Disclaimer: I’m not completely sure I remember everything correctly (it’s been two days since I listened to the episode). As I have no intention of listening again, I’ll just add this observation—which may, in itself, say something about the impression the episode left on me.

While Sabbath Dei has flashes of the atmospheric weirdness that makes Faction Paradox so compelling, it’s hard to overlook just how muddled the execution is.

In true Faction Paradox fashion, let us begin with the end. In the last ten, maybe fifteen minutes, the story suddenly tries to cram in all the plot that should have been built up over the entire runtime of this episode of Faction Paradox Protocols. After hearing the whole audio drama, I see the function of this episode as the introduction of some interesting characters, settings, and ideas—to set up at least the next story, if not more. And it’s intriguing material we get—just not told very well in terms of pacing. The material in those last ten minutes could very well have been a shorter episode itself. And while, in its compressed form, it just droned on and on, I caught myself thinking, “When does this finally stop?”

Switch to the beginning. After a short "What happened so far" recap, the episode itself starts with one character’s monologue. This audio is drenched in reverberation, making it genuinely difficult to follow what’s being said. I assume this was meant to generate atmosphere, but as it dragged on for way too long, it just irritated me immensely. Instead of drawing me in, it left me straining and properly annoyed. I can respect the way the sound was distorted as a creative choice, but at the same time it not only didn’t work for me—it actually made me take a one-day break and even consider not listening to any more of the episode at all.

Next up is a storyline about Cousin Eliza.
This storyline is, for one, confusing in terms of what it makes you think Eliza knows and doesn’t know about her hosts. Thinking about it, it’s not necessarily as implausible as I initially thought while listening. At first, I was confused because it seemed to me that Eliza’s investigations indicated she did not know that Justine had moved their timeship into the cave. Later, when reflecting for this review, I thought her probing could very well be interpreted as simply inquiring about the mysterious Mary Culver. And that would be plausible. So, it didn’t work for me personally, but it might for others.

Much more irritating was the characterization of Eliza. Wasn’t she the more or less—for lack of a better word—“normal” one, surrounded by eccentric figures in the last two episodes? Now she’s a more or less stupid/mad woman who gets to say the line, “If I haven't been biologically modified, it probably would be my time of the month” to explain why she’s acting as she is. Ah, not my kind of humour, added to a characterization that irritated me.

After that storyline, the story actually got kinda good. But as I mentioned at the beginning, then the audio drama closed the way it did and lost me again.

There are glimpses of what could have been a strong episode of the Faction Paradox Protocols, but the missteps in structure, character work, and sound design are hard to ignore.

Cards on the table (if you’ll excuse the pre-emptive pun), I’m not a massive fan of Faction Paradox.  It’s not that I think it’s a bad idea, it’s just that I don’t see why it has gained the popularity it has.  I really only see fans raving about it.  I find it wilfully obscure.  I think it’s the frustrating nature of its links to Doctor Who which became non-copyright allusions once the Faction began appearing in spin-offs – i.e. the Time Lords become the Great Houses.  Now, I’m aware that it isn’t as simple as all that because, much like the Stranger series of videos started off being a bit like Doctor Who but eventually developed their own mythos, Faction Paradox is now its own entity with its own ‘background’.  But when it insists on including things like Compassion, the Sontarans or Sutekh in its stories, I can’t help but think it needs to decide if it is one thing or the other.

Sabbath Dei is really the third part of a series, The Faction Paradox Protocols which began in The Eleven Day Empire.  I have listened to the first two parts a number of times and quite like them – the presence of the Sontarans helps enormously in The Shadow Play – and I actually quite like the conceit of the Eleven Day Empire.  Faction Paradox purchased the 11 days that were lost from the calendar in 1752 when we changed from the Julian to Gregorian calendar (effectively one day was the 2nd September and then the next was the 14th).  This is a historical event I came across a few years ago in a book of ‘Millenium’ short stories for children.  One story was about the riots which apparently occurred from some poorer parts of society who wanted their 11 days returned, feeling they had been robbed in some way.  Apparently, these riots are an urban myth and are unlikely to have actually happened, but it made for an interesting short story all the same.

Sabbath Dei is set after the Eleven Day Empire has been ‘eaten’ and Lolita, a strange being, has taken over and is threatening the Homeworld of the Houses.  The two survivors of the Empire, Cousins Eliza and Justine have escaped in a time machine to 1762, an era well known to the Faction (the 18th century being where the Empire itself had first come from).  Here, they are hiding out with the Order of St Francis (better known as the Hellfire Club), biding their time.  Now, here I admit to having lost the plot somewhat.  This is partly because a few of the characters (notably Lord Sandwich and Sabbath) sound quite similar meaning I got confused as to who was allied with who for some of the play.  Basically, the secret service of King George III have secret plans afoot involving a homunculi army (yes, like the Peking Homunculus in The Talons of Weng-Chiang), a woman called Mary Culver is really in charge of the Order of St Francis and has been waiting for Eliza and Justine, and an agent of the service, Sabbath, is making contact with forces beyond our world by cutting himself in various patterns.

BBV’s audios are of varying quality.  As you may have seen in my earlier reviews of The Green Man and A Quality of Mercy, production and acting are often of variable quality.  Sabbath Dei benefits from good sound design and music (the chamber music in the first part of the story adds tremendously to the 18th century atmosphere – something which has been lacking in the Big Finish audios set in this era) but the acting is variable, from bad to wooden to fairly good.  Susanne Proctor as Cousin Justine is fairly wooden throughout, Emma Kilbey as Cousin Eliza is fine, but sounds slightly out of place due to her being originally from the 20th century (I believe) and so her speech patterns clash with those of the 18th century residents.    Saul Jaffe as Sabbath is also a bit flat and, as I said, sounds too similar to Michael Chance as Sandwich making it difficult in the early scenes to differentiate the two, although Chance is good as Lord Sandwich.  Mark Grieg as the Earl of Bute seems to have a very odd accent and Eric Maclennan as King George III is clearly trying to do ‘going mad’ acting but ends up with an odd high pitched delivery.  Jackie Skarvellis has fun as Mary Culver but does have a slightly mannered performance.  Jo Castleton, a BBV regular (she’s is the lead in the Auton series of videos and in Cyberon), plays the Sieur D’eon, an androgynous French spy.  She has an outrageous French accent and, despite the fact that D’eon is apparently a man, albeit one who passed as a woman for many years, sounds like a woman for the entire length of the play!

Also, although the music is great, the sound effects are a bit indistinct meaning some of the time it is difficult to tell what is going on – and this does lead to some poor dialogue with characters describing what they are seeing ; the eternal pitfall of audio drama.

I’m not a big fan of Lawrence Miles, either, so that doesn’t help.  I thought Alien Bodies was great but Interference, his two part BBC novel, was overblown and self-indulgent.  His Bernice Summerfield novel, Down, is alright but I can’t even remember what his debut Christmas on a Rational Planet was about (apart from also being set in the 18th century I think).  I have actually met Lawrence Miles at a fan get together and he is an odd man.  I think he has great ideas (I can see why Faction Paradox is a good idea), but can be very self-indulgent and clever for the sake of being clever.

One positive about this play, certainly compared to the other stories set in this century, is the amount of historical detail.  Not only do we have real life figures such as the Earl of Sandwich (yes, him of the sandwich invention), King George III and his Prime Minister, the Earl of Bute, but also D’eon is based on a real person – Chevalier D’eon (who apparently lived half his life as a man and then ‘became’ a woman) and there are numerous mentions of Sir Francis Dashwood, the infamous founder of the Order of St Francis (or as it is more commonly known, the Hellfire Club).

The story is full of gambling (echoing Phantasmagoria), high society balls, spies, secret organisations, salacious gossip, shadowy caves and rumours of human sacrifice.  There is even a scene where Eliza describes the peculiar arrangement of bushes outside the house, in the ornamental garden – initially I thought she meant they looked like a rooster…

A sure sign that this play struggled to hold my interest is that I had to listen to the end three times having fall asleep twice!  I rarely listen to audio without doing something else (washing up, walking to work etc) but happened to just be sitting down waiting for my daughter to go to sleep.

What I had forgotten in planning this marathon was that Sabbath Dei is actually the first part of a 2 part story ending with In the Year of the Cat.  Consequently, the next review in my marathon will be of the second part, also set in 1762 (I had been under the misapprehension that, due to the presence of Mr Sin’s brethren, the action moved to the 51st century).

Sabbath Dei is an interesting, if not a little confusing, continuation of the Faction Paradox story. The plot has enough intrigue going on that it held my interest. I genuinely can't wait to find out what happens next.

The world building is great, with new aspects of this world opened up and ready to explore.

The voice cast does an excellent job, with their delivery of some of the fun dialogue being a standout aspect.