The Green Man

An interesting idea that meanders a little. The setting is good, with a cast of characters that really flesh out the world. The acting is solid with some good sound design.

It seems to be a common trope with BBV releases that they tend to stretch an idea to the limit. Sadly, it means that some potentially good releases get knocked down a peg or two in my ratings.

I’ve always had a soft spot for BBV. They carried the flame for fandom through the dark ages of the Wilderness Years TM and set a standard for fan-made drama which surpassed the usual iffy fan efforts and certainly laid excellent groundwork for Big Finish to pick up and run with when they were granted the official license. Many of BBV’s audios are very good – well written, well acted and well produced.

The Green Man is not one of these audios…

BBV had, at this point in their releases, already delved into the world of Krynoids with the story, The Root of all Evil. It was okay, but mainly served to suggest that there wasn’t a lot to be done with the Krynoids that hadn’t already been covered in their television outing, The Seeds of Doom. BBV had successfully explored the Zygons and the Sontarans in their ‘monster’ audios and the most obvious difference between those alien races and the Krynoids is why those stories succeeded and Krynoid-based adventures fail.

Krynoids don’t really say much.

This means lots of other characters talking about the Krynoids and the Krynoids only contribution to the dialogue being the odd roar.
In The Green Man, to be fair, there is one scene set in the church which sees the main cast speak with the more human-like early stage of the Krynoid, but pretty soon after it’s grows to ‘monster’ size and all chance of reasonable dialogue is abandoned. The other Krynoid uses a wolf as it’s host, so from the off there is no chance of a quick chat.

The idea behind The Green Man is a good one. Carvings of green men are, as the script explains, a common sight in churches and other medieval buildings around England. To link this with the Krynoids is a natural combination of both fictions. But beyond this basic idea, nothing is actually done with it. There is no suggestion that the Krynoids have been seeding ancient legends leading to the humans creating the myth of the Green Man and no exploration of where the Krynoids have come from. The cast of characters find the Krynoids, battle the Krynoids and defeat the Krynoids.

Many of the story’s main beats are taken from The Seeds of Doom. There are two Krynoid creatures, the first of which is the more human. The Krynoids start to control the plants, including a scene where a hapless soldier leaps into the castle’s moat only to be drowned by weeds – in much the same way Scorbie is dispatched in The Seeds of Doom. The larger Krynoid monster attacks the castle in the same way one attacks Harrison Chase’s mansion and the medieval equivalent of bombing the creature – Greek fire – sees an end to the menace.

The cast do their best with the script but much of the dialogue falls foul of audio drama worst enemy – the need to describe the visuals. Arthur Bostrom (of Allo Allo fame) plays Earl Godfrey but fails to include any emotion or urgency in his performance. Saul Jaffe as Henri, a Knight Templar, has the emotion and urgency, but also a slighty comedic French accent (which is ironic when he is performing opposite Arthur ‘Good Moaning’ Bostrom). The rest of the cast includes Time-Flight’s Keith Drinkel and writer/director/actor Nigel Fairs (who features on the CDs cover, photoshopped into a Krynoid).

Unfortunately the script is merely a bunch of set pieces with the humans fighting various stages of Krynoid development. It turns into a siege story in the final third which fits nicely with the medieval setting but there is very little to engage the listener in the drama as the characters elicit very little sympathy with their two-dimensional personas.

The script also ends on an absolutely atrocious joke where Godfrey wonders what his wife, Maud, will think of the state of the castle (wrecked by the Krynoid) when she fully recovers from her illness (which has kept her ‘off-stage’ for the entire audio).

The script aside, this story’s other main problem is shonky sound design. It is unusual for BBV, but this audio sounds as if it was recorded in a fan’s back bedroom with three mics and a CD of sound effects. Some of the sections are hissy and difficult to hear clearly and volume levels chop and change between very loud and very soft, giving the impression of some actors standing right next to the microphone and others saying their lines from the other side of the room.

Prior to listening to this audio I was unable to find any online sources with an exact date for the story beyond a medieval setting. Whilst the script give no actual date, it does have Earl Godfrey mention King Richard and the battle for the city of Acre, dating this to sometime around the same time as the television story The Crusade, around 1191.

Other historical aspects included are the Earl in the castle with a nearby peasant village and forest (there is a nice line where the Earl realises he has never seen inside a peasant’s home before); collecting herbs for medicine and a Jewish physician (Moses of Tyre); a siege; battlements, a moat and catapults; arrows, swords and axes and a Sergeant at Arms; Greek fire (an incendiary mixture used by the Byzantine Empire and discovered by the English during the Crusades); lots of riding on horseback, wolves, boars and livestock (presumably sheep and cows); the Knights Templar; and lots of olde English names: Godfrey, Alfred, Leofric, Geoffrey, Osbert.

Overall, the trappings of this story fit with the portrayal of medieval England seen in The Time Warrior (soon to appear in this marathon). Certainly all the medieval tropes are present and correct. It’s a shame The Green Man doesn’t do more with it’s central conceit and that the post –production makes listening to it an uncomfortable experience. As an example of BBV audios it is not the best but as proof that some Doctor Who monsters really were one-shot wonders it certainly serves that purpose.