The Monthly Adventures #060 - “Medicinal Purposes" by Robert Ross

The 2000s were, let's say, a different time. A time when more things were acceptable, when attitudes were far less caring for one’s fellow man. Thankfully, things have changed since then but by golly has the time’s media not aged well. Medicinal Purposes is in poor taste for a number of reasons;  on top of everything, it's not very good, but it also just so happens to fundamentally misunderstand our main characters in a remarkably baffling way. Face to face with a pair of infamous body snatchers, what does our hero do? Congratulate them, apparently. 

Arriving in misty 1820s Edinburgh, the Doctor and Evelyn become wrapped up in the story of Burke and Hare, two graverobbers working for the enigmatic Dr. Knox - a man with knowledge beyond this world.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Where do I even start with this story? It’s one of those beasts where it just feels like a list of bad moves on the writer’s part -  and this is supposed to be one of Robert Ross’ better stories! I guess I’ll begin with the main positive takeaway I had, which was Leslie Phillips as this audio’s antagonist - Dr. Knox. Knox is not a great character, he is a moustache twirling villain who rants about his evil plans to himself and sits down to talk his machinations over with our hero. He is a manual on how to write a disappointing antagonist. But god dammit does Phillips pull this pantomime character out of the depths of hell and make him a good time to listen to. Phillips manages to carry Knox with a decidedly humorous undertone, fully leaning into the ridiculous bravado of a Bondesque bad guy and making his scenes by far and away the best of the audio. It’s not good, but compared to the rest of this s**t show, it’s a blessing. Which is a shame because I genuinely like some of the stuff Ross was going for here. The idea of a galactic con man locking a historical tragedy in a time loop so he can show it off to the highest bidder is genuinely really fun and could’ve been great if somebody with half a brain wrote it. Unfortunately, it's barely capitalised on and how the “Burke and Hare Experience” works is never really outlined. It also could’ve been interesting to lean into the Doctor’s morality, what with the moral dilemma of “would you kill for science?” up in the air and this being a character who has gone from callous to kind hearted over the course of his tenure. If only the direction this throughline goes wasn’t the Doctor fully supporting and congratulating murder.

Getting into the many troughs of poor decision making present in this script, let's recap: the Doctor and Evelyn find themselves in the killing spree of graverobbers William Burke and William Hare, who murdered people on behalf of one Dr. Robert Knox for his dissections and studies of anatomy. Now, the Doctor realises this and, rather than condemn such a callous disregard for human life or perhaps way up the philosophical implications of killing to better the world, goes to shake hands with serial murderer William Hare for killing innocent people because something-something the pursuit of science. It’s a bizarre left turn for the Doctor to have and certainly not helped by the fact that Evelyn - a whip smart history lecturer - acts like an obviously doting old lady for the duration of this audio. Clearly, Ross did not understand either of these characters and so just did his own thing, making two bland and cold caricatures instead.

And then you move onto the dialogue, which practically ruins any hope of good characters in the first place. Both falling into the pit trap of trying to explain everything the listener can’t see and the pit trap of trying to be funny when you’re really not, it’s a slog to get through sometimes, especially when Ross combines the two problems and creates dull exposition bloated by poor attempts at wit. It’s not as bad as something like Winter for the Adept, but it's stilted and often overextends story beats.

However, perhaps the worst offense this audio makes is in the form of Daft Jamie, a historical victim of Burke and Hare played by none other than David Tennant, who just so happens to be a very early 2000s representation of somebody with a learning disability. Tennant certainly tries here - his performance is… energetic, to say the least - but it doesn’t save the fact that every single character treats Jamie as either an infant or an intrusion, including our leads. It's a very awkward and poorly aged mistake that makes Medicinal Purposes even harder to stomach, especially when the Doctor willingly leads him to his death at the end because of some weak web of time crap.

But, you know what? This story’s greatest sin isn’t that it’s offensive or that the characters are poor or that the dialogue is alien, it’s that it’s boring. This is a bottom of the barrel run around, a barely plotted mystery that switches between two locations with no drive, atmosphere or tension, every character barely reacting to what's going on around them and every plot reveal communicated in endlessly confusing ways that leave an overly simple story a chore to follow. Medicinal Purposes is a story that tries. It tries very hard, but is stuck with one of the worst scripts I’ve seen in a Doctor Who project, and for that I can only feel sorry for it.

It’s clear at this point that I do not like Medicinal Purposes. It has to hold every single problem I’ve ever had about a story and is only somewhat avenged because the whole cast is trying to make it work and there was a good amount of potential. What scares me though is that Robert Ross, for some reason, was invited back. And the story he wrote was Pier Pressure, which is rated far lower than this mess. I’m sure reviewing that one will be super fun.

3/10

Pros:

+ Knox was a fun villain

+ Has some great ideas

Cons:

- The Doctor and Evelyn acted massively out of character

- The dialogue was beyond atrocious

- Could barely explain its plot beats

- Oddly enough sides with the murderous bodysnatchers

- Daft Jamie was an incredibly offensive stereotype

- Dull and meandering story.