The Monthly Adventures #95a - "Exotron" by Paul Sutton

Paul Sutton has risen to be one the most underrated Doctor Who writers for me, penning absolute masterpieces like Arrangements for War as well as underrated gems like No More Lies. And yet, nobody talks about Exotron. Going into this, I saw the cover, I saw the blurb and I went “huh?”. One of the most interpersonal and human Doctor Who writers is doing a story about mechs? Really? Well, no. Exotron turns out to be a love story disguised as an action flick, which falls in line with Sutton’s MO, but what exactly makes it so forgotten?

In a colony base besieged by the titanic Farakosh, an army captain’s invention - the similarly gigantic exotron - defends the population. Upon arrival, the Doctor and Peri find themselves at the centre of a bizarre siege and an even stranger love triangle that threatens to wipe out the colony.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Exotron is a really weird story to me and definitely stands out as the black sheep of Sutton’s body of work, being easily his most underbaked. The story is pretty simple: a colony world is being attacked by the native population and are using giant robots to defend themselves, except that there’s more to the situation than originally appears. Simple, thoroughfare stuff. But Sutton isn’t a simple writer, he specialises in sweeping character epics and you can really feel the clash here. Apparently this was pitched as “Doctor Who with big robots” and then once it actually got picked up, it turned into a more standard Sutton script; you can really feel the difference in opinion in the script because what we get is strained.

Firstly, Sutton does what he does best and I really like the character drama put forth here. Our side cast is generally pretty strong and the central dynamic between Paula, Major Taylor and soldier-turned-exotron Christian is great. It’s a very unconventional kind of dynamic but that’s what I like about it, all these characters have a decent amount of nuance to them I can get behind. The supporting cast also have their moments, with surprisingly endearing ally Mozz getting a genuinely great death scene and giant talking hyena Kucha being oddly likeable. The only member of the cast I didn’t love was big bad Ballantyne, because he felt unneeded and shoved in for a bit of unnecessary drama.

So, Sutton has a really nice character drama going on here but as I said, this is first and foremost a unique take on the base under siege and you can feel how much there is going on. It’s got a lot of fantastic ideas and tonally, it’s incredible -  it balances epic and tragic effortlessly, reminding me a lot of the space opera romance of Arrangements for War - but my main issue with it is one that I find tends to be Sutton’s achilles’ heel: the action feels underbaked.

However, rather than because of something like focus or pace, the story’s simply not long enough to accommodate both the character plot and the action plot. This is once again a three part story and, unlike with I.D., you can absolutely feel that missing part four. Everything here is rushed and underbaked, every plot beat feels like it happens because of convenience and a ton of good ideas get left by the wayside. The Farrakosh are a telepathic race who are mentally tortured by the exotrons’ radio signals? That’s cool, how about we see how their world and society work? Or we could just get the reveal that they’re intelligent in Part Three and then have them do nothing. So much in this story would have benefitted from another twenty five minutes to explain and explore everything but instead we’re just lumped with a really strong A plot and a really weak B plot.

And whilst I really enjoy one half of it, the other is so generic and unengaging that I simply could not get into Exotron. There is some fantastic potential here, especially in the reveal that the exotrons are piloted by the consciousnesses of dead soldiers, but it’s clear that wasn’t the story Paul Sutton wanted to write so all we’re left with is a sweet character study in the middle of a bunch of bland half-concepts. This could’ve been a lot better if not constricted by its format but as it stands, this is by far Sutton’s worst story.

5/10

Pros:

+ Impeccable character writing

+ Tragic and epic tone

+ Full of interesting, interpersonal concepts

Cons:

- You can really feel the missing Part 4

- Ballentyne felt forced

- A lot of the material feels underbaked

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

Previous Story: The People Made of Smoke

If I had to rate this based on how generic it is, I'd give it a 5. It's a fairly bland action story, it's got bland characters, a bland setting and a weirdly obtrusive soundtrack. The Doctor is written quite out of character, I understand that 5 does a lot of self-sacrifing but he usually only does it when there's no other way and atleast has some sort of a back up plan.

Here, he enters the suit and says his farewells to Peri while leaving the guy who is in control of all the suits completely unchecked. I'm fairly certain there were other ways around that situation so it left the Doctor looking a bit dumb. I honestly wish they'd stop doing these "there's only one way, all hope is lost" sacrifices in such boring stories because you know he'll be back in 5 minutes.

The fact that it's such a basic story makes it impossible to believe that the Doctor's life is at threat from a bunch of generic robots. Overall, this is a very skippable story, it's a shame that Peter Davison's talents are being wasted in stories set so close to the end of the Fifth Doctor.

Next Story: Urban Myths