The Monthly Adventures #014 - "The Holy Terror" by Robert Shearman

Doctor Who is my favourite show for a very good reason. It is, in my opinion, the greatest sandbox for creative minds ever conceived, a concept so good you could write any story inside of it, set in any time with any genre, and it could feasibly work given it was penned by a decent writer. Any story could come out of Doctor Who and sometimes, once in a blue moon, you get a masterpiece. “Masterpiece” can be used to describe the entire body of work by Robert Shearman. My favourite writer of all time, author of some of my favourite stories of all time and seemingly and all around great guy, this will not be the last you hear of Robert Shearman during this marathon and it will certainly not be the most gushing (I think this is the worst of his works in The Monthly Adventures). A surreal psychological horror that boasts one of Big Finish’s funniest scripts and a weird f**king story to boot, this is The Holy Terror.

In an empire where God has died, leaving his son to be crowned his successor, the Doctor and his Whifferdill-companion Frobisher have arrived and are hailed as messengers from heaven. But a plot to usurp the throne and a great evil in the castle’s crypts threaten to end the very world itself.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The Holy Terror is a very unique story, even amongst Shearman’s own body of work. His stories always have a very dry, black-as-night comedy underlying them but here, the comedy is front and centre, and it really works. This audio is absolutely hilarious, there were some very full on laugh out loud moments for me, especially early on. I mean, the whole story begins when the TARDIS goes on strike because Frobisher had been abusing its power too much, which is a funny concept by itself but every single character here has one or two quirks that makes them comedic gold. In fact the whole sidecast is on top form; a side cast can often make or break a story with me (even if the story’s good, I don’t want to be stuck with dull characters) but every single cast member of The Holy Terror is their own brand of bizarre and it really works, the story takes itself seriously enough for these very out there personalities to not become caricatures, and this helps when the audio shifts in tone towards the end. Added to our roster of characters is Frobisher, a companion from the comics as this is our second “side-step” following The Shadow of the Scourge, and I’ll say it outright, Frobisher might be the best part of this audio with a brilliant vocal performance lending itself to the character - a large amount of the laughs came from him. And whilst The Holy Terror is a comedy at heart, it’s no surprise that Shearman twists this quirky misadventure into something that’ll scar you for life. The third act change in tone is something that really shouldn’t work, the rest of the story is so light and now you have people being literally ripped apart and aged backwards into an infant before being violently murdered, and yet it works. Probably because the humour was already a little bleak but it still is quite astounding how Shearman manages to not alienate the listener. It’s basically revealed that the brother to the emperor - Childeric - has been raising a child god in the depths of the castle, though this child breaks free from his “father” and begins to slaughter everybody in the building. It’s then revealed that the Child is in fact the son of the court scribe, and the entire castle is a fiction created by him to punish himself for murdering said child in the real world. Utterly bizarre twist but it really works in the context of the story, much like everything else this audio tries to do. This final part is so oddly sad, you have Sejanus’ outburst at Frobisher and Eugene finally confronting his son, choosing to kill himself rather than his child, ending the prison’s cycle and leaving Six and Frobisher to have no choice but to quietly depart. It’s incredibly bleak but, once again, it just works. Like, incredibly well, this final part is genuine perfection, I love every single bit of it.

Which is why it also damages the story a little. I said before this is my least favourite of Shearman’s works and I stand by that, mostly because I think the end eclipses the rest of the story. I like the first half but it doesn’t hold a candle to the third act and a lot of the narrative feels like it builds up to this moment rather than a story unto itself. However, I will mention that I didn’t love the Child because you could tell it was an adult voicing him, just with the pitch heightened and that got very annoying very quickly.

The Holy Terror is utter brilliance, a surreal horror story that can make you laugh out loud and then leave you shaking. I think that one part outweighs the rest in terms of quality, and that causes the first half to become a little meandering in my opinion, but it’s Robert Shearman, he’s a hard man to criticise. The best is still very much yet to come, and I can’t wait to talk about it.

9/10

Pros:

+ Frobisher is an incredibly fun character backed by a great performance

+ Genuinely really funny, Shearman gets flex his comedy muscles a lot here

+ The macabre, bizarre tone is very unique and makes this audio stand out

+ Has an incredibly memorable and colourful cast of characters

+ Great third act shake-up that redirects the tone

+ Sombre and surprisingly moving ending

+ The medieval castle turned torture chamber is a brilliant setting

+ Shockingly harrowing and bleak, especially when the first half was so funny

Cons:

- The final act is significantly better than the first two

- The Child’s voice got really grating really quickly