📝9/10

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! 

This time: Jack Sparrow and Lloyd-Webber fear, the singing Doctor Who is here!

MY SCATTERED AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT NOTES:

“You know what makes a good story? Pirates!", says Evelyn, and I wholeheartedly agree! And what makes a pirate story even better, you ask? Well, one of two things: It's either Johnny Depp or musical numbers. Big Finish couldn't afford the former, so we will have to do with the latter.

I love how this story uses a framing device of Evelyn telling the tale to one of her students and how the student questions her storytelling all the time, making her change the story as she goes (it’s a bit of a riff on The Princess Bride, isn't it).

Jacqueline Rayner proved with The Marian Conspiracy that she has a knack for combining a pure historical with a funny and comical atmosphere, and she repeats the success here—we get fun pirate characters with fun pirate accents, lots of swashbuckling, and a tale filled with piracy, rum barrels, treasure, mystery, music, and adventure that rivals the pirate films of old! The script is clever and laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s truly impressive how it fires its jokes on all cylinders and every single one lands right on target.

The music is genuinely one of the very best of any Doctor Who story—televised, Big Finish, or otherwise.

Colin Baker and Maggie Stables offer some of their best performances on Doctor Who; both are natural with comedy, and Stables, in particular, is allowed to carry the story very well. Bill Oddie is a scene stealer as Red Jasper, one of the funniest pirate characters I’ve ever encountered; Nicholas Pegg, meanwhile, is endlessly funny as a wimpy sea captain.

Part 2 is very talky, and the funny pirate style of the story begins to lose its effect. Then comes the brilliant cliffhanger to part 2, after which Rayner makes an even more brilliant twist and turns Part 3 into a genuine musical—this is what I want from my Doctor Who!

Baker sings surprisingly well, and considering the complexity of the lyrics, the musical number (“I Am the Very Model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer”) here is impressive as well as funny. The later songs are also fun and varied (“I'm a Better Sailor Far Than You” is a particular favourite), with good vocals from Helen Goldwyn in particular, making Part 3 one of the very best single episodes in Big Finish history.

Despite its overwhelmingly humorous tone, Part 3 also reveals a more depressing twist related to Sally. It arrives as a gut-punch surprise and gives more emotional weight to the story. It also gives us some of the finest dialogue written for the Sixth Doctor I've come across.

Part 4 then becomes a treasure hunt, with Colin Baker once again taking the lead. This takes the pirate story and the more important framing device built around it to a satisfying conclusion.

What a beautiful story. My expectations were over the moon and they were still blown out of the water (water like like pirates on the sea guys). Probably also my bias for sea settings and ultra cliché horribly inaccurate portrayals of pirates. While listening I played some games where i just walked around in a pirate-island setting, so I was locked in to be fully immersed in this one ya know what i mean.

But then, and I’ve gotta be fair here, even if I enjoyed the stupid pirates a lot, as other reviewers have pointed out, the plot is terribly simplistic and the pacing all over the place, but like, I think it kinda works for me thematically? It’s a bit just scene after scene, skipping over stuff, it actually feels like a recount of an adventure instead of a standard DW adventure. All the messy desperateness to get to plot points they want, to needless extending of a scene, feels like a very specific stylistic writing choice, especially because we know that Rayner can write meticulously paced stories. I mean we’ve all heard The Marian Conspiracy.

This writing style doesn’t work for a normal story, but for this special case where the adventure isn’t the actual story, it works. It does make you think if the story really needs to be this long, and you know what? Maybe it doesn’t. It could’ve possibly been way tighter as a one hour story, but you know what again? I like it better this way. From purely a script perspective, there is a lot of unnecessary pirate blabbering, but overall, I think it helps with setting the tone, the vibes as they say. Not the vibes of the sea (yarr-arr) but those of Evelyn and Six and Sally. The filler-y nature of the pirate story allows the real story to become a bit of a slow burn. It’s always when nothing is said that the most is said (that works both ways) and I think this story shows this very well. When Evelyn awkwardly tries to avoid Sally’s questions and starts going on a long talk about irrelevant details, it’s saying so much by having her say nothing (meanwhile she’s saying lots of things that don’t really say anything. Both ways i said!). Like yeah it’s weird to have the primary part of your story be a worse story that really just plays a supporting role to your main narrative, but that’s also why I love it so much. It’s so Doctor Who, like nothing else can be.

The idea of this seems unappealing. Not like something that’ll get you lots of sells. It goes so overboard (ha ha get it) in its attempt to have such a realistic feel that it sacrifices its marketable surface. Hollywood executives would say it’s counterintuitive to the whole point of creation. But you know. You and I know what the real point is.

Be weird, be diverse, be allowed to do something else. This story out of universe is the successtory of a story that wasn’t afraid to not conform to conventionalities. A realization for me about what people mean when they talk about early Big Finish being willing to experiment.

I do understand that this isn’t a story for everyone, and I do see how one could even find it off putting, but for me it really works. And then some, because. Well.

And then, euh, my guilty pleasure that I have avoided talking about… I genuinely really enjoy the silly pirate story as well. IT’S MY THING OKAY I LOVE THIS SHIT. I already told you how i was ‘locked in’ and stuff, i was READY for this nonsense and I would have probably loved this regardless of if it was actually good or not. Yeah, I have a type. Just saying if you’re a campy story sailing the seven seas I won’t mind if you gave me your number.

I don’t think I really need to explain what i like about the story about grief and depression and suicide. That’s pretty obviously stellar, and i feel there are people who could more eloquently put its beauty into words than me. So instead I’ll just give my hot take, or maybe not hot take idk, opinion that this is a way more elegant story about suicide than The Chimes of Midnight. Not that that isn’t a 10/10 story, but that’s also for different reasons, and this is a 10/10 plus a little red heart. Essentially Pirates and Chimes have the same core message, but I think Pirates does a way better job at flowing that message throughout the themes of its story, and is less heavy-handed in the delivery.

Damn i went through all that and didn’t even mention the songs. Yeah, part three might just be the single most entertaining episode of Doctor Who in any media. That is recency bias. When you read this I most possibly don’t think that anymore lol. But I have always loved song parodies from a young age, with Dutch comedy duo ‘Van Der Laan en Woe’ being very heavily responsible for this, (why not, i had to add some personal experience about my life to this review) and this falls perfectly into that. What do people say about this sorta thing usually? Oh right. “Great stuff.”

I’ve now started thinking about writing a song parody into this review but I feel like that would be very much overkill and also it’ll be terrible so that’s gotta wait for the next musical episode. Yeah I’ll end it there that’s a good review ending methinks.

Doctor Who is the series that can do anything.  It’s format is limitless.  That said, on television at least, the basic rules of dramatic narrative tend to be followed.  Only on a few occasions has this been tampered with, an example being Love & Monsters.  On audio and away from the confines of delivering a series not just for fans but also for the ‘casual viewer’, Big Finish have had more freedom to experiment with the manner in which their stories are told.  I’ve found these releases to be of varying success.  I couldn’t abide The Natural History Fear and wasn’t a great fan of Live 34 or Creatures of Beauty.  On the flipside (if you’ll excuse the pun) I love Flip Flop and adore Doctor Who and the Pirates which, looking at the release schedule, was actually the first time they really tried something different in the main range.

Doctor Who and the Pirates is, famously, the musical one.  It’s become a bit of a thing for television series to do a ‘musical episode’ ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer led the way with the brilliant Once More With Feeling.  I’m a bit of a fan of musicals, although not so much of Gilbert and Sullivan, but the idea of Doctor Who finally dipping it’s toe into these waters filled me with joy.  Of course, Big Finish did bottle it slightly in that only the third episode is musical, but the entire release plays with the nature of story telling and narrative as Evelyn, and subsequently the Doctor, attempt to prevent a death by telling the story of a tragic adventure they had just experienced.

Much of the first episode is an Evelyn showcase.  She barrels into Sally’s room and begins her story without so much as a by your leave to Sally.  Little hints here and there allow the listener to realise that all is not well with either Evelyn or Sally and this is countered by the hilarity resulting from Evelyn’s initially incredibly clichéd tale of pirates and treasure.  Maggie Stables is wonderful and once the Doctor turns up, Colin Baker provides admirable support.  And I mean that term quite specifically.  It does feel through much of this story that the Doctor is the ‘companion’ to Evelyn.  This is a story about Evelyn dealing with the death of Jem and the potential suicide of Sally.  The Doctor is there to provide moral support.

The pirate part of the story is, as I have said, very clichéd but this is entirely the point.  Evelyn is trying to tell a happy, funny story about one of her adventures with the Doctor whilst trying to avoid the tragic end.  Her pirates all have the same voice and have names like John Johnson, Bill Billson, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.  There are terrible inconsistencies in her tale; one moment the boat is sinking, the next it isn’t.  Red Jaspar, the villain of the piece, begins the story as a comical, over the top baddie.  Bill Oddie goes to town chewing virtual scenery left, right and centre.  But as the story progresses the performance subtly changes to one of murderous insanity.  The Doctor and Evelyn point out time and again that he is insane and although Oddie’s performance never quite makes it down from the rafters there is a narrative reason for this.  His ruthlessness at dealing with the other pirates is horrendous especially when he cuts out the tongue of one for disagreeing with him.The other part of the tale, Sally, is equally affecting.  Helen Goldwyn is excellent.  Trying to be nice to Dr Smythe but really wanting her to go away and allow her to deal with the death of her boyfriend which she feels responsible for.  I do think she accepts what Evelyn and the Doctor are saying a little too easily but maybe this is due to the fact that she is distracted by her own tragedy and isn’t really thinking too hard about what they are saying to her.

So what of the musical episode?  As I’ve said, I am not a massive fan of Gilbert and Sullivan although I love musicals, particularly stage ones, with all my heart.  That said, one of my first musical experiences was a video of a very strange cartoon drawn by Gerald Scarfe called Dick Deadeye which was a bizarre mash up of lots of different Gilbert and Sullivan characters and songs.  My brother received it for Christmas one year in his stocking (I got some sciency video about slowed down camera trickery of drops of water splashing and the like).  Needless to say, my brother cast it aside fairly quickly but I watched it on countless occasions.  One of the reasons might have been the climax of the story which featured all the characters pitching up on a desert island to be greeted by its Amazonian natives, complete with bare breasts!  This was a PG certificate video!  Anyway, as a result, the songs have long been part of my psyche.  This means that Doctor Who and the Pirates has the advantage of triggering a fond nostalgia when I listen to its own versions of familiar songs.  The singing is very good, particularly Helen Goldwyn, and the songs are witty and arranged well.  Quite whether the conceit of turning the story into a musical to provide a happy ending works narratively I’m not entirely sure but as an excuse for a bit of fun (and one beautiful song from Sally) I think it can be forgiven.

Historically, this story probably owes more, as Sally points out, to the 19th century clichés of pirates such as Long John Silver and, obviously, the Pirates of Penzance.  This is a story which is set in the 1700s but is presented far more in the style of the 1800s.  It is interesting that Evelyn states this is ‘not her period’ which allows her to use all manner of pirate clichés but when she doesn’t even know that the ‘flat end’ of the boat is called the stern I did raise my eyebrows slightly.  She is a lecturer in the Tudor period when there was a lot of exploration in ships going on so surely she would know something as basic as that about boats.The only historical reference made is to Queen Anne dating this story to sometime between 1702 and 1714.  Lance Parkin has gone for a date of around 1705 but doesn’t really give any other explanation in Ahistory as to why (although he does state there is no other dating evidence aside from being set in the 1700s which seems to ignore the reference made to Queen Anne).

Doctor Who and the Pirates will probably always be one of my favourite Big Finish audios but, like all good things, too much of this style would probably begin to grate.  I will always admire Big Finish for being willing to push the boundaries of what Doctor Who is; something I think many fans find difficult in their rigid set views as to what the series should be; and I really hope that a full on four episode musical eventually surfaces (The Ultimate Adventure adaptation notwithstanding) because I think it could be wonderful.  It could easily feature, in the tradition of Charley Pollard, the 6th Doctor picking up Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith is a brilliant musical actress) and finding themselves on a planet where everyone communicates in song, or the TARDIS translation unit goes on the blink or something…

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

Previous Story: Jubilee

A fantastic story, Jacqueline Rayner's last pure historical with Six and Evelyn was incredible so it makes sense this one would be aswell. The way this story is framed is absolutely my favourite part about it, I visualised it as a theatre performance and I think that fits really well.

I love the down-to-earth feel, after fighting all sorts of aliens, the Doctor and Evelyn return home and prevent one of Evelyn's students from killing themselves. While it's not directly stated, it's heavily implied and there's definitely a sense that something's wrong right from the start. I find the way this is handled at the end to be really touching, with brilliant performances from Colin Baker, Maggie Stables and Helen Goldwyn.

I couldn't write a review for this story without mentioning the music, it blends in perfectly with the very stereotypical and exaggerated pirate world. I was surprised at just how many songs there actually were and it was cool that the whole cast were involved. I think it makes for one of the most unique experiences I've had on audio to date. Another excellent story for Six and Evelyn.

Next Story: Project: Lazarus

The Monthly Adventures #043 - “Doctor Who and the Pirates" by Jacqueline Raynor

It’s always hard when you run into a popular story you just can’t get it into. No point in avoiding what will be the main talking point of this review, I don’t like Doctor Who and the Pirates. I think it is some novel concepts that forgot the basic tenets of scriptwriting and, as a result, came out lacklustre. It’s not a story I’m particularly fond of and not one I have a large amount to say on, it simply is a story that is not for me, one that was created with a different target demographic in mind that I just can’t seem to connect with. A swashbuckling adventure with an intrusive sense of humour and an annoyingly eccentric style.

Who doesn’t love a good story about pirates? Evelyn thinks the answer to be no-one, so when she takes it upon herself to cheer up one of her students, she tells the story of the time she and the Doctor were taken prisoner by fearsome pirate king Red Jasper.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

When looking at an episode that seems to fit normally into positive public perception and giving it a low score, one first must consider its positives and why it is so beloved. I think the main reason for Doctor Who and the Pirates’ success are elements that simply do not appeal to me but I can take part in admiring a few of its factors. At its heart, it is a story based on the gimmick of it being told by the Doctor and Evelyn, and not in the Companion Chronicles way of every companion having script level accuracy storytelling but in the way that they keep misremembering things or skipping over boring bits or making it more exciting for whomever it is they’re talking to. This gimmick is done really well, I have to say, and the ways it’s implemented are all pretty fun, from Evelyn not being able to think of enough names for the characters to giving Red Jasper countless anachronisms to shy away from his actual cutthroat nature. It’s a good idea done with a great amount of creativity that could only really, truly work on audio. As for the rest of the story, I think it pretty much fails on all fronts but one. When Raynor dials in the campiness and the pantomime-esque shenanigans, she can deliver some really solid scriptwriting. For one, Evelyn has some really great character development here, with the whole framing device of her trying to soothe a grieving student, whilst dealing with her own guilt over a character in the story’s death. It’s a great little setup through which we see more of her than we have before and really get a glimpse into the things that’ll make her one of the greatest companions in Doctor Who, at least in my opinion. In fact, every single plot beat that is separate from this story’s wall of noise is leagues greater than the rest of the narrative, and the tone probably should’ve been somewhat closer to that.

But, alas, it was not. I’m not denying that Doctor Who and the Pirates is a story with a lot of merits, I’m just saying that I don’t like it personally. I think this might be the first score I’ve given that’s based mostly on my own personal feelings rather than what I consider outright criticism, even the best bits (like the surprisingly solid musical Part 3) were just part of a story that doesn’t appeal to my personal tastes, and that’s fine, you don’t have to objective on everything. But do I think Doctor Who and the Pirates is a perfect story that I’m just baselessly against? No. No, absolutely not. I find that Doctor Who and the Pirates is a story that had a great idea, spent all its energy on realising that idea, and then forgot to write a compelling story around it. A gimmick is fun and all, but a story should take precedence in any work of fiction, which it doesn’t here. The story is basic and derivative: a nasty pirate wants to find a mystical treasure, throw in a bunch of one-dimensional, faceless characters and you’re done. The villains are tricked easily and the plot is moved forward by fantasies, it’s not very interesting and is paced poorly. And then there’s the cadence of it all. I guess it’s based on old Gilbert and Sullivan musicals so I don’t know if it’s reflective of them but the whole thing feels so ridiculous, like a really bad pantomime. Again, this might be a matter of taste but little to none of the humour landed for me and all the characters felt more like caricatures.

I’m not sure how many more ways to say “this wasn’t for me” there are, so I’ll stop this review here. Doctor Who and the Pirates is a fun audio with some good ideas, but I just can’t bring myself to like it. It’s a cacophony of loud voice acting and musical numbers that can never seem to stick the landing, no matter how hard it tries. I think it probably is a good story, or at least a passable one, but I wouldn’t know.

5/10

Pros:

+ Has good ideas and uses them well, in increasingly creative and unique ways

+ Some really nice character growth for Evelyn

+ Portrays emotional beats with a surprising amount of tact

Cons:

- A really simplistic and dull story with little forward momentum

- Has practically no good characters besides our regulars

- Irritatingly hyper and quirky

- On a personal level, does not work for me