The Monthly Adventures #046 - “Flip-Flop" by Jonathan Morris

It’s a little difficult to talk about something like Flip-Flop. We are now deep in Big Finish’s experimental phase, getting something different with every other release. We had Creatures of Beauty and its bizarre, non-linear structure. We had Doctor Who and the Pirates, which became a musical for one part. And now we have Flip-Flop, famous for its unique structure that allows you to listen to its discs in any order. Unfortunately, it's also rather infamous due to its inclusion of some rather… unfortunate aspects, that were, according to the author, completely accidental. Somehow I find it hard to believe.

The Doctor and Mel, searching for a crystal toxic to the Quark race, land on the only planet that mines it - Puxatornee. But upon arriving, they discover a harsh reality and some unknown acquaintances. It seems they’ve already been there.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

It’s a little tricky to talk about a story so problematic. On one hand, you could separate points, only half of this audio covers the offensive elements, so you could simply ignore it. On the other hand, a half-rotten apple is still a rotten apple, and this entire script does leave a bad taste in your mouth. First, what’s good? Well, the gimmick is easily the most interesting thing here. This story can be described as a narrative möbius strip, constantly looping no matter how many times you listen to it. The “white” half of the story ends and the “black” one begins. When you finish the “black” half, it begins the “white” half. So on, so forth, the members of the story forever stuck in an ever-looping world due to two characters forcing the Doctor to change history in each version of events. It’s a really neat little sci-fi concept that is executed incredibly well, the format aiding the idea wonderfully. What also helps is how well everything’s constructed. Everything is made to make sense, no matter what order you listen to it in (I listened to the second half, “black” first, by the way, for the sake of the gimmick). And what’s really fun is seeing the blanks get filled, being shown more insight into the breadcrumbs left behind. It would be really easy for this story to trip over itself and end up filled with plot holes but Morris manages to keep the whole thing structured and interesting. The plot almost feels Nolanesque; in fact, this might be the plot of Tenet, but I can’t really remember, that whole movie was a bit of a blur. As of our cast, pretty much great across the board. This is a very Seventh Doctor story and McCoy is predictably great, as is Mel who is characterised incredibly well by Morris. As for the rest of the cast, they all pretty much deliver. All characters feel very real and complex, each one’s motivations thought-out and rational. They’re not outstanding but it’s always nice to be invested in a sidecast.

However, we then have to talk about the other thing Flip-Flop is known for. I’m going to have to be objective here and rate Flip-Flop down quite a bit more than my gut would tell me, despite enjoying it more than some stories I’ve rated higher, because it’s undeniably flawed, even past it’s one major fault. Jonathan Morris has reported this element to be accidental, which I can’t really understand because Flip-Flop has the unique property of being incredibly racist. Basically, our main villains are Slithergees, slug like beings who posed as refugees to gain access to Puxatornee, insidiously taking over by accusing the humans of racism whenever they don’t get their way, slowly becoming the majority and erasing human culture. This is sickeningly very similar to a real-world racist argument, typically used by anti-semites that really has no place in Doctor Who. But, allegedly, it was not made with any ill-will in mind. Apparently, Jonathan Morris is actually quite left-wing, despite this having all the subtlety of a Daily Mail article, so who knows. I actually think it could be possible this whole mess was an accident because the real world argument Flip-Flop has parallels to is ridiculous and baseless enough to be science-fiction. However, the Slithergees being giant slugs with the faces of Jewish caricatures? That seems a little too on the nose (though apparently, Jonathan Morris just imagined them as giant slugs and it was the cover artist, Lee Binding, who made the model used). This whole debacle feels similar to two other stories: The Ark and Kill the Moon. The Ark because it’s a really neat sci-fi idea squandered by a weird, right-wing ideology of “the oppressed really being the bad guys!” and Kill the Moon because despite being a ridiculously on the nose right-wing allegory, it was apparently not meant to be a ridiculously on the nose right-wing allegory. At the end of the day, it is unfortunate and whether it was intentional or not doesn’t make the issue itself any better. Luckily it’s only the focus for about half the story but it does make this one quite hard to sit through. On a more conventional note, Flip-Flop still struggles elsewhere. I think its biggest problem besides the obvious is that it relies too much on its concept, which is something experimental Big Finish can stumble into sometimes. Because it’s so preoccupied making the story fit together and setting up clues for the next half of the plot, it forgets to actually write an engaging episode of Doctor Who and it ends up as busy work for a good part of the runtime. Plus, because the two halves are variations upon the same story, it can get quite boring to see the same characters make the same mistakes you just saw, with the only new thing being you going “oh, that’s different now” every once in a while. Also, due to the format, the story doesn’t really have an ending, just two different bits of set-up. And finally, the worldbuilding falls flat. Again, the adherence to the formula means we don’t get much of a story outside of it and, because of that, what should be the richly thematic and interesting world of Puxatornee becomes a series of faceless streets and rooms.

Flip-Flop in one word would be “unfortunate”. It’s unfortunate that Jonathan Morris wrote something like this and in fact, I’d call it confusing especially since Morris has now become a regular writer for Big Finish and has even written We Are the Daleks, which is apparently a critique of Thatcher-era Britain. Flip-Flop it’s a strange little oddity that has some really great ideas behind it, but is smothered by its own misguidance. A real shame, I’d say.

5/10

Pros:

+ Really interesting time travel concept that the story takes full hold of

+ Well constructed and complex story

+ Good cast of characters

Cons:

- Steeped in utterly awful politics, however accidental

- Due to the focus on the gimmick, the story never really moves past it

- Yet another wholly unexplored world

MR 046: Flip-Flop

Wow. You know it didn't have to be like this. This could have been fixed so easily with a couple more rewrites. This one is bad not because of badly written dialogue or being boring. It's not because of bad audio mixing or any technical issues. It's not because it's buried in technobabble or does hilariously bad accents that make your skin crawl. This one is bad because of its politics. Ironically the second with bad politics after The Fearmonger, another Seventh Doctor story.

But first, the story. The Doctor and Mel are involved in a double time loop. Two versions of history keep switching back and forth as people from those timelines want to go back in time and change it so their version doesn't happen. Like a grass is always greener situation. Yet each time they regret the change.

The basic premise here could have been a good one. You're supposed to be able to listen to either disc first and the story will make sense from either side. The first story of each disc is simultaneously the beginning of the story and the end of the story from the other disc while the second story of each disc is the end of the story and the beginning of the story from the other disc. It could work really well, especially if it didn't essentially repeat the exact same dialogue but with minor variations in each timeline.

The divergent point is when the human colony of Puxatornee (named for the groundhog in groundhog day, get it? get it?) gets visited by a battle cruiser filled with a species call the Slithergees, giant blind slugs. They are refugees who demand to be allowed to live on Puxatornee's moon or there will be war. One version has a war that leaves devestating radiation with the Puxatornee humans on the verge of extinction. The other version has the Slithergees essentially invading and conquering Puxatornee. This is where the problem comes.

Each version of history has a Stuart and Reed, commanders in the war history and dissidants in the conquered history who try to go back in time to change their history and end up creating the other time line. Thus it is a double time loop. Each time the loop goes round the history changes back to the other side. Like I said, this could be an interesting premise and could work better in the hands of a better writer.

The bad politics comes from the conquered Puxatornee side. The writer really thought he had something here. He thought he was going to create a liberal and a conservative side and have them both be dystopias. He wanted to satirise liberal politics. Just like every other conservative who thinks they're creating satire, they can only ever imagine liberals creating a fascist dystopia with the humans becoming slaves. It's as if we all inately understand that conservative politics are evil, even the conservatives who are trying to inact them.

All of the conservative "satire" comes from one episode in which we see the Slithergee have pretended to be victims in order to enact an actual invasion while the weak willed (naturally) woman liberal complies to all of their demands in an effort not to look offensive. It's a pretty dangerous line of thinking.

There's the typical rhetoric you see from conservatives. White people (I mean humans) are being made into a minority in their own colony (white genocide anyone?). It makes a point of saying that Slithergee occupy 90% of the planet while humans are forced into ghettos. Humans are forced into being servants/slaves to avoid looking offensive to the Slithergee.

There's even one to one War on Christmas rhetoric straight from Bill O'Reilly circa 2003. Quite literally. It's set at Christmas specifically so that the Slithergee can say that Christmas is offensive and should be replaced by their own holiday.

The War on Christmas stuff is obviously ridiculous, but it's part of a larger rhetoric to pretend like immigrants are forcing white people to become oppressed minorities. We live in the middle of the global ressurgance of fascism. We're all very familiar with this rhetoric by now. Conservatives don't really dog whistle anymore, they just show open contempt for minorities now. They believe that immigrants and refugees are invaders and the liberals are collaborators in white people becoming a minority and becoming oppressed.

If you really believe that refugees or immigrants are an invasion there are only two solutions to this problem. And it's not going back in time to prevent refugees from coming into your country in the first place. You either round up people from their homes and mass arrest everyone of that minority so that you can deport them. Or you do the same thing and kill them instead. The Nazis themselves did both. They tried to deport the Jews, but no other country would accept them as refugees, because of their own xenophobia. So the Nazis ended up killing them instead.

This is why this audio is seen as taboo. With good reason. And it could have been such an easy fix. The Slithergee actually invade and enslave the humans instead of this ridiculous pretending to be victims conservative fever dream. Done. It would have been much more respected in the past twenty years instead of seen as despicable as it is now.

This is always the problem with conservative "comedy" as well. They aren't funny because they have no relation to reality. Immigrants don't pretend to be the victim in an effort to enslave the majority in the country they're in. Whenever you hear anything about racial tension, it's always the white people in the area getting upset that non-white people are there and making up rumors about them. This can be things like there being an increase in traffic accidents or something like they're killing and eating pets or even they're killing and eating children. In the conservative fever dream of reality, that's what they're really doing, as we see in this story, which is why their attempt at satire doesn't land. It's not real in any way.

I'm mostly surprised that this script was green lit in the first place. Doctor Who has always traditionally been more left wing so whenever you see scripts like this with conservative politics you have to wonder how they got made. I'm also rather surprised that Sylvester McCoy agreed to do this one too, considering his own personal politics. Ultimately, this would have been an interesting experiment, but the author ruins it with his bad political beliefs. It could have been good with a better author.

It's wild how we JUST had Jubilee, this fantastic dissection and look into the way fascist politics works at the human level. I was just talking about, in that review, how we have to guard against the encroaching reach of fascism, because it always pops up insidiously. And here it is, popping up.

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

"Flip-Flop: A Clever Experiment That Struggles with Engagement"

Flip-Flop, written by Jonathan Morris, is one of the more experimental and daring entries in Big Finish's Main Range. Its unique narrative structure—a two-disc story where the discs can be listened to in any order—sets it apart. The black and white discs each present alternate versions of the same story, creating a circular narrative without a definitive conclusion. This gives the listener the freedom to decide which version of events they believe to be "correct," emphasizing a "timey-wimey" storytelling style characteristic of Doctor Who.

The story's premise revolves around the Seventh Doctor and Mel arriving on a human colony during Christmas in the future. The narrative mirrors The Ark, with one half of each disc exploring the past and its impact on the future, and the other showing the consequences of those actions. At the heart of the story is a slug-like alien race, the Slithergee, whose request to settle on the moon sparks political turmoil, a devastating war, and a cascade of time-traveling attempts to alter history.

Sylvester McCoy delivers a strong performance as the Doctor, perfectly capturing his disdain for those who meddle with time without considering the consequences. Bonnie Langford also shines as Mel, providing a warm and grounded presence amid the chaos.

The Slithergee are an intriguing addition, brought to life through evocative sound design and solid performances. Their blindness and reliance on sound lend them a unique flavor, though their role in the narrative feels underutilized.

Despite the ambitious format, Flip-Flop struggles with pacing and engagement. The bleak atmosphere is slightly oppressive but fails to generate the necessary tension to sustain interest over its two-hour runtime. The story’s core premise—a political and social conflict over the Slithergee—is not particularly compelling and feels overly drawn out.

One significant issue is the repetitive nature of the narrative. Both halves essentially tell the same story from slightly different perspectives, making the second disc less engaging once you’ve listened to the first. While the Black Disc offers a more nuanced and tense storytelling experience, the overall lack of variety undermines the cleverness of the format.

The references to Seven and Mel's unseen adventure defeating the Quarks provide a humorous touch but inadvertently highlight how much more exciting that story might have been compared to the one we’re given.

Ultimately, Flip-Flop is a fascinating experiment in nonlinear storytelling but struggles to maintain interest due to its repetitive structure and uninspired premise. For those who appreciate Doctor Who’s more experimental side, it’s worth a listen, but it may leave some longing for a more traditional, tightly written adventure.

📝Verdict: 5/10

Flip-Flop is ambitious and inventive but hampered by a lackluster narrative and pacing issues that detract from its unique structure.

Defences from the evil aliens such as “you cannot understand the Slithergee ethic experience, we are being prejudiced against. It is a hate crime.” And portraying them as “heavily armed refugees” was not very Doctor Who in 2003 and certainly doesn’t stand up today. It belittles and undermines language crucial to defending people in racially hostile environments.

I definitely think Flip-Flop is a little underrated but I do understand its limitations.

The design and clever use of time travel is a major highlight of the audio, to the extent I would consider this a pretty much must-listen for Doctor Who fans. The cool structure of the audio is really novel even among a long-running franchise with lots of crazy time travel, non-linear stories. It reminded me of the Big Bang in a good way, or a much, much better version of Ravagers. This is among one of the better ones, even if the story itself doesn't have much of a point, per se. It's a bit of a paradox that doesn't really get much of a satisfying resolution. This world the Doctor and Mel visit is essentially facing two versions of doom, and no matter what they do, they are basically screwed.

That feels mostly on the Slithergee, who essentially weaponize playing victim against the humans in such a way they are able to decimate the world of Puxatornee no matter what happens. All this and more I found really clever. Mel also gets to really shine here.

Where the audio is limited is more around some of the other characters. Mitchell and especially President Bailey felt way more off in their writing, with Bailey's whole affair feeling very silly both times around. Stewart and Reed were also more annoying than anything else.

I also agree with PalindromeRose, who, by the way, is one of my favourite Doctor Who reviewers, where the story could at the very least be interpreted as having some pretty heavy right-wing themes to it. This is something I definitely noticed, and it even has that particular flavour of modern conservatism that feels deeply rooted in a macabre sense of cynicism I kind of despise, but, I don't know. I didn't feel it was part of the authorial intent and didn't particularly get the sense that this was supposed to have politics meant to be taken that seriously. The Slithergee felt menacing more than a political statement.

So, overall, an imperfect but kind of legendary audio. The Christmas connection was threadbare, though, to the point I'm not really sure why they bothered.