The Monthly Adventures #002 - "Phantasmagoria" by Mark Gatiss

The Fifth Doctor is the one pre-Whitaker Doctor I never gelled with. It’s not that he’s too human, or irritable, or catty, I just found him to be ultimately very dull and fall short of the other Doctors before and after him. This isn’t bashing the incarnation, I still find a lot of his stories fun and I don’t even dislike him all that much - Davison is a stellar performer - it’s just that compared to his predecessors and successors, he doesn’t quite reach the heights they did. However, since it’s Big Finish that ultimately turned me around to loving the Sixth Doctor, I expect them to at least get close to the same with Five, beginning with an eerie mystery set in Stuart England: Phantasmagoria.

Landing in 18th Century London, the Doctor and Turlough become embroiled in the occult research of a local physician and the machinations of the mysterious Sir Valentine and the victims of his card table at the local gambling club.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Gatiss is not a writer I would label as a favourite. On one hand, he did write Nightshade, which stands as one of my favourite Doctor Who stories period, but he also wrote a litany of bland and overall unimpressive stories for TV, all of which fail to wow me. His audio output seems to be somewhere in between - Phantasmagoria is certainly not a bad audio or a poor introduction to the regular formula of The Monthly Adventures, but it’s definitely not a story one would remember after listening to it. It’s an absolute joyride - fun and lighthearted without feeling shallow or childish - but past that, it isn’t much. Davison and Strickson are both great and they carry their respective subplots, easily slipping back into their characters. David Ryall’s performance as the infinitely eerie Nikolas Valentine is another great strength of this audio and his inherent otherworldliness helps the horror elements of the audio break through. As for plot, it’s nothing standout, a simple mystery that is slowly revealed to be alien in origin but I will highlight the part three twist of two characters - Hannah, the kindly maid, and Lovemore, the dashing highwayman - being the same alien in two disguises hunting for Valentine was a genuinely fun reveal that breathed some new life into the story for the final part.

However, as with most of Gatiss’ works, Phantasmagoria is really nothing unique. It boasts a bunch of great ideas - an alien masquerading as nobleman gambler, the Doctor performing a seance, Valentine’s living spaceship - but it never focuses on any of them for too long and we only ever see glimpses of more interesting stories passing us by in favour of the narrative’s next fixation. Another flaw of Gatiss’ script is that he cast himself and his mate - David Walliams - as two characters that are just ridiculous: overacted caricatures that turn the episode into a pantomime and frankly, they have next to no reason for being so over the top. Eventually, the story wraps up in a pretty lacklustre way with Valentine being tricked easily and most characters escaping completely unharmed, nothing to write home about.

Overall, Phantasmagoria was a fun if narratively lacking story that never spent enough time on all its conflicting ideas. It’s a Gatiss script if I’ve ever seen one, inoffensive but far from bad, certainly a worthy opener to the Main Range formula going forwards.

7/10

Pros:

+ Tremendous fun that really keeps up a great pace

+ Valentine was a terrifically creepy villain with a great performance behind him

+ The reveal of Hannah/Lovemore’s identity was a fun part three twist

+ Strickson and Davison both nail their performances on the first go

Cons:

- Full of great ideas that are minimally explored

- Gatiss and Walliams play overacted and unfortunately prominent characters.

- The ending falls mostly flat