Vienna

#2.01. Tabula Rasa ~ 9/10

◆ An Introduction

Hotels can be disorientating; an endless network of samey corridors, which make you feel like you’re traversing a well-decorated ant’s nest! You might occasionally see a member of housekeeping tidying up a room, maybes even other guests in the same predicament you are, but the corridors are often as silent as the grave.

I went to a spa hotel with my ex-boyfriend and quickly lost my bearings… but that might have something to do with the fact that I was severely dehydrated from the sauna, and had just thrown up all over the restaurant!

Our resident bounty hunter is trapped amongst those disorientating corridors, but there are bigger problems. None of the guests can recall why they booked in, nor can they remember their own names. Deaths are occurring across this hotel and nobody knows who’s responsible… not even the killer!

◆ Publisher’s Summary

Ever woken up and can't remember where you are? What if you couldn’t remember who you are? Or why there’s a dead body outside your door?

Vienna Salvatori is hunting for a killer – but can she be sure it’s not herself?

◆ Vienna Salvatori

James Goss makes this an excellent jumping on point for new listeners, because our resident bounty hunter spends most of the runtime suffering from memory loss. Vienna has woken up in a hotel surrounded by amnesiacs, but that wont stop her trying to discover why corpses are appearing in the corridors.

Chase Masterson puts on an excellent show in ‘Tabula Rasa’. Herself and Harry Ditson get some fab scenes where their characters are bickering with each other; trying to figure out whether they’re a married couple, or just some catty one-night stand! There’s clearly a lot of chemistry between these performers, which makes me sad that Ditson’s character is a one-and-done.

Vienna doesn’t like the idea that she could’ve woken up next to a lunatic. It would also mean she had terrible taste in men; overweight and mad. Even if she’s lost her mind, she would like to think she kept her standards up. She’s never cared for cops. Vienna thinks personality hotels are only used by idiots: if you don’t like your life, fix it. Don’t run away from it. If you wanna be a film star, work hard and be a film star. Don’t spend a week running round in a false personality; it’s not gonna make yourself feel better about it. Vienna Salvatori may not have money or power, but she has one big thing going for her: she always wins! She used to kill people for a living. Vienna plans ahead: it’s how she always wins.

◆ Personality Transplant

‘Tabula Rasa’ introduces us to the interesting concept of a personality hotel; somewhere you could go for a full personality reset. Guests tended to choose the personalities of someone rich and important as a break from their mundane lives, but that wasn’t always the case. You have guests like Mr Anders: the CEO of some multi-million business venture looking for a “personality downgrade” to escape the pressures that come with their job.

Personality hotels were also used for more tragic reasons. It’s revealed in a flashback that, when Police Chief Curtis discovered that his wife was terminally ill, they both booked into a personality hotel to pretend that everything was normal: that was the last happy week of their lives.

I’m fully aware that the concept is horrifically amoral, but I guarantee a good percentage of you reading this would book yourselves into a personality hotel. I would request an optimistic personality from somebody who is calm and collected. That’s basically my polar opposite since I’m a total pessimist, riddled with anxiety, and my temper detonates faster than the R101 above some French fields!

Personality manipulation has been touched upon in the wider world of Who before – see my review of ‘ID’ by Eddie Robson – but never as well-realised as this. Memory editing seems to be a common theme in this range, and I think Goss has taken it in a rather interesting direction.

◆ Sound Design

Series One featured a lot of cinematic set-pieces; a spaceship falling towards a burning star, alien lobsters exploding after being depressurised, and the arena style setting of its finale. Each soundscape was expertly crafted like a Hollywood blockbuster. Howard Carter was perfectly suited to the overall vibe of that box set.

Series Two is a very different beast. The grandiose set-pieces have been ditched in favour of dialogue heavy scenes, featuring a lot of world-building and character development. In terms of scale, this run of episodes feels less Star Wars and more Judge Dredd.

Most of the scenes in ‘Tabula Rasa’ take place inside of the personality hotel, allowing Nigel Fairs to create quite the claustrophobic atmosphere; muffled sobs can be heard from amnesiac guests, and any one of them could be the killer!

◆ Conclusion

“I don’t believe it. You’ve just escaped from a locked room with a teaspoon!”

Vienna has to interrogate an entire hotel full of amnesiacs, before one of them remembers they’re a shape-shifting killer. Unfortunately, the AI Concierge has also wiped her memories!

Personality hotels are an excellent concept, which any writer could easily get a lot of mileage out of. You essentially get to become someone else whilst booked into the hotel; whether that be someone rich and famous, or a walking doormat bus boy, is entirely down to your preference.

Husk would definitely book into a personality hotel; hoping to relive the days when he was an Overlord of Hell, before losing his power and soul to the dreaded Radio Demon. Sorry, been watching far too much Hazbin Hotel…

It’s been nearly twenty-four months since I last reviewed anything from this range, but what a spectacular way to reintroduce myself to the galaxy’s most glamorous assassin… or should I say police officer? Don’t worry, the reasons why Vienna switched professions will become clear as Series Two progresses.