The Monthly Adventures #026 - "Primeval” by Lance Parkin

Nyssa’s not a favourite companion of mine. Yielding from the most infamous TARDIS team of the Classic Era, she was a companion with a lot going for her that was primarily let down by a lack of interest on the part of the writers and a somewhat bored performance. Nyssa never really had any good moments, anything particularly unique to her, unlike her fellow companions of the era, despite her possibly being the most interesting. A genius scientist from a utopian society that, like the Doctor, is the last of her kind following a great catastrophe, who’s father’s murderer walks around committing atrocities whilst wearing his face. That is a ridiculously good setup that is just never explored for whatever reason but it seems that once again Big Finish have come to our rescue, or at least Lance Parkin has. A prequel to her debut episode, is it finally time for Nyssa to shine? No, not really.

Afflicted with a mysterious illness, Nyssa is returned to Traken by the Doctor, who finds himself at odds with the local government. But in space, circling the planet, is a far greater evil, with some plans for Nyssa.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Primeval, also known as Doctor Who: The Doctor gets into Politics and Battles the Healthcare System, acts as a prequel to The Keeper of Traken, showing the “Primeval Times”, when the keeper was absent and the world was at the whim of giant supercomputer The Source, with a cowardly government that relied entirely on the machine. Whilst this story fails at expanding on Nyssa, which I’ll get to, it very much works as a story about Traken and its society. The worldbuilding here is immaculate and all the bits and pieces of this utopia we get to see are fascinating and easily my favourite part of this audio. I also love the political side of the script, the absolute backwards morals of an uber-religious governing church are incredibly funny when they immediately swap sides once their lives are threatened. The looks into how Traken is run are not only the most interesting parts of Primeval, they are the funniest, which is very much needed in an otherwise supremely dry script. Other than the worldbuilding, my highlight here was probably the Fifth Doctor himself as I consistently find this incarnation’s characterization to be very lacking, but here he genuinely surprised me. His desperation to save Nyssa and the inherent softness to his persona were deeply fascinating to me and I’d really like to see more looks into his character like this.

I’d also like to see more insights into Nyssa’s character, something this audio doesn’t do. Yeah, for something that leans so heavily on her introductory episode, we actually have very little Nyssa, instead focusing on the Doctor’s attempts to cure her. For half the episode she’s bedridden in the background and for the other half, she’s doing meaningless busywork so the script can remind you she’s there. In fact, this whole second half is honestly meaningless. The story ends pretty much halfway through; Nyssa and the Doctor could leave but the Doctor instead decides to very stupidly walk directly into the trap the big bad villain man obviously set for him. The antagonist, who I think was called Kwundaar, literally tells him “go here, it’ll help me” and then the Doctor just does out of curiosity I guess, which, surprise surprise, causes the planet to get invaded. On another note, I found Kwundaar to be incredibly dull as a villain - the voice acting was good but he felt like a very generic big bad. Also, for this second half, Nyssa’s stuck in a swimsuit, which… was an interesting decision.

Primeval’s one of the stories that just fail to impress. It isn’t bad per say, but it offers you next to nothing and it won’t stay with you after you finish listening to it. It’s one of those in-betweeny stories where you don’t dislike listening to it, but it’s simply average, and sometimes that’s worse than an outright bad story. Just a missed opportunity, through and through.

5/10

Pros:

+ Traken is gloriously realised

+ Love the political undertones of the episode

+ One of Five’s best outings thus far

Cons:

- Didn’t have enough of a focus on Nyssa

- Kwundaar was a somewhat underwhelming villain

- Story ends halfway through and is only continued due to the Doctor’s ineptitude

- Nyssa spends half the story in a swimsuit for seemingly no reason