The Monthly Adventures #046 - “Flip-Flop" by Jonathan Morris

It’s a little difficult to talk about something like Flip-Flop. We are now deep in Big Finish’s experimental phase, getting something different with every other release. We had Creatures of Beauty and its bizarre, non-linear structure. We had Doctor Who and the Pirates, which became a musical for one part. And now we have Flip-Flop, famous for its unique structure that allows you to listen to its discs in any order. Unfortunately, it's also rather infamous due to its inclusion of some rather… unfortunate aspects, that were, according to the author, completely accidental. Somehow I find it hard to believe.

The Doctor and Mel, searching for a crystal toxic to the Quark race, land on the only planet that mines it - Puxatornee. But upon arriving, they discover a harsh reality and some unknown acquaintances. It seems they’ve already been there.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

It’s a little tricky to talk about a story so problematic. On one hand, you could separate points, only half of this audio covers the offensive elements, so you could simply ignore it. On the other hand, a half-rotten apple is still a rotten apple, and this entire script does leave a bad taste in your mouth. First, what’s good? Well, the gimmick is easily the most interesting thing here. This story can be described as a narrative möbius strip, constantly looping no matter how many times you listen to it. The “white” half of the story ends and the “black” one begins. When you finish the “black” half, it begins the “white” half. So on, so forth, the members of the story forever stuck in an ever-looping world due to two characters forcing the Doctor to change history in each version of events. It’s a really neat little sci-fi concept that is executed incredibly well, the format aiding the idea wonderfully. What also helps is how well everything’s constructed. Everything is made to make sense, no matter what order you listen to it in (I listened to the second half, “black” first, by the way, for the sake of the gimmick). And what’s really fun is seeing the blanks get filled, being shown more insight into the breadcrumbs left behind. It would be really easy for this story to trip over itself and end up filled with plot holes but Morris manages to keep the whole thing structured and interesting. The plot almost feels Nolanesque; in fact, this might be the plot of Tenet, but I can’t really remember, that whole movie was a bit of a blur. As of our cast, pretty much great across the board. This is a very Seventh Doctor story and McCoy is predictably great, as is Mel who is characterised incredibly well by Morris. As for the rest of the cast, they all pretty much deliver. All characters feel very real and complex, each one’s motivations thought-out and rational. They’re not outstanding but it’s always nice to be invested in a sidecast.

However, we then have to talk about the other thing Flip-Flop is known for. I’m going to have to be objective here and rate Flip-Flop down quite a bit more than my gut would tell me, despite enjoying it more than some stories I’ve rated higher, because it’s undeniably flawed, even past it’s one major fault. Jonathan Morris has reported this element to be accidental, which I can’t really understand because Flip-Flop has the unique property of being incredibly racist. Basically, our main villains are Slithergees, slug like beings who posed as refugees to gain access to Puxatornee, insidiously taking over by accusing the humans of racism whenever they don’t get their way, slowly becoming the majority and erasing human culture. This is sickeningly very similar to a real-world racist argument, typically used by anti-semites that really has no place in Doctor Who. But, allegedly, it was not made with any ill-will in mind. Apparently, Jonathan Morris is actually quite left-wing, despite this having all the subtlety of a Daily Mail article, so who knows. I actually think it could be possible this whole mess was an accident because the real world argument Flip-Flop has parallels to is ridiculous and baseless enough to be science-fiction. However, the Slithergees being giant slugs with the faces of Jewish caricatures? That seems a little too on the nose (though apparently, Jonathan Morris just imagined them as giant slugs and it was the cover artist, Lee Binding, who made the model used). This whole debacle feels similar to two other stories: The Ark and Kill the Moon. The Ark because it’s a really neat sci-fi idea squandered by a weird, right-wing ideology of “the oppressed really being the bad guys!” and Kill the Moon because despite being a ridiculously on the nose right-wing allegory, it was apparently not meant to be a ridiculously on the nose right-wing allegory. At the end of the day, it is unfortunate and whether it was intentional or not doesn’t make the issue itself any better. Luckily it’s only the focus for about half the story but it does make this one quite hard to sit through. On a more conventional note, Flip-Flop still struggles elsewhere. I think its biggest problem besides the obvious is that it relies too much on its concept, which is something experimental Big Finish can stumble into sometimes. Because it’s so preoccupied making the story fit together and setting up clues for the next half of the plot, it forgets to actually write an engaging episode of Doctor Who and it ends up as busy work for a good part of the runtime. Plus, because the two halves are variations upon the same story, it can get quite boring to see the same characters make the same mistakes you just saw, with the only new thing being you going “oh, that’s different now” every once in a while. Also, due to the format, the story doesn’t really have an ending, just two different bits of set-up. And finally, the worldbuilding falls flat. Again, the adherence to the formula means we don’t get much of a story outside of it and, because of that, what should be the richly thematic and interesting world of Puxatornee becomes a series of faceless streets and rooms.

Flip-Flop in one word would be “unfortunate”. It’s unfortunate that Jonathan Morris wrote something like this and in fact, I’d call it confusing especially since Morris has now become a regular writer for Big Finish and has even written We Are the Daleks, which is apparently a critique of Thatcher-era Britain. Flip-Flop it’s a strange little oddity that has some really great ideas behind it, but is smothered by its own misguidance. A real shame, I’d say.

5/10

Pros:

+ Really interesting time travel concept that the story takes full hold of

+ Well constructed and complex story

+ Good cast of characters

Cons:

- Steeped in utterly awful politics, however accidental

- Due to the focus on the gimmick, the story never really moves past it

- Yet another wholly unexplored world