The Monthly Adventures #94a - "I.D." by Eddie Robson

Three audios ago, we looked at Circular Time - the Main Range’s first experiment with format - and I mentioned how it would not be the end of Big Finish’s formula shake ups, with the next experiment beginning here. I.D., uniquelly, is a three part story with an additional short adventure - Urgent Calls - making up the fourth part. Of all the different story formats that were used in The Monthly Adventures, this one seems to be the most polarising and I concur that it does seem the hardest to pull off. But since we have one of my favourite writers - Eddie Robson - creating the jumping off point for this type of story, does it prove itself as a viable format for the Main Range?

On a planet-sized junkyard, a years-long quest to uncover a mysterious data pack is coming to fruition, but with it something deadly. As crazed robots pick off the employees of a salvage expedition, the Doctor must face down the endpoint of genetic science.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I.D. is, by itself, an utterly fine story. It’s often overshadowed by its much more beloved sister story Urgent Calls (I am uploading a review for that alongside this, by the way) but taken out of the shadow of its partner, we’re left with a fun if messy episode of Doctor Who. First of all, this is an Eddie Robson script and I think Robson is a writer who, even in his worst stories, has some consistent strengths. For one, I think our sidecast is altogether pretty strong; yeah, maybe Gabe is a little underdeveloped - especially considering his prominence in the third act - but the rest are all relatively impressive. I think Bridge worked great as a one time companion and the detail of her having artificially removed her ability to feel guilt is a great, dystopian concept. Doctor Marriott was a convincing antagonist with believably petty goals and Atkinson-Wood’s performance as both Ms. Tevez and Tindell is incredibly strong, with the two personalities appropriately distinct.

I think another thing Robson tends to excel at is pace and I.D. is very good at keeping a momentum, the story beginning swiftly and moving at a good speed right up until its final moments. This is a very action heavy script, which can often be difficult to do on audio, but Robson manages it incredibly well, with a lot of high-speed chases and tense situations filling out the runtime. There’s a real kinetic element to this story that makes it an incredibly breezy listen.

However, the actual quality of the plot varies. For a story that is shorter than the average Monthly Adventure, I.D. manages to be more overstuffed than even the series’ longest entries. The plot changes maybe three times throughout, first being about corrupted “scan-droids” going haywire, then about a mad scientist uploading his consciousness into one of the characters and then in the final part it suddenly becomes about people turning into mutant creatures because of some failed genome project. It’s very haphazard and does make the whole script feel very jumpy; the story wraps up about halfway through and then just feels artificially inflated.

I also think the script feels a little surface level. Sure, it’s definitely intended to be more spectacle than anything but even then, there are just some basic things that seem overlooked. For instance, it has a really weird relationship with death. Like, at one point a character’s mother is killed and he seems sad about it for all of five seconds; it barely impacts how he behaves throughout the rest of the story. This is a trend I find to be consistent with most of the cast. And it’s little things like this and Robson’s decision to not be more introspective about his central concepts that make I.D. feel so lightweight for me. The setting is rich and interesting and detailed and I love the idea of personality grafts becoming a trend but all he really does with it is use it to turn people into spooky monsters, which feels a lot more shallow than that should’ve been.

I.D. is by no means bad; as with most Robson scripts, it’s pretty damn fun but there is a reason it’s so under-talked about. It’s a decent story but it struggles to rise up above the crowd and just ends up being sort of mediocre, with a messy script and a lack of deeper meaning. It’s a good time, just not a memorable one.

6/10

Pros:

+ Well developed cast

+ Good pacing and action

+ Interesting and well realised setting

Cons:

- Narratively all over the place

- Thematically shallow