The Sixth Doctor and Peri share an adventure on board a starship taken over by its dual personality computer, which tries to take the ship back to the dawn of the universe and start life again. Along the way the duo meet a couple of comedy policemen, an art thief and a captain who wants to infect his crew with one of his diseases... - TARDIS wiki

This is a review/commentary about the BBC Radio drama Slipback by Eric Saward. In this episode, the BBC murdered the visuals so all we have is the audio of the adventure... or someone forgot to turn the light on. I will preface this review with some valuable and important context before delving into the episode proper. And it goes without saying that these are my opinions, you do not have to agree.

Eric Saward is, quite possibly, a very nice man, but that's not the impression he gives off in behind-the-scenes interviews and anecdotes I've heard about him. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true; his reputation with others would suggest a man frustrated with the world around him or the job he was doing. This anger fuels his more famous stories like Resurrection and Revelation Of The Daleks, Earthshock and Attack Of The Cybermen (yes, he wrote it, Ian Levine had nothing to do with it).

While this vitriol leads to some interesting dark sections (something I'm always a big fan of) but his stories often leave me feeling bored or dull - Revelation being the exception because it manages to be consistent in its themes and execution. So colour me surprised when I find there's another literary masterpiece of his I haven't experienced - an audio drama released during the infamous 1985 hiatus.

Well, this I have to hear.

The thing about Colin's era for me is that, prickly and rough around the edges though it is, I do quite like it. There's a certain undercurrent of ominousness to stories written during his era. The universe feels a little less safe, and a bit more spooky. Toss in the fact that our leading man is often unpredictable and can even turn on the companion and you have the core elements for some potentially really interesting television.

I say potentially because stories like Timelash remind me that not everyone got the memo.

Nevertheless, you have potential here. Better yet, for a story like Slipback, you're bound by audio - now you don't have to worry about the limitations of budget in regard to your visuals. You could do practically whatever you wanted. Maybe, finally, Eric would pull his socks up and deliver a cracking story. Surely... surely he wouldn't miss and hit the wall. He had every reason to succeed!

Slipback is just utter bollocks. Were Pirate Radio 4 really so desperate for new content that they thought, “Hmm yes, this is acceptable”?

The usual staples of Eric Sward storytelling are on full display: acres of a garbled mess of the English language that I like to call Sawardese spew out of characters' mouths, the plot starts off decently then spirals into nigh incomprehensible gibberish, and the medium the story is made for clearly hasn't been accounted for at all.

I expected this, yet I'm still disappointed.

The supporting actors are... something else entirely. I can't tell if they're trying their best or taking the piss. There's a range of acting styles on display, and none of them are even remotely convincing. I guess it doesn't help that the script is just plain bad, but like... come on now. This was the first new Doctor Who content in months, a show that was held in high regard by lots of people both in and out of the fandom, and the director really thought, “Hmm yes, I'll just tell them to wing it”?

Speaking of winging it, the sound design is seriously lacking and the effects dubbed on the actors' voices to simulate different environs sound really cheap. What was the budget for this? 20p? A piece of paper saying “you'll get paid, trust me”? Eric Saward's taxi fare? I jest, of course, but my mate Karma's just informed me that the budget got slashed before recording started which... yeah, Grade and the Beeb really were trying to kill Who, weren't they?

The problem with Slipback is that, if retooled by someone else, it might have been actually good. Like - get everybody treating the script with sincerity, rewrite all the bits that don't make sense, make the dialogue actually sound like human speech and not archaic neue-Shakespearean rubbish and you might have something genuinely good on your hands. As it is, that's not what we get.

When people yarn on about how bad the synths in 80s Who sound, I'm convinced they're talking about this story, because this is one of very few examples where the music is just utterly terrible. Usually the tunes and leitmotifs have some hummable element to them, and can stick in your head for years if done right. An example that comes to mind is the score that opens Mark Of The Rani, this elegant and beautifully composed piece of music that really just sets the scene for you. The music in Slipback is like someone took a bootleg video game and corrupted its data. I'm fairly sure this constitutes hearing damage. The BBC owes you compensation and a complimentary hearing aid simply for listening to it.

Slipback is a crime against Doctor Who. It was the last anyone could hope to hear from the programme until the hiatus ended, and even then, most people were convinced it wouldn't. Morale in fandom was low. The production team were reeling from their jobs suddenly and viciously being put on ice simply due to the pettiness of their channel's controller. Colin was in a state where he thought he'd killed the show. Nicola Bryant had been treated terribly by John Nathan-Turner. The future of the programme was in doubt.

Eric Saward had a massive opportunity to turn things around, to save the show that had kept the lights on in his house for 4 years. Instead, he elected to write utter sludge and the resulting production feels messy and all over the place. Colin and Nicola are acting their hearts out, desperately trying to save such a crap story from being eviscerated by the fans and while yes, they do carry the production, even their combined efforts is not enough for me to be positive about it.

Slipback is just plain bad. If you must experience this story, watch Ian Levine's animated rendition because at least then the visuals are funny but the overall experience is like taking a teaspoon of sugar before consuming five entire lemons. This story is so insipidly dull, badly written, questionably performed and shoddily edited that it feels like parody. The only difference being that parodies are funny.

As I write this post, I genuinely wonder if Eric ever actually put much stock into Doctor Who to begin with. He talks fondly about some aspects but is horribly condemning about most others; he talks with pomp about stories he wrote before casually trashing stories that didn't quite match up to his impossible standards. He wasn't willing to help writers realise their potential, he was just in it for the money. For someone who claims to like the show, given his track record, he didn't seem to have all that much investment in it.

Slipback is the ultimate proof of this, the smoking gun if you will. When put in a position to save the show, he just puts out a damp squib. Sure, you could make the argument that “oh, it was for kids so maybe he wasn't as invested”. Yeah, that might be so, but Who has a habit of being considered a kiddy show in general, yet he would sometimes bring his a-game to the screen... why not here?

I genuinely cannot fathom what went wrong, or where in the pipeline the fault happened. But happen it did, and you're left with something that's so massively underwhelming I can't even recommend it as a joke. If you're to take anything away from this, it's that Doctor Who audios really didn't hit their stride until Big Finish because man...listening to the BBC ones is like wading through treacle.

Don't listen to this. Just don't. You'd be wasting your time. But hey, at least it's not The Eight Doctors, huh?