The Monthly Adventures #040 - “Jubilee" by Robert Shearman

The King has returned, all hail the King! Robert Shearman is back and with another masterpiece, somehow (not sure how he keeps making these). Jubilee, better known as “did you know Dalek was based off an audio story?”, is a top contender for greatest Dalek story ever written and is most definitely the best Dalek story out of The Monthly Adventures so far; a funny, disturbing, original, shocking and wholly unique take on the Nazi pepper pots that doubles as a biting destruction of backward Fascist ideologies. The third in a line of perfect audios (because The Maltese Penguin didn’t happen), Jubilee is, no doubt, a seminal story.

A fault in the TARDIS strands the Doctor and Evelyn in an alternate version of London, where the British Empire are masters of the world and the President of England is torturing an unearthly prisoner for the sake of the next day’s 100 year anniversary of a failed Dalek invasion.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

As always, it’s hard to know where to start listing positives in a Robert Shearman story, considering you have a whole tidal wave of them crashing down at you. I guess I’ll start with how incredible of a script this is, once again playing around with time travel in a way I don’t believe I’ve seen before - having the TARDIS split in time, landing the Doctor and Evelyn in two different places at once. We don’t see one pair of the Doctor and Evelyn however, merely their effects a hundred years later. That is except for possibly one of the greatest twists in Doctor Who, when it’s revealed the version of the Doctor from 1903 has been imprisoned in the Tower of London for a hundred years. Not to mention the setting, I mean: an alternate fascist Britain that has taken the morals of the Dalek race where they’re torturing the last of their former attackers so that they can get it to talk by its execution the next day - at the jubilee celebrations. Immediately, you can see the similarities to Dalek, which Shearman based off this script, but it does go in a very different direction; Dalek was used to explore the Doctor’s PTSD after the Time War, very much an episode that could’ve only happened in the first series of the Revival, whereas Jubilee acts as a hilarious, disturbing and genius destruction of the futility of fascism. It takes the Daleks back to their roots, pointing out how they were always meant to be stand-ins for the Nazis and, how like we’ve actually trivialised the SS in real life, we’ve become accustomed to the Daleks just being those funny pepper pots. And it does not let down exploring its themes, you have so many different facets of fascist ideology being mocked it's hard to even count. How fascism breeds fascism, creating false enemies when you’ve conquered all the worlds, the insane back bending conformers to these beliefs have to do to justify them. And I don’t think it would work if Shearman wasn’t such a naturally comedic writer. Don’t get me wrong, Jubilee is a f**ked up story that does a lot of dark things, but it’s all mixed in a macabre brand of humour that means all these heavy themes, whilst not shied away from, are not too much to bear or become edgy or meaningless. And I really do need to point that I think this might be the blackest comedy to ever exist, maybe only beaten by something like Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. You have the president of the British Empire cutting the hands of little people so he can stuff them inside fake Dalek suits for his own entertainment, all the while laughing about how he’s only pretending to be evil.

And that’s another thing, our cast is amazing. Obviously we have Six and Evelyn, probably in what is their best outing; forget Arrangements for War, the subtle character building here is incredible, Evelyn’s conversations with the imprisoned Dalek alone should’ve won her some kind of award. And then there’s the leaders of the British Empire, Rochester and his wife, Miriam, both incredibly insane in very unique ways. Rochester, trying to justify his atrocities, has convinced himself everybody is under Dalek mind control and he has to pretend to be evil to survive, so really he’s a good man whilst Miriam has been so taken up by the British Empire’s generational fascist beliefs that she’s trying to overthrow the country because she thinks Rochester isn’t an abusive enough husband to her. And that’s only our villains, you have the slimy, power hungry second-in-command, the supposed good guy who’s only “following orders” and that god damn Dalek. Probably the best character here, the Dalek is centre to what is my absolute favourite interpretation of Doctor Who’s most iconic villain. They are not wholly evil and murderous, but tragic, not in a sympathetic way but for in a “wow, you’re f**ked” way. Without orders for a hundred years, the Dalek has gone mad, begging everybody around him to tell him what to do. And by the end of the story, it decides that, because the human race got destroyed by conforming to a Dalek ideology, the Daleks must kill themselves to prevent the same happening to them, the imprisoned Dalek blowing the fleet up and stopping the Dalek invasion in 1903 from ever happening. It is, in my opinion, an incredible ending that shows the absolute dredges of the kind of things Shearman’s criticising, and also gives us one of the most fascinating and oddly beautiful portrayals of the Daleks. It’s sad, it’s funny, it’s bombastic, it’s complex, it’s interesting, it’s- have I made it clear that I like Jubilee yet?

The cons section is, unsurprisingly, very short but I do have to highlight one problem that persists throughout most of Shearman’s work that was particularly bad here: the dialogue. Shearman’s dialogue can often be original, witty, funny and engaging but it can also be very often weirdly forced, in a way that no human would ever actually say those lines. Plus, he has a habit of often just explaining things we already know by having the characters repeat them ad nauseam. It’s not enough to ruin the experience,  but it’s enough to be a pet peeve.

All in all, what did I think of Jubilee? Amazing, it’s amazing, it’s so incredible I’ve done nothing but rant about it for 754 words that you probably skim read. It’s a masterpiece, and only Shearman’s third best, that is, in my opinion, miles above Dalek in quality. It’s a twisting and brilliant story that takes a hammer to fascist ideology all with a grin and a quip. It is a must listen for any fan of Doctor Who especially since it doesn’t require prior listening. It’s brilliant, it’s classic, it’s Jubilee.

10/10

Pros:

+ Enthralling, complex and original story

+ Incredible and macabrely brilliant takedown of fascism

+ Genuinely funny in a kinda f**ked up sort of way

+ One of the most interesting and unique takes I’ve seen on the Daleks

+ Amazing twist at the halfway point

+ Six and Evelyn are at their very best

+ Entertaining and fascinating side cast

+ Sombre and thematically rich ending

Cons:

- Dialogue can feel forced at points

MR 040: Jubilee

He doesn't miss ladies, gentlemen and others. He doesn't miss. Robert Shearman can do no wrong. He's so good, he wrote the first good Main Range Dalek story.

And boy is it a story. It's not as good as his first two stories: The Holy Terror and The Chimes of Midnight, but it is very good. Like his first two, there's some exploration of narrative structure here, specifically the way in which we view the Doctor and the Daleks. The Daleks are the eternal evil and the Doctor is the eternal good. But you can twist either to suit your own ends.

That is what this story is about. A century ago, the Doctor and Evelyn stopped a Dalek invasion in pre-WW1 UK. The British Empire used that as a rallying point, bolstering national confidence and preventing the British Empire from ever falling. The Nazis presumably didn't come to pass because the British WERE the Nazis. They grew more and more fanatically fascist, seeing the Doctor as this great fascist military war hero who fought off the Daleks. And now the British Empire never fell and has conquered a great deal of the world, including the US. Possibly all the world.

And like any fascist regime that has run out of enemies to fight, they have to invent new enemies. Daleks were the great enemy, but they are few and far between. Now we invent new things to execute people over like contracting your words. There are even whole pretend Daleks ready to be executed to maintain the public hatred of an other.

The real secret is that the British Empire took prisoner a single Dalek and they torture it regularly. They create juice out of its fluid it leaks under torture. They're trying to get it to talk, to say anything, so that they can blow it up in front of the people to maintain that fear of an other.

They market the s**t out of Daleks in the media and on products. There's a great comparison here to the way we treat the Nazis in our reality. We often just use them as a fun plaything, a cartoonish super villain without any real thought to the real horrors that they committed.

The direct comparison would be how the people of the British Empire have the Daleks, an evil fascist force, and then they market them and sell them and then end up just like the Daleks. We do the same thing with the Nazis, we market and sell them as this evil force and yet we have literal fascist political movements that are prominent around the world right now, especially in the US. Everyone knows that the Nazis are evil, but we're not Nazis, you say as you believe the same things they did.

The real REAL secret is that they also took the Doctor prisoner as well. The Empire presumably thought that the Doctor would work for them, but he always refused to become their fascist puppet. So he ended up rotting away in the Tower of London, stuck there for half a century after they cut off his legs. Evelyn starved to death right next to him in that very cell. This s**t is dark and this is where it goes to the straight up horror that Shearman is so good at writing. The idea of cutting off the Doctor's legs is so effective because it's his thing. What is the Doctor known for? Running. What can't he do without legs? Run.

The story does an effective job of making you think this is Davros as well. The President's wife starts out by saying that he's in a wheelchair and he's been lurking in the dark in the Tower, going mad. That he's responsible for the Daleks being there. And then it does a great second episode turn around cliffhanger when it's actually the Doctor who's been there the whole time. This was horrifying for Evelyn, to discover this Doctor, a hundred years older, trapped here, decayed, a shell of his former self.

Speaking of the President's wife, the story has two very good characters in her and the President himself. The President is quite mad, thinking he wants to be good but that everyone is under mind control and so he has to pretend to be evil. But he's really just using it as justification for his evil. There's a great scene directly illustrating this point when the dwarf who came from America won't fit inside his Dalek casing (since he uses dwarfs to pretend to be Daleks and get killed for the people's continued hatred of the other) and so he cuts the man's hand off, but then immediately says that he's not actually evil, he's just pretending to be evil. The President's wife WANTS to be the anti-feminist fascist barefoot and pregnant house wife who acts silly, wears tons of makeup, gets abused, and follows her husband's orders. But she thinks her husband is TOO WEAK to actually abuse her properly and wants to depose him to get a stronger ruler. They're both quite insane and they're both justifying their actions with their insanity.

The scene that gets people to compare this to Dalek from series 1 is when the Doctor sees the imprisoned Dalek, but this story is very different from that one. There's a similar set up in the Doctor confronting a weak and helpless Dalek who has been tortured as well as his companion being sympathetic to said Dalek, but that's where the comparison ends, really. The people doing it in Dalek are doing it for money and the people doing it in Jubilee are doing it to maintain the fascist regime.

Speaking of the Dalek, there's a fantastic scene where the two fascists who have been torturing it now attach the gun stick back onto it, giving it the ability to kill someone. The one who is used to giving orders orders the Dalek to kill the other one, who is used to following orders. The Dalek reverses it and orders the one used to giviner orders to kill the one used to following orders. But he can't do it. He can't kill with his own hand. He's killed SO many people by ordering others to do it, but he can't do it himself. But the one used to following orders absolutely can and kills the other one. The ones on the top can brainwash other people into following orders and being willing to kill for their cause, but they can't do the same things themselves. As if they don't really believe the bullshit they spew.

The Dalek, itself, is struggling because it doesn't have any orders to follow. Daleks follow orders. Fascists follow orders. But nobody has given it orders in a century. So it goes to the Doctor in the tower, its old enemy, and begs for him to give it orders, but he won't. Colin does a fantastic, hysterical, chilling even laugh at the suggestion before the Dalek kills him, wiping out this timeline. I wasn't sure why he didn't regenerate, but that would rather defeat the point of the sequence I think.

When the actual Jubilee comes, the TARDIS and the Doctor serve as a link between the two times. A century ago and now. They're both stuck in both times at once and so now the Doctor is serving as a conduit to allow the Dalek invasion in 1903 to come through into 2003. The President's wife deposes her husband and wants to marry the Dalek because it will be a stronger ruler, because she's quite mad. But it doesn't matter because they both get killed by the Daleks anyway, fighting over who is the leader. There is also a really good speech from Colin in which he says that he can't tell the difference between the Daleks and the British Empire, which was great. Colin is always good at giving scolding speeches and this was a good one.

The Dalek invasion is stopped, ironically, by the Dalek that his been imprisoned all this time. It has decided that the British Empire tore itself apart. And because the Daleks are so like the British Empire, they have to avoid becoming them and ripping themselves apart. In order to survive, the Daleks must die. To win the Daleks must lose. It's the self-defeating mental gymnastics that fascists have to do to justify their own beliefs. And so the Daleks end up killing themselves. The invasion force from 1903 is destroyed and thus the invasion never happened and thus the timeline returns to normal.

But the Doctor and Evelyn still have echoes of it. In a very Chibnall style "this is the moral" wrap up, the Doctor talks to Evelyn about how the humans are doomed to repeat their fascism. We bury it and try to ignore itand pretend like we're not like that. We could never be like that. But in reality, it comes creeping up and we have to deal with it again and again.

What another triumph for Robert Shearman. This is a knock out of the park. It's dark and edgy (and not just for the sake of it like Project: Twilight) with some really profound things to say on the nature of fascism. It feels like Shearman took a course or read a book about fascists before doing this one because he nails the fascist attitudes spot on. The need for an enemy, the denial and disassociation from the evil you're doing, the inability to believe or act on the horrifying bullshit fascist ideas from the upper leadership, and the deeply submissive nature of fascists, unable to do anything without orders. Shearman took a huge swing with his very direct comparison of Dalek ideals with humans at their worst and creates a story that is not only relevant to the current age, but is also timeless. Fascism always has a chance to creep up from the shadows and take control. We must be ever vigilant to stamp it out.

📝9.6/10 → FAVOURITE!

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

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “JUBILEE”

Robert Shearman is back writing for the Main Range, this time with the oft-lauded Jubilee, a Dalek story with Six and Evelyn. He kicks off the story with a fun fake trailer for a Dalek movie before dropping Six and Evelyn in London in the early 1900s, where they exist on two time tracks at once (a bit like The Space Museum). From here, Shearman begins slowly unravelling this strange alternate timeline, with a British Empire ruled by a president and America ruled by a prime minister, and with contractions in speech strictly forbidden.

Shearman adapted Jubilee for TV in 2005, when he wrote Dalek for Series 1 of Doctor Who. Having seen the episode before listening to Jubilee, I immediately recognised some of the common elements between the two versions, such as the initial mystery of a prisoner the President keeps torturing in hopes of making it speak in time for the jubilee celebrations or the special bond between the companion and the prisoner.

Even though I guessed it was coming, the Dalek reveal in the cliffhanger to Part 1 is fairly effective. What I didn’t see coming was the brilliant shock cliffhanger in Part 2. Shearman keeps hinting about someone in a wheelchair locked up in jail who is responsible for creating the Daleks, making us believe it's Davros, only to then reveal that it is, in fact, the Doctor himself.

Much like Holy Terror or Spare Parts, Jubilee builds an effectively eerie and tense atmosphere strengthened by dark humour and complex but meaningful narrative beats. The Doctor remembers how he’s already been to 1905 to save the world, yet knows nothing of it—still, both he and Evelyn are celebrated figures because of that. All of this feels very unnerving and adds to the tension.

It’s interesting to follow a story playing around with a timeline where the Daleks have been defeated and are then belittled and made fun of, similarly to the Nazis after WWII in our timeline. This is all played about against the backdrop of the Doctor and Evelyn somehow existing on two time tracks at once, constantly living their present and their past. In the second half, we realise that the Doctor has become a fascist totem, his actions directly leading to the creation of the current, dark times.

Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are magical, as you'd expect. Evelyn, in particular, is used well as a counterbalance to the Doctor, as she refuses to stay put and wants to do whatever she can to solve the problem at hand.

The Daleks play a different role here; they are seemingly friendly, but with a presence that still makes them feel creepy and dangerous. This is easily the most effective use of the Daleks in early Big Finish—not too big and bombastic, but with genuine depth and character. The conversation between Evelyn and the Dalek in Part 2 is a great example of this new way to write and characterise the pepperpots—a Dalek with an existential crisis. I also love how the human characters try to control and use the Dalek for their own ends, only to notice that the Dalek slowly but steadily takes control of the situation.

The supporting cast is superb.

The latter half of this story takes a brilliantly dark turn, with some brutal violence introduced as the Dalek begins to realise its potential. We also fully realise the psychopathic tendencies shown by Miriam, who becomes the biggest villain of the piece.

Part 4 unleashes the Dalek threat after great buildup but also gets weighed down somewhat by it. The nature of the Doctor and the Daleks are explored, and this is the most enjoyable aspect of the final episode.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Daleks movie advertised at the beginning stars Plenty O’Toole, who we know better as the name of one of the Bond girls in Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

Jubilee is fascinating on a number of levels. The thing it reminds me most of is actually the John Carter film from not that long ago that Disney put out. That movie was based on the 1912 book A Princess of Mars, which, in turn, went on to inspire a whole roster of major figures in science fiction as well as scientists like Carl Sagan. This, in turn inspired Star Wars and James Cameron in the more modern age, and likely had an influence in the development of Doctor Who as well. But John Carter, the movie, didn't do very well. It didn't connect much to the audience who recognized a lot of the story of Princess of Mars in a hundred other pieces of fiction produced since 1912. Jubilee gave me a very similar effect, where, having seen Dalek first, I could definitely tell that this audio was very original.

So sure, Jubilee might be the original, but it really feels like Dalek is the refined, optimal, enhanced version of it. It makes Jubilee super interesting as a piece of data in Doctor Who history, but I'm not going to pretend that I don't prefer the more focus, shorter, and pared down Dalek. We have less distractions compared in Dalek compared to Jubilee - less random details and scenes while Dalek really focuses on the meat of the story and the more interesting elements of Jubilee.

Yes, I really like the Dalek elements of Jubilee and even the stuff with the English Empire, but weird choices like the Dwarves and even the second, legless Doctor feel like they diluted the good of this story a bit. Jubilee was fun, to be sure, and certainly influential on Doctor Who, but it wasn't the same polished experience as watching Dalek. It is very cool to see and listen to how this longer audio was adapted into a television episode, but it felt more like a curiosity to me than something that was strictly a piece of entertainment, even though, to be clear, it was entertaining. It was just a little more interesting for its history than its content.

Absolutely incredible story. I had high expectations, because I've heard so much praise for this over the years and it was adapted into one of my fave stories Dalek. Surprisingly, it exceed my expectations. Despite its length, it doesn't feel long. The social commentary is really powerful, and very relevant now more than ever. Evelyn and Six had some phenomenal scenes in this, between themselves and apart with the guest cast. Somehow the supporting characters in this compared to Dalek are even worse. Absolutely harrowing in parts, and downright bleak.