The Apocalypse Element

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

Previous Story: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

Middle of the road Dalek slop. The only redeeming factor in this story is that it has the return of Lalla Ward as Romana II. Even then she doesn't reunite with the Doctor until a good deal into the story. Maggie Stables is doing fantastically as Evelyn and I found the bit where she did the Dalek impression funny. Colin Baker is trying his best to salvage this story and it says a lot about him that even in as boring a snooze-fest as this he's putting in a really strong performance.

Aside from the excellent lead cast, this story has nothing going for it. The Daleks are as simple and one-dimensional as ever. Their grating voices are not suited to the audio medium whatsoever and for some reason Stephen Cole thinks we need a 20 second action sequence that we can't even see that consists of nothing but Dalek lasers firing and exploding things. That kind of action simply doesn't work, especially without any dialogue throughout the entire thing to atleast tell you what's going on.

It's a shame 6 and Evelyn have had a dud only 3 stories into their run. I really hope this story ends up being an exception.

Next Story: Bloodtide

28.02.2022

Noise. It's just noise. It had so much potential - interplanetary space conference, president Romana, Gallifrey bureaucracy. Instead it's running around, shooting around and genuinely just solving routine tasks until the time runs out. Speaking of which, it's 2h17m long. It's tedious to listen through. It's repetitive and pointless. It wastes Evelyn, it wastes Romana, it wastes Gallifrey. 1/5

MR 011: The Apocalypse Element

The Daleks enact a rather overly complicated plan to cement their own powerbase in this overly long epic. Oh dear. I figured that not all Six and Evelyn audios would be good, but I didn't expect it to drop off so soon when all the Sixth Doctor audios so far have been bangers.

The problem is that the story is just too complicated for its own good and that's because the Daleks' plan is too complicated. Not to mention the usual Time Lord stuff is too complicated.

The Daleks piloted a planet (The Dalek Invasion of Earth!?) into another universe or some such and dumped hundreds of the people who were on that planet as dead bodies on another planet. So there's a conference of time travelling empires to determine what happened.

It turns out the Daleks wanted this planet because it has a rare element, more on that later. It also turns out that Romana II, on official business as the new President of Gallifrey, was on the planet when it disappeared and has been a slave to the Daleks for twenty years. As far as I know, this is the first time Romana has ever been seen to be President or as having left E Space. It's also her first appearance on audio. So that's exciting.

The Daleks steal a bunch of time travel secrets from the delegates at this conference and then crash their stolen planet into the planet on which the conference is taking place, killing everyone.

That's the first half. Yeah. The Second half involves the Daleks tricking Vansell, an agent of the CIA, into letting them onto Gallifrey by pretending to be refugees from the conference. And Vansell, being from the CIA, wants to steal the refugees' time travel secrets. Kind of the most obvious trick in the book, but sure.
The last hour and a half consists of running around while the Daleks invade Gallfrey and enact their final phase of the plan. They have a giant weapon, the Apocalypse Element, which they detonate to destroy a galaxy. It will extend to destroy the entire universe if it isn't contained and they believe the Time Lords have the ability to contain it.

Only it was a trick. It's not a general purpose weapon. Obviously they don't want to destroy themselves. They want to destroy and remake an entire galaxy leaving it easy and ripe for Dalek invasion, building up their own galactic power base right on Gallifrey's doorstep.

The thing is that for most of this plot I had to read the wiki's summary to understand what was happening because it's overly complicated as it is nevermind the writing. It makes sense as the writer of this one also wrote The Land of the Dead which had an overly complicated monster for no reason.

That said, all the key figures here get interesting things to do. The Doctor gets to shout. Evelyn gets to act as a key when the Doctor uses her eyes as the only retinal scan that will open any doors on Gallifrey. Vansell gets to be all sneaky. The President gets to have his moment of trusting the Doctor and then getting double crossed. It's just... not very interesting. I'm sorry, I just don't think Gallifrey is very interesting as a setting. It's a boring and stuffy place and the Doctor left it for a reason.

romana, six and evelyn!!! i really enjoyed this story, it felt very big in scale and i always love a good gallifrey centric story.

The Monthly Adventures #011 - "The Apocalypse Element" by Stephen Cole

The Monthly Adventures’ Dalek Empire Arc was strange for many reasons. Four audios that are mostly unrelated connected via their focus on the titular kingdom of nazi pepperpots was characterised by slow and uninventive stories that have already demonstrated the extent of their quality with utter atrocity that was The Genocide Machine. The Apocalypse Element is probably the most well-known of these four stories purely because it involves Gallifrey and has been retroactively tied into the Time War. It’s got Time Lords, it’s got Daleks, and it’s got the powerhouse TARDIS team of Six and Evelyn in the middle of it all, so surely there is no way it could possibly disappoint. Somehow, Stephen Cole found a way for it to disappoint.

Unintentionally wrapped up in the Dalek invasion of the planet Archtryx, the Doctor and Evelyn uncover a decades old plot including the kidnapping of an old friend and a plan to destroy the entire universe as we know it.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I have listened to The Apocalypse Element twice now, having finished my second listen just a few hours ago. Before writing this review, I had to look up the plot to remind myself of what had happened. You could not pay me to tell you what transpired in The Apocalypse Element, you also could not pay me to tell you a single character’s name besides our recurring cast members. You may notice the length of this review and how short it is; I assure you, this is every thought I have on The Apocalypse Element. Romana was a great inclusion, she’s one of my favourite companions and every story that has her is better because of it (I should really get around to listening to Gallifrey one day). This being one of the opening battles of the Time War is a really cool piece of lore and it’s the type of thing I go to Doctor Who for: some neat worldbuilding plus some added context for later stories. Unfortunately, past these elements, I can not remember anything that happened.

I really can’t express this enough, I feel it’s physically impossible for this story to hold my attention. The Daleks were mining an element that could, somehow, blow up the universe when ignited - I think. That is pretty much all I can recall. Not only is the premise lacking a lot of originality, so is pretty much everything else. Evelyn is written particularly poorly here - she’s sidelined for a lot of the story (I can’t actually remember anything she does) but I do recall her acting like a feckless old grandmother, constantly stopping in the middle of a crisis to compliment people’s jewellery. This is not only against Evelyn’s established character, it just feels insulting towards one of the best companions. The Daleks are at their worst too. I always find an issue with Dalek stories where there are thousands of them crushing a planet, because they feel too big to be an understandable entity, they just become a force without character and, by extension, threat. We need little intimate moments of pain and suffering to really show off their evil, but we just don’t get it. And then there’s this story’s biggest sin: it’s really, really boring. When the second part ended, I legitimately thought it was the end of the audio and audibly groaned when I realised I was only half way through. It’s bloated, padded and fills this space with nothing interesting; the dialogue is boring, the Daleks are unoriginal, it boasts no interesting ideas, and I think that’s the most a Doctor Who story can fail at, feeling generic and dull.

You may call this an unfair review since I can’t actually remember most of what I’m evaluating but since I listened to this literally earlier today, I think it’s fair to call The Apocalypse Element a complete misfire.

4/10

Pros:

+ Romana was a wonderful inclusion in the story

+ Loved the lore it introduced and its historical place in the show

Cons:

- Evelyn is incredibly wasted and acts constantly out of character.

- One of the most forgettable stories I’ve ever listened to

- The Daleks are simply too massive to feel threatening

- Drags on for two parts too long

I did not care for this audio much at all. Sure, it makes an interesting sort of prelude to Time War content, I guess, but otherwise it just feels like a waste. A waste of Evelyn Smythe, who felt like such a strong companion in her initial appearances, a waste of Romana's return, a waste of the Daleks, and a waste of the Time Lords. Even the sound effects got annoying after a while. Not a fun audio, definitely not something I would like to revisit any time soon, and overall a bit of a disappointment, even by early Big Finish standards. That being said, it very much feels like something the company would be able to polish more in the future.

I do appreciate its role in Who history though, and this is an early yet great prototype to the great voice acting of Nicholas Briggs for the Daleks, which I definitely think is a bright spot here in an otherwise very skippable audio.