The Monthly Adventures #010 - "Winter for the Adept" by Andrew Cartmel

Relistening to audios I’ve already experienced was one of the things I was primarily looking forward to in this marathon, mostly because I think I rated things a little wrong the first time around. On my first journey through The Monthly Range, skipping over most standalone adventures and poor, non-essential outings, the scores I dished out for these audio adventures were all incredibly high; the lowest I ever went was a 5/10 and eights were a commonality. I was actually looking forward to the bad stories, because it meant I could experience new lows and rant about them in these reviews, as well as get a complete picture for the Main Range. I’ve already experienced pain with The Genocide Machine and now I get to experience pure, unadulterated joy as I watch (or I guess listen) a story crash and burn before my eyes (or, ears, I suppose). This is Winter for the Adept: a trash fire.

When a teleportation experiment gone wrong strands Nyssa in the blistering cold of a remote, Alpine all-girls school, the Trakenite finds herself wrapped up in a haunting, a schoolgirl’s elopement and an alien race’s experiments with psychic abilities.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

When you can only think of one or two positives for a story, you know you’re dealing with a hulking beast of a bad time. The one thing about Winter for the Adept that I could truly admire is that it had some good ideas. That is it. The idea of a haunting being caused by telepathy - a cool idea. The setting? I’ve already expressed my love for snowbound stories in The Land of the Dead, and the frozen and remote academy is a striking visual. There is good here, even if you have to dig for it. The biggest mercy I can give this story is I didn’t hate listening to it; that’s the only reason I didn’t give it a 1/10, I haven’t had this much fun laughing at a car crash since The Legend of the Sea Devils.

But what caused this car to crash exactly? Where does Winter for the Adept go wrong? Everywhere. It goes wrong literally everywhere. The dialogue: atrocious, genuinely some of the worst I’ve ever heard to the point where it makes the Chibnall era look like a Tarantino film. There is not a single line of dialogue that feels natural, and by extension, none of the characters feel natural, not even Nyssa, whose performance is still on shaky ground. The Doctor’s the one character here that feasibly could be a real person (personality-wise, I don’t mean actually) and that’s mainly just because of Davison’s performance. India Fisher shows up six audios early and, whilst I don’t adore her performance as Charley or anything, it’s incredible to see how much better she must’ve gotten in half a year because dear god is she terrible here. Ok, just going to list some negatives, hold on: the sound design is a mess and I kept on thinking on of my earbuds had disconnected, it feels like it’s trying to go for some heightened realism thing with all the “eccentric” personalities but then decides to play the entire thing straight, just making every character embarrassing, the Spillagers are villains we are told are “evil” and “dangerous” but we never actually get to see why or are even told what they’re whole deal is, just that they have something to do with telekinesis and despite only being 90 minutes long, it felt like it had overstayed its welcome halfway through. Despite its many, many, many flaws, I’d struggle to call Winter for the Adept bad, just incredibly baffling. What Andrew Cartmel must’ve been on to think this was a finished product is beyond me. The Doctor isn’t in a majority of Part One; why? Literally no reason. A ghost just shows up in Part Three and then has no bearing on the plot, and if you want to know just how utterly f**ked this entire script is, the climax happens off screen. The climax. Happens. Off. Screen. That has to be the most basic thing Cartmel could’ve gotten wrong here. And that’s not even mentioning it’s paced horribly: we’re knee deep in the plot by the five minute mark and I’ve had no time to adjust to this setting or world, so any atmosphere or immersion I may have had is just gone. Plus, it’s bookended by an exceedingly pointless narration by one of the characters. Odd choice, but I’m pretty sure it’s only there because Andrew Cartmel didn’t know how to start or end this dumpster fire of a “story”.

I really would give Winter for the Adept a 1/10, I really would, but I can’t bring myself to because it’s just so goddamn funny. There is a moment where a table is levitated using telekinesis and is used to attack an alien, and India Fisher’s character’s reaction is “Oh good! A floating table! Just what I’ve always wanted!” in absolute sincerity and that is the hardest I’ve laughed since a PNG jumped onto a ghost ship in The Legend of the Sea Devils. If you want to experience a story beautifully fall to lower and lower levels of quality, whilst breaking all its metaphorical bones, I highly recommend Winter for the Adept; it might sometimes get a little dull, and a little painful, but the bits where you can just sit back and laugh at it are pure gold.

2/10

Pros:

+ There were a few good ideas hidden in the piles of garbage

+ Not actively painful to sit through

Cons:

- The absolute worst dialogue I have ever heard in a DW story

- Every single character is either dull or works to annoy me

- Has no tonal focus and can’t decide if it wants to be a fun runaround, a horror story or a comedy

- Way too fast paced

- The Spillagers are extremely underwhelming villains

- The plot is so poorly designed that it ends off screen

- Terrible sound design that made some scenes actively painful to sit through

- Bookended by completely pointless and annoying narration

- Makes constant baffling decisions, like the sudden introduction of a ghost who has next to no bearing on the narrative or the Doctor being missing for a good twenty minutes

- India Fisher’s character in particular was awfully written as well as acted