Despite loving this duo, I again found it to be a very weak outing for them. They really gave the rubbish scripts to 5 in the early days, huh? Nyssa is very sidelined in this one, more so in the first half than the second, but even still I could've done with it being way more focused on her due to the nature of returning to Traken. The side characters aren't anything to rave about either, and neither is the villain. On a more positive note, I really enjoyed the additions to Traken lore, that was really interesting to learn more about!

In yet another 5th Doctor audio from Big Finish, the Doctor brings an ailing Nyssa to Traken, uncovers the truth behind the planet’s history and becomes the first Keeper.

This one sentence sums up pretty much the whole story. Primeval is quite a languid story which meanders from episode to episode, never really convincing that the threats presented are in anyway dangerous.

The main evil is Kwundaar, played by Stephen Grief, an omniscient alien with the power to control Nyssa from across the universe. He sits in his spaceship until episode four and then gets defeated. The effect put on Grief’s voice makes it difficult to understand his dialogue and as an enemy I never really felt threatened by him.

The Consuls are clearly from the same stock as those originally seen in The Keeper of Traken and are singularly uninspiring.

It is nice to hear about the history of Traken but really that is what we get – hearsay. The Traken we are presented with, for all it’s ‘primeval’ status, is very similar to the Traken we see 3000 years later. Even the same locations are used – the Consul chamber, the Grove and the vault containing the Source. A brief visit to a spaceport does nothing to expand Traken.

When discovering the origins of Kwundaar and the Source, the even older Traken we are told about with Priest Consuls plotting against the living God, Kwundaar, sounds a much more interesting place to visit. Surely if a prequel was the idea, one where we find out how the Source was created would have been more interesting than this retread of the original story.

Were it not for the fact that Traken is destroyed in Logopolis, this story could just have easily been a direct sequel rather than a semi-prequel and that is its main problem. It simply feels like more of the same. Traken is nice. An evil is trying to corrupt it. The Doctor and Nyssa defeat that evil.

Primeval is a pleasant enough meander through Traken but there is a lot of talk and very little action.

😵(2.50) = NEAR DISASTER!

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

The only thing I remember from my first time listening to Primeval is that I found it slow and boring. Let’s see if relistening alters my perception.

Primeval kicks off right away, with Five taking Nyssa to Traken some three hundred years before her time to hopefully treat a medical condition she is suffering from. This introduction is very jarring, as it doesn’t ease you into the characters of the conflict.

Lance Parkin’s story adds to the lore of Nyssa’s home planet and its people, and this is its primary purpose. The problem is that the presentation is so confusing and the narrative so muddled that it’s difficult to remain engaged.

I don't find the Trakenite characters particularly interesting, not to mention the fairly one-dimensional Doctor or Nyssa, who's just hanging around and panicking while we wait for her to either die or get cured.

The music and sound design are pretty good, at least if they’re going for a slightly mystical feel.

The majority of this involves the characters engaging in discussions about cures, politics, and other related topics. While this creates an unusual character drama, it lacks a compelling element.

I guess the performances are mostly solid. There is nothing outstanding here, but they work.

The second half brings some light tension to the story, particularly due to the Doctor’s mistakes risking the future of Traken, but it’s still not very interesting.

This is also such a forgettable story that I cannot remember what I’ve been listening to immediately after finishing it.

The Monthly Adventures #026 - "Primeval” by Lance Parkin

Nyssa’s not a favourite companion of mine. Yielding from the most infamous TARDIS team of the Classic Era, she was a companion with a lot going for her that was primarily let down by a lack of interest on the part of the writers and a somewhat bored performance. Nyssa never really had any good moments, anything particularly unique to her, unlike her fellow companions of the era, despite her possibly being the most interesting. A genius scientist from a utopian society that, like the Doctor, is the last of her kind following a great catastrophe, who’s father’s murderer walks around committing atrocities whilst wearing his face. That is a ridiculously good setup that is just never explored for whatever reason but it seems that once again Big Finish have come to our rescue, or at least Lance Parkin has. A prequel to her debut episode, is it finally time for Nyssa to shine? No, not really.

Afflicted with a mysterious illness, Nyssa is returned to Traken by the Doctor, who finds himself at odds with the local government. But in space, circling the planet, is a far greater evil, with some plans for Nyssa.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Primeval, also known as Doctor Who: The Doctor gets into Politics and Battles the Healthcare System, acts as a prequel to The Keeper of Traken, showing the “Primeval Times”, when the keeper was absent and the world was at the whim of giant supercomputer The Source, with a cowardly government that relied entirely on the machine. Whilst this story fails at expanding on Nyssa, which I’ll get to, it very much works as a story about Traken and its society. The worldbuilding here is immaculate and all the bits and pieces of this utopia we get to see are fascinating and easily my favourite part of this audio. I also love the political side of the script, the absolute backwards morals of an uber-religious governing church are incredibly funny when they immediately swap sides once their lives are threatened. The looks into how Traken is run are not only the most interesting parts of Primeval, they are the funniest, which is very much needed in an otherwise supremely dry script. Other than the worldbuilding, my highlight here was probably the Fifth Doctor himself as I consistently find this incarnation’s characterization to be very lacking, but here he genuinely surprised me. His desperation to save Nyssa and the inherent softness to his persona were deeply fascinating to me and I’d really like to see more looks into his character like this.

I’d also like to see more insights into Nyssa’s character, something this audio doesn’t do. Yeah, for something that leans so heavily on her introductory episode, we actually have very little Nyssa, instead focusing on the Doctor’s attempts to cure her. For half the episode she’s bedridden in the background and for the other half, she’s doing meaningless busywork so the script can remind you she’s there. In fact, this whole second half is honestly meaningless. The story ends pretty much halfway through; Nyssa and the Doctor could leave but the Doctor instead decides to very stupidly walk directly into the trap the big bad villain man obviously set for him. The antagonist, who I think was called Kwundaar, literally tells him “go here, it’ll help me” and then the Doctor just does out of curiosity I guess, which, surprise surprise, causes the planet to get invaded. On another note, I found Kwundaar to be incredibly dull as a villain - the voice acting was good but he felt like a very generic big bad. Also, for this second half, Nyssa’s stuck in a swimsuit, which… was an interesting decision.

Primeval’s one of the stories that just fail to impress. It isn’t bad per say, but it offers you next to nothing and it won’t stay with you after you finish listening to it. It’s one of those in-betweeny stories where you don’t dislike listening to it, but it’s simply average, and sometimes that’s worse than an outright bad story. Just a missed opportunity, through and through.

5/10

Pros:

+ Traken is gloriously realised

+ Love the political undertones of the episode

+ One of Five’s best outings thus far

Cons:

- Didn’t have enough of a focus on Nyssa

- Kwundaar was a somewhat underwhelming villain

- Story ends halfway through and is only continued due to the Doctor’s ineptitude

- Nyssa spends half the story in a swimsuit for seemingly no reason

I wish I could say I enjoyed this one more. I deliberately sought it out to learn a bit more about Nyssa and while technically it did help with that, I feel we get bogged down too much in Trakan politics. I think that's a shame because on paper there's a lot to like about this outing - the basic premise of Nyssa being sick and this being the culmination of her psychic stuff could have been compelling on its own, just like the idea of visiting an ancient Trakan. Seeing an alien world and its culture and how that might change over many, many years is a cool idea.

Unfortunately, things kind of fall on their face pretty quickly as it devolves into a real villain-of-the-month kind of story and only ever barely recover. Kwundaar's actor and Davison aren't bad, but they and others get a little hammy in a way I don't feel adds to the story. Still, it has its moments. For whatever reason I found part three pretty compelling and I did enjoy some dialogue with the Doctor throughout. I wish Nyssa's perspective on things was explored a little more as it sort of feels downplayed near the end. Still, I did enjoy the idea of gods and other powerful entities being unleashed following this confrontation with Kwundaar. That's good and clean bait for future stories I can appreciate.