappear. A whole church is overthrown and simply never appears again, the TARDIS materialises before the Doctor and Charley and blows up but is then revealed to have been an unnecessary hallucination, C’rizz is mind controlled, tries to kill Charley, is miraculously better by the beginning of the next part and then does a second heel turn in the climax for quite literally no reason, his threat extinguished as our other leads defeat the antagonist in the background.

And that’s another thing, the resolution is pretty weak here. I like the idea of defeating a god by making its prophet have a crisis of faith but it’s over too quickly and leaves little impression. As for Carder’s one-dimensional assistant’s mission that’s quickly interrupted by C’rizz, it has little to no bearing on anything and feels like padding, especially when there’s a forced emotional moment of her becoming the new Bordinan. Really, the thing Faith Stealer needed was more time; more time to explore the Multihaven, more time to discover this culture, more time to build on characters and grow a creeping sense of dread. Everything moves too fast except for the bits that need a little oomf and it makes the whole thing feel narratively lopsided.

Faith Stealer is a quaint but wholly enjoyable story with a great helping of wit but little in the way of script. Missing the vital qualities it needed to really pop, we’re left with a good if imperfect runaround that disappears quite pleasantly into the fuzz of this era of the Main Range. The Divergent Arc still refuses to play with concept past time not being a word in this universe, which is a stretch from it not existing entirely, but it does have some hidden gems here and there.

7/10

Pros:

+ Fantastic tone and humour

+ The Multihaven is a fantastic setting

+ Enjoyable sidecast with a fun villain

+ Brimming with a really unique brand of creativity

Cons:

- Has a weird, stop-start pace

- Contains a number of subplots that go nowhere

- The final resolution is unsatisfying

- Could’ve used more runtime