Oh god it’s awful but I liked the ending the ending made it all worth it

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

Previous Story: The First Sontarans

This is quite an odd story if I'm being honest. It's really weird listening to what is essentially a lost TV episode, on audio, made during it's respective Doctor's tenure. It's actually surprisingly good, both the audio quality and story quality hold up in my opinion. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant adapt effortlessly to audio and I wonder if the experience of doing this might have made them more keen to do Big Finish. It's weird hearing their voices so young, while Bryant sounds mostly the same now, Baker has noticeably aged since (though he's aged well).

The plot itself is surprisingly competent, I was expecting it to be gratuitously violent and annoying like most of Season 22 but it ends up being quite fun and unique. It doesn't feel too dissimilar to something Big Finish might put out today. The characters are quite fun, albeit a tad silly. The plot of the captain's body incubating death-spores when he got angry was a bit ridiculous though. I like the character of the computer's voice, it ended up being quite charming and something only the 80s could pull off.

I've seen a few people say this story is drawn out, but it's so short and made up of snappy 10-minute episodes that I really can't see it getting boring. It's an easily digestible story that you can finish in one sitting. Overall I quite like it and it's a fun way to bridge the gap between Sixie on TV and Sixie on audio.

Next Story: Whispers of Terror

We all know the story, Doctor Who went on an unprecedented hiatus, and during that hiatus the Doctor returned in audio drama form. Except this happened twice, what that introduction most likely calls to mind are the Big Finish audio dramas we know and love today, but back in 1985 - during the 18 month hiatus - the BBC brought the Doctor and Peri to audio themselves for a one-off six-part adventure: Slipback.

Following a strange dream and an unexpected materialisation, the Doctor and Peri find themselves boarding the Vipod Mor, a ship captained by a being who is able to make his crew ill by the force of his own will, and operated by a computer with a mind of its own. As the Doctor investigates what brought them here, he gets separated from Peri, who finds herself tagging a long with a comedic duo of policemen.

Penned by then script editor Eric Saward, this is a surprisingly light-hearted and comical story, in stark contrast to the darker tone the TV series had been moving towards in then-recent years. Many of the writer's own stories such as Earthshock, Ressurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks are themselves among the most notable examples of this increasingly dark direction, as well as Saward also acting as script editor for the show through that time. This change of direction works really well for Slipback, and suits the more bizarre nature of its side characters.

In line with the lighter tone, the Doctor and Peri's relationship is at its most amiable, with the usually expected moments of conflict between them being nowhere to be found. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are clearly both comfortable in their roles even moving into a new medium, both putting performances on par with what they were doing on TV at the time.

The ship's computer is the real star of the show however. Played by Jane Carr, it's a performance of two very distinct halves in quite a literal sense, portraying both the computer's bubbly outer voice, as well as the more serious inner voice, with its own agenda. The outer voice of the computer has so much personality and is a joy to listen to, able to bounce between various parts of the ship at a moment's notice allowing it to cross between various plot threads in a way other characters can't, both getting to have a wider variety of interactions and acting as a connective tissue between most elements of the story.

Another notable member of the cast is Valentyne Dyall, who previously portrayed the Black Guardian but is now playing the captain of the Vipod Mor: Captain Slarn. Dyall puts in a good performance, but his character doesn't get a chance to shine, feeling somewhat disconnected from the plot. Slarn never interacting with a character in any kind of opposition to him doesn't do him any favours either, while he still has a role to play it's all tangential and leaves a feeling of lost potential. It's an interesting and less traditional approach but doesn't quite pay off.

The format of the story is also very non-traditional, with each of its six parts only running for ten minutes each. The shorter episodes make the story's progression feel much more incremental, having such little time to develop its characters and move things along. Listening to them in isolation rather than as a complete package doesn't come recommended.

The ending is unfortunately a deeply unsatisfying anti-climax. Without giving too much away, it seems to end rather abruptly, with very little agency from our leading duo. The ending does at least come about in an interesting way, and has a particularly nice moment for one of the side characters.

Slipback is an imaginative piece and a fun listen. You're not getting the most fleshed out plot, owed both to the way it segments off its characters and the shorter per-episode runtime, but you are getting an interesting and entertaining cast of characters and the unique novelty of an audio drama made during the classic series and during its leads' on-screen tenure. It has enough going for it that - to this reviewer - the story has earned its place among the sixth Doctor's televised adventures in future re-watches.

It's a shame that no further audio stories were produced at the time, there truly is a surreal factor to hearing Baker and Bryant in the format as they were in the 80s and it would have been interesting to see what kind of stories would've followed and where they would take the series tonally. Doubtlessly, further audio stories would've helped tide fans over through the rest of the hiatus, still having over a year to wait for the show to return after Slipback concluded. It's an interesting thing to think about, but perhaps in the alternate version of history where Slipback led to many more audio dramas, Big Finish wouldn't have emerged at the tail end of the century, and with the Sixth Doctor and Peri still adventuring together over 40 years later through them, that's not something to wish away.

If this review has sparked your interest, Slipback is available on CD and the third disc of the Season 22 Blu-ray set.

The Sixth Doctor and Peri share an adventure on board a starship taken over by its dual personality computer, which tries to take the ship back to the dawn of the universe and start life again. Along the way the duo meet a couple of comedy policemen, an art thief and a captain who wants to infect his crew with one of his diseases... - TARDIS wiki

This is a review/commentary about the BBC Radio drama Slipback by Eric Saward. In this episode, the BBC murdered the visuals so all we have is the audio of the adventure... or someone forgot to turn the light on. I will preface this review with some valuable and important context before delving into the episode proper. And it goes without saying that these are my opinions, you do not have to agree.

Eric Saward is, quite possibly, a very nice man, but that's not the impression he gives off in behind-the-scenes interviews and anecdotes I've heard about him. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true; his reputation with others would suggest a man frustrated with the world around him or the job he was doing. This anger fuels his more famous stories like Resurrection and Revelation Of The Daleks, Earthshock and Attack Of The Cybermen (yes, he wrote it, Ian Levine had nothing to do with it).

While this vitriol leads to some interesting dark sections (something I'm always a big fan of) but his stories often leave me feeling bored or dull - Revelation being the exception because it manages to be consistent in its themes and execution. So colour me surprised when I find there's another literary masterpiece of his I haven't experienced - an audio drama released during the infamous 1985 hiatus.

Well, this I have to hear.

The thing about Colin's era for me is that, prickly and rough around the edges though it is, I do quite like it. There's a certain undercurrent of ominousness to stories written during his era. The universe feels a little less safe, and a bit more spooky. Toss in the fact that our leading man is often unpredictable and can even turn on the companion and you have the core elements for some potentially really interesting television.

I say potentially because stories like Timelash remind me that not everyone got the memo.

Nevertheless, you have potential here. Better yet, for a story like Slipback, you're bound by audio - now you don't have to worry about the limitations of budget in regard to your visuals. You could do practically whatever you wanted. Maybe, finally, Eric would pull his socks up and deliver a cracking story. Surely... surely he wouldn't miss and hit the wall. He had every reason to succeed!

Slipback is just utter bollocks. Were Pirate Radio 4 really so desperate for new content that they thought, “Hmm yes, this is acceptable”?

The usual staples of Eric Sward storytelling are on full display: acres of a garbled mess of the English language that I like to call Sawardese spew out of characters' mouths, the plot starts off decently then spirals into nigh incomprehensible gibberish, and the medium the story is made for clearly hasn't been accounted for at all.

I expected this, yet I'm still disappointed.

The supporting actors are... something else entirely. I can't tell if they're trying their best or taking the piss. There's a range of acting styles on display, and none of them are even remotely convincing. I guess it doesn't help that the script is just plain bad, but like... come on now. This was the first new Doctor Who content in months, a show that was held in high regard by lots of people both in and out of the fandom, and the director really thought, “Hmm yes, I'll just tell them to wing it”?

Speaking of winging it, the sound design is seriously lacking and the effects dubbed on the actors' voices to simulate different environs sound really cheap. What was the budget for this? 20p? A piece of paper saying “you'll get paid, trust me”? Eric Saward's taxi fare? I jest, of course, but my mate Karma's just informed me that the budget got slashed before recording started which... yeah, Grade and the Beeb really were trying to kill Who, weren't they?

The problem with Slipback is that, if retooled by someone else, it might have been actually good. Like - get everybody treating the script with sincerity, rewrite all the bits that don't make sense, make the dialogue actually sound like human speech and not archaic neue-Shakespearean rubbish and you might have something genuinely good on your hands. As it is, that's not what we get.

When people yarn on about how bad the synths in 80s Who sound, I'm convinced they're talking about this story, because this is one of very few examples where the music is just utterly terrible. Usually the tunes and leitmotifs have some hummable element to them, and can stick in your head for years if done right. An example that comes to mind is the score that opens Mark Of The Rani, this elegant and beautifully composed piece of music that really just sets the scene for you. The music in Slipback is like someone took a bootleg video game and corrupted its data. I'm fairly sure this constitutes hearing damage. The BBC owes you compensation and a complimentary hearing aid simply for listening to it.

Slipback is a crime against Doctor Who. It was the last anyone could hope to hear from the programme until the hiatus ended, and even then, most people were convinced it wouldn't. Morale in fandom was low. The production team were reeling from their jobs suddenly and viciously being put on ice simply due to the pettiness of their channel's controller. Colin was in a state where he thought he'd killed the show. Nicola Bryant had been treated terribly by John Nathan-Turner. The future of the programme was in doubt.

Eric Saward had a massive opportunity to turn things around, to save the show that had kept the lights on in his house for 4 years. Instead, he elected to write utter sludge and the resulting production feels messy and all over the place. Colin and Nicola are acting their hearts out, desperately trying to save such a crap story from being eviscerated by the fans and while yes, they do carry the production, even their combined efforts is not enough for me to be positive about it.

Slipback is just plain bad. If you must experience this story, watch Ian Levine's animated rendition because at least then the visuals are funny but the overall experience is like taking a teaspoon of sugar before consuming five entire lemons. This story is so insipidly dull, badly written, questionably performed and shoddily edited that it feels like parody. The only difference being that parodies are funny.

As I write this post, I genuinely wonder if Eric ever actually put much stock into Doctor Who to begin with. He talks fondly about some aspects but is horribly condemning about most others; he talks with pomp about stories he wrote before casually trashing stories that didn't quite match up to his impossible standards. He wasn't willing to help writers realise their potential, he was just in it for the money. For someone who claims to like the show, given his track record, he didn't seem to have all that much investment in it.

Slipback is the ultimate proof of this, the smoking gun if you will. When put in a position to save the show, he just puts out a damp squib. Sure, you could make the argument that “oh, it was for kids so maybe he wasn't as invested”. Yeah, that might be so, but Who has a habit of being considered a kiddy show in general, yet he would sometimes bring his a-game to the screen... why not here?

I genuinely cannot fathom what went wrong, or where in the pipeline the fault happened. But happen it did, and you're left with something that's so massively underwhelming I can't even recommend it as a joke. If you're to take anything away from this, it's that Doctor Who audios really didn't hit their stride until Big Finish because man...listening to the BBC ones is like wading through treacle.

Don't listen to this. Just don't. You'd be wasting your time. But hey, at least it's not The Eight Doctors, huh?

Slipback is a boring, drawn out story, which is a feat at only 1 hour. The plot is an overlong drudge, that honestly could have been told in 20 minutes. There is no sense of actual characters, except for one 'person'. The quality of the recoding is good considering its age. Really, this is for completist only.

(Taken from my Goodreads Review | Last Listened To: January 2022)

Slipback is an odd beast. Written by then-script editor Eric Saward, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri respectively, and released as part of a kids radio program during the 'hiatus' between Seasons 22 and 23, this isn't that good. Made up of six ten minute episodes, the story sees the Doctor and Peri arrive on a spaceship where someone is experimenting with time. Colin and Nicola are fine, however the story is just kinda boring with a captain who can create and release viruses when he's angry, a schitzophrenic ship's computer, an art thief and a revelation that the ship will cause the big bang. At the time, it was probably enjoyed as it was new Doctor Who when there wasn't any on TV. Now however, it just doesn't stand up to the superior story-telling that we get from Big Finish. It doesn't help that Saward isn't the best writer Who has ever had. It's not un-listenable, and as a historical curiousity it's interesting, but it's not worth re-listening to. Mercifully, it's short. So check it out for historical curiosity, but don't expect much out of it.