The Monthly Adventures #028 - "Invaders from Mars” by Mark Gatiss

From here, number 28 of the Main Range, to the 33rd audio - Neverland - is the second “season” of the Eighth Doctor’s run and it is quite possibly Big Finish’s most popular and revered series of stories in its history. Being unconnected from most lore, the Eighth Doctor’s audios are the usual go-to starting point for new listeners and whilst his introductory four stories were perfectly fine as an establishment of the series, it's here where we begin to see some of the more iconic episodes, with fan favourites like Neverland and Seasons of Fear featured, along with the next audio, The Chimes of Midnight, which may just be the most famous audio in Big Finish’s nearly 25 year history with Doctor Who. But all stories must have a start, so how does Season Two fair?

A botched trip to Singapore in the 30s lands the Doctor and Charley in hot water, when they come across the dead body of a private investigator in the streets of Manhattan. With the mob peddling weapons from beyond this world and Orson Welles panicking the population on radio, the travellers prepare for a war of the worlds.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

It’s always fun writing a review about a Mark Gatiss story because he’s one of those writers with little to no interesting qualities in his scripts. His works are true skeleton stories, the absolute basics of a Doctor Who narrative with all the buzzwords necessary for a familiar plot. Which makes it incredibly hard to talk about his works, as they usually don’t have anything for me to highlight. Eight and Charley are, as usual, great here and McGann and Fisher are clearly having fun with this script. The Doctor trying to navigate 1930s Brooklyn with dialogue directly ripped from Miller’s Crossing is incredibly funny and how he and Charley bounce off each other is expertly written. I think if there was one word to describe Invaders from Mars, it would be “fun”. This is a fun script, this is a goofy runaround with cartoony mobsters going “forgetta ‘bout it!” where the Doctor saves the day by tricking aliens into thinking a rival invasion is happening using Orson Welles’ the War of the Worlds, which is a really fun way to implement a bit of sci-fi history into a Doctor Who story. It truly feels like going to New York and fighting space bats with the mafia, and Mark Gatiss sells Brooklyn to me, a lot of this feels straight out of cheesy B-list film noirs.

However, this style of light comedy riffing mafia flicks does come with its downfalls. Pretty much every mobster character has the same, overacted and cartoonish Brooklyn accent and it’s painfully obvious that it’s a cast of Englishmen voicing them. I think the best it gets is with the main gangster - Chaney - funnily enough played by Simon Pegg of all people, but the rest range from really annoying to indecipherable. And beyond that, whilst I call it a film noir set in the Doctor Who universe, it’s also not really because half the plot is the Doctor running around with a KGB agent trying to recover the Russian scientist working with the mobsters as a nazi works to steal his research and other members of the alien he’s experimenting on’s species come to kill them all. And on top of this you have the Orson Welles subplot that barely ties into the story and is, for the most part, underused. In fact, a lot of this story is underused, The War of the Worlds is a really cool historical moment to base a Doctor Who story off but it’s basically just there until the final part, when the script decides it’s needed. And, with the metric f**k ton of plot threads all colliding, most of the ideas feel underbaked. A Doctor Who film noir; cool idea, but we can’t focus on it because we’re too busy fighting annoying bat aliens. Gatiss is a writer who isn’t short on good ideas but often fails to use them the right way, and Invaders from Mars is no exception.

Entering a Gatiss script, you can expect a good but ultimately unfulfilling time. There is a unique genericness to his stories, a certain hollowness that plagues a good majority of scripts and leaves you with a fine narrative, full of fine ideas realised okay with fine characters. A little boring and very much core Doctor Who, as close as you can get to formula for this show. Invaders from Mars is not bad by any means, but it’s not leaving you with anything special.

6/10

Pros:

+ Eight and Charley are at their best here

+ New York is well realised in its time period

+ Really fun and fast paced story

+ Clever use of the War of the Worlds

Cons:

- Too many similar characters with cartoonish accents

- Balances far too many plot threads at once

- Underutilises a lot of cool ideas