A Sting in the Tale

It’s probably unfair to review this story without acknowledging that it is really Episode 4 of a five part adventure, Hornet’s Nest. The first three ‘chapters’ of this series: The Stuff of Nightmares; The Dead Shoes and The Circus of Doom, are actually more standalone that this story but still form part of an ongoing adventure which sees the Fourth Doctor (sort of, I’ll come to that later) recounting his encounters with alien hornets back through time. He is recounting them to Captain Mike Yates and is living in a small cottage with a housekeeper called Mrs Wibbsey and a wolfhound called Captain. As the stories progress it is revealed that the Doctor’s and hornets’ timestreams are travelling in opposite directions (e.g. the Doctor’s first encounter with the hornets in 2010 is actually the hornets last encounter with him). This is all very Eleventh Doctor/River Song timey wimey.

I will do proper reviews of the other chapters when I reach them chronologically (1832 for The Circus of Doom; 1932 for The Dead Shoes) and so will focus now on A Sting in the Tale. This instalment ties up many of the threads from previous chapters, leading to the finale in the fifth and final CD, Hive of Horror. The Doctor tells Mike of how he tracked the hornets back to 1039 finding them inhabiting the mind of a pig. A pig which is being treated as the Mother Superior by a group of nuns! The hornets eventually decamp to a wolfhound which the Doctor manages to get on board the TARDIS. Once there, the hornets invade the Doctor’s mind and there ensues a fairly length conversation about the previous stories, the timey-wimey nature of the overall arc and the swarm’s plans for domination. The hornets eventually leave the Doctor and we return to the present where the Doctor and Mike decide to leave the cellar they have been hiding in (from hornet-possessed stuffed animals and a hornet-possessed Mrs Wibbsey).

Basically, not a lot happens. There are some gruesome scenes early on when possessed wolfhounds are attacking the convent in an attempt to retrieve the swarm leader (residing inside the pig) but a sizeable chunk of the story is taken up with a very long (and not very engaging) conversation between the Doctor and the Swarm.

A lack of plot, though, would be forgivable were I more attuned with the way this series has been presented. For Who fans used to the full cast audios of Big Finish, or even the single voice audios from the BBC, Hornet’s Nest is a weird amalgam of the two. It’s closest in presentation to Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles, but has more than their usual two or three voices. At minimum, we have the Doctor, Mike and Mrs Wibbsey, accompanied in each story by a mixture of other, usually quite strange, characters performed by other actors.

But even this could work if, and here is my biggest problem with this series, this felt anything like Doctor Who.

It doesn’t.

Within half an hour of listening to the first instalment I was struck by how much this series is, basically, The Tom Baker Adventures. Tom Baker is not playing the Fourth Doctor. He’s playing Tom Baker. This feels like what Baker would have become in the original television series had JNT not restrained his excesses when he took over for Season 18. Frankly, it’s terrible. I’ve never been a fan of Tom Baker and have baulked at the hero-worship he receives from a lot of (generally older) fans. As a child of the 80s I don’t have a ‘romantic’ relationship with the Fourth Doctor. He was just the curly haired bloke who came before the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors (who I grew up with). I think Tom is a great Doctor, but then I think ALL the actors (with one exception) have been great Doctors (and I include the ‘non-canonical’ in that statement).

The Tom Baker Adventures continue throughout the episodes up to and including this story. This is a ‘character’ who could quite convincingly spout Tom’s anecdotes about profanity-strewn tombstones, grannies with heaving bosoms or dogs at bus stops and it would seem in keeping with the dialogue writer Paul Magrs has given him (although to be fair, there is little way of knowing how much Tom has ‘adapted’ the original script).

The underused Captain Yates (who is basically just a device for the Doctor to tell the story to) and the ridiculously named (although delightfully performed by Susan Jameson) Mrs Wibbsey have no chance of matching the sheer barminess of Baker (and Richard Franklin’s material is atrocious – question after question merely written to draw the next part of the Doctor’s,…I mean Tom Baker’s, story).

The concept of the hornets and the timey-wimey relationship with the Doctor/Tom Baker is a good one but it is lost underneath an unending barrage of florid dialogue and what constantly feels like an indulgent Tom Baker.

Historically, A Sting in the Tale gives us our first medieval Nuns but they are particularly ballsy types, wielding axes and swords with aplomb, with a crazy line in pig care. A wintery landscape and a convent, sprinkled liberally with wolfhounds (one of which becomes the Doctor/Tom Baker’s loyal pet, Captain), gives way to the TARDIS console room fairly quickly leaving this as a game of two halves.

This was the first time I’d ever listened to this audio. When I come to review the other instalments it will be the second time. I will be interested to see whether approaching them with a better idea of their idiosyncratic format will make me more accepting and able to appreciate them a little more. We will see.

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

Previous Story: The Circus of Doom

Finally, we reach the end of the Doctor's string of tales. The explanation for how the hornets came to inhabit stuffed animals in the present is finally concluded by the Doctor, and we are now caught up to speed with events. It's also explained how the hornets came to possess Antonio.

In an interesting twist, it turns out the Doctor has caused most of his own problems. The scenes where the Doctor himself is possessed by the hornets is horrifying, you can feel the peril he is in as he describes losing control.

Next Story: Hive of Horror