The Monthly Adventures #020 - "Loups-Garoux" by Marc Platt

Doctor Who, being a science-fantasy show, has many a time dabbled in the realms of folklore and famous brands of monster. It’s done vampires and ghosts and things that go bump in the night over and over again. And a couple times it’s done werewolves. From Tooth and Claw to Kursaal, there is no shortage of lupine metamorphers howling at the moon and Loups-Garoux is an interesting entry into this subcategory of story. Marc Platt is a very hit or miss writer in my opinion, some of his stories are gold and some are dull trudging, so you never really know what you’re going to get. Whilst I’d hesitate to call Loups-Garoux a bad story, I will call it an incredibly strange one.

On holiday in Rio, the Doctor and Turlough discover a secret society that has lived for millennia, a secret society that hunts at the dead of night, that can transform into wolves at will.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Loups-Garoux is a story I can confidently say I haven’t seen done before. Marc Platt, for all his flaws, certainly doesn’t write anything generic and Loups-Garoux is brimming with fascinating ideas for you to get swallowed up by. The worldbuilding is magnificent, the near future Brazil turned into a desolate dustbowl by advanced industrialisation is an evocative setting and the Loups-Garoux themselves, our strain of werewolf this time around, is a whole new take on the mythos, which I feel it would have to be to keep it interesting. The werewolves here can transform at will and have eternal life, but are also not infected via bite of curse, instead by unlocking some deep, inner darkness present in every human. It’s a cool idea and I like that the story chose to not just make them “werewolves from space”. However, I don’t think this audio ever explains exactly what they are, werewolves are just real I guess, there isn’t any extraterrestrial techno-babble explanation, human beings are just one particularly bad day off growing teeth and ripping peoples’ heads off. It’s a weird idea but this whole audio is weird, so it evens out; there’s a dream-like quality to the entire script and it often feels like walking through some strange nightmare, with werewolves and spirits all darting about. And making this nightmare reality is Pieter Stubbe, our big bad and a werewolf of legend: “The Grey One” and the father of all other Loups-Garoux. Nicky Henson’s audio performance has this very deep and gravelly quality that lends itself well to the character, and I think it was the main reason why I was so threatened by Stubbe, he served nicely as an antagonist.

Unfortunately, for as much as I loved the idea of Loups-Garoux, the story leaves something to be desired. Marc Platt stories can often get too convoluted - just look at Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible - and by the end, so many different plot threads were happening that it was hard to keep track. On one hand you have Stubbe trying to wed Iliana, and the Doctor becoming her champion, and on the other you have Rosa, the random woman with spirits living in her head that feels a few bad mistakes of a racial stereotype, running around with Turlough. There’s also two different romance subplots, Rosa with Turlough and Five with Iliana. Neither of these land for me, both have very little time relegated to them due to how much stuff is happening and end up feeling underbaked. Also, the audio sounded strange pretty much the whole time, all the voices sounded oddly tinny, like they weren’t mixed properly. Other than that, as much as I like the setting, I don’t think it’s utilised enough. You’re in a barren Rio in the middle of carnival and you spend half your audio on a train? A lot more interesting stuff could’ve been done with the city in my opinion.

Loups-Garoux was a story I could massively appreciate. It was new, it was bold, it toyed with new ideas and gave me a bleak but dream-like future world I could get immersed in. Using vampires and ghouls and werewolves for your antagonist is an idea that’s getting stale, but Loups-Garoux does enough new that I still find it interesting. An overencumbered story and some failed romance significantly harms the audio for me, but it’s definitely an interesting listen.

6/10

Pros:

+ Has a surreal, dream-like quality that lends itself well to the audio

+ Some great world building, I loved the idea of an underground ring of werewolves

+ Tries something different with the werewolf mythos, which I can respect it for

+ Stubbe was a well acted and often threatening antagonist

Cons:

- Doesn’t make good enough use of its setting

- Neither of the romantic subplots landed

- Too much going on, gets rather hard to follow

- Strangely tinny audio