1001 Nights

Big Finish a few years back settled into a pattern for the main range.  After experimenting with 3 episode/1 episode releases (which obviously weren’t felt to work very well, as they disappeared from the release schedule) they now seem to favour trilogies of releases centred around a particular Doctor and a trilogy which features one of three Doctors across the three releases (the 1963 selection, the trilogy starting with The Burning Prince and the upcoming ‘displaced Doctors’ releases).  Nestled between these trilogies is usually a single anthology release.  The majority of these have been 4 distinct stories, occasionally linked by a running theme (the numbers 45 and 100 for example).

With 1001 Nights, however, we have a different use of the format.  Drawing on the tale of Scheherzade, we find Nyssa forced to tell tales to a Sultan to preserve her own and the Doctor’s lives.  What this means is that we actually have 3 stories, surrounded by a framing device which is a proper story in its own right.  Indeed, the first and final episodes are mainly concerned with telling this ‘1001 Nights’ tale.  The first story Nyssa tells is very short and only the second (The Interplanetarian) and the third (Smuggling Tales) are a full episode in length.  Even then, the ‘main’ story recurs throughout as we cut back to the Doctor’s attempts to escape prison.

So, the story opens with the Doctor and Nyssa somewhere on the Arabian peninsula in the 9th century.  Searching for an alien device, the Doctor has ended up in the Sultan’s dungeon and Nyssa is being forced to tell stories of their exploits.  As her stories continue, the Doctor meets an old man in the cell next to his, who claims to be the Sultan but seems to be suffering from some sort of perception control.  It is revealed, eventually, that the Sultan in the palace is an imposter but before he is unmasked, the Doctor ends up stranded in 9th Century Arabia for the best part of 3 years – 1001 nights, in fact.

This is more than just a framing device.  Were this a Companion Chronicle, this story would be secondary to the one being told by Nyssa.  In this release, the stories Nyssa tells are smaller, less consequential, than the tale of the fake Sultan.  It is a great story.  Performed faultlessly by Davison, Sutton, Alexander Siddig as the fake Sultan and Nadim Sawalha as the real Sultan, it weaves itself around Nyssa’s tales and most of the time, even though Nyssa’s stories were engaging, I kept wanting the action to return to the palace.

The climax, which takes us away from 9th Century Arabia, sees Siddig getting a chance to play ‘the Doctor’ and its quite exciting to hear another ‘what if’ cleverly integrated into the story.  With Siddig’s Star Trek credentials, not to mention his other forays into fantasy (such as Atlantis), it is easy to picture him as a potential Doctor.  When his ‘Doctor’ starts to struggle with his psyche, Siddig is marvellous: desperate, angry and broken all at the same time.The palace and Arabia are convincingly realised through sound design, script and performances.  What’s interesting, though, is how the dialogue in this story sounds more natural than the more theatrical style favoured by other Arabic-flavoured stories such as The Crusade or The Destroyer of Delights.  I found this made the story much easier to listen to.  In fact, this story provides a good companion piece to The Destroyer of Delights which took one of the common tales included in 1001 Nights anthologies, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and gave it a Doctor Who twist.

Historically, there is the link with Scheherezade, but not a lot else.  Although only legendary, the character is tied up in many Arabian legends and members of royalty.  The place the story occurs is not named, although reference is made to the Caliphate (although it seems to be a different one that the one referred to in The Destroyer of Delights (where the White Guardian has taken on the role of his Legate)).  A History’s dating of the story is a little arbitrary but based on the ‘Sultan’ knowing of Scheherezade (which is loosely dated to the 9th century) and that the Arabian sequences have happened ‘many centuries’ before the 1892 date of The Interplanetarian.

A very enjoyable anthology and definitely one of the best examples of this type of release.  It isn’t a format which Big Finish could repeat too often, but it would be good to see what else they could do with the anthology format rather than just having four separate stories all the time.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: 1001 Nights (Smuggling Tales)

This anthology has been an absolute pain to review. I probably would have enjoyed all of this so much more if I wasn't busy trying to decipher what I was actually listening to. Anyway I figured it out in the end, 1001 Nights is made up of the opening and closing segments of the first three parts, followed by the entirety of the fourth part. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are the three other stories in this anthology respectively.

It's a great story as a whole, the setting is vibrant and unique. This is greatly accompanied by the fantastic score throughout. The idea of a creature that assumes identities seems fairly basic at first but it's made much more interesting by the fact that they aren't a generic shapeshifter. The Doctor getting his memories wiped and then left on the floor as the TARDIS flew away painted a tragic picture. That element of the story was resolved too quickly in my opinion though.

This story could have done with an extra part expanding on both the amnesiac Doctor and the false Doctor as that was glossed over very fast. There was a touching scene with the old Sultan. In general this is just a really good story from start to finish. I think it could have done without the other stories even if I can't really see a way they could have been excluded. It was a nice touch that they mirrored the main story's themes of false-identity and storytelling but otherwise they just felt so messy and out of place.

Still, this specific story in the anthology is easily the best and ties everything up quite neatly. In the nicest way possible though I hope I never have to review another anthology like this one ever again.

Next Story: Fanfare for the Common Men

This episode as a four part whole was fine. It was an intriguing setup, making Nyssa tell tales to the Sultan in order to have the Doctor released from his prison. However, it seemed strangely disjointed throughout - possibly a function of not listening to it all in one go, but I feel that trying to connect the three substories into the main one, especially when the main one basically didn't make sense, was an interesting choice.

As I say, it was fine enough. I enjoyed listening to the little anthology stories, especially the last one, and I even liked the alien villain as an idea. Using stories to metamorphose into other people is a cool idea, and worked well on audio, however with ten minutes left in the episode, the villain assuming the Doctor's identity, and Nyssa swept away with the villain, one of two things could have happened: the plot could spill over into the next story and have the next box be all about the Doctor retrieving his identity; or things could get resolved quickly with a handwave.

And, to my disappointment, it was the latter. I felt the conclusion to this set to be too quick, too tidy, and all the suspense of the Doctor losing his memory and sense of self gets completely undermined by the fact he gets himself back one scene later. Certainly not the worst MR story by a long shot, and as I say, enjoyable enough. But I don't think I'll be revisiting this one.