MR 062: The Last

For the most part this is rather mediocre, but it does have some good ideas in it. It's an exploration of a society that has destroyed itself. How did this happen and why did this happen?

The problem is the explanations are rather mediocre. The leader is mad, power hungry, controlling. She's the very essence of a fascist. Power for its own sake and anyone who questions that power gets executed. She'll even kill people herself if it comes down to it. This character, Excelsior, will just do things and then act as if they were no big deal. She'll come up with excuses and pretend to ignore what's happened and pretend to be mad. The one thing she will never do is attempt to justify her actions because she doesn't feel like she needs to do so. She's the one in power and so everyone does what she commands, no justification necessary.

Her ministers are self-interested and intent on keeping themselves alive, navigating through Excelsior's mad mood swings. They're trying to escape this impossible situation after the people on the planet have all been killed. There's only a hundred or so people left alive on the planet in this underground bunker and somehow they're mostly all still loyal to Excelsior, who probably knows about everyone being dead, but pretends not to know and practices her victory speeches.

This is the situation as the Doctor, Charley, and C'rizz arrive in this nuclear irradiated hellhole. Everyone is destroyed. Charley is stunned at the idea that ONE SINGLE BOMB could do this much damage, kill millions of people. Of course, she doesn't know about the nukes in WW2. They take shelter in a house that collapses. The Doctor gets buried, Charley gets entirely paralyzed by a beam hitting her extremely hard and C'rizz goes for help. What help he thinks he's going to find, who knows. Charley and the Doctor get pulled into the bunker by Landscar, a mysterious figure in the government who claims to represent the planet, or some such. C'rizz finds a bunch of ghosts, though he thinks they're survivors.

Things in the bunker go immediately downhill as everyone has to tiptoe around Excelsior. Charley impresses her with fashion after she executed her make up artist and they all just mostly putter around for a bit, filling up the run time until there's a flood. An underground river bursts and they have to evacuate, but most everyone dies, leaving a few left. And Excelsior still talks about executing people for disagreeing with her when there are literally five or six people left. Indeed, she threatens the Doctor and Charley with execution just for them saying that everyone is dead on the surface.

Charley figures out that Excelsior is not quite so mad. She just pretends to be to hold on to power and so Excelsior kills her. She's entirely paralyzed and can't resist. There's what you'd expect here, with Charley, about leaving her behind because she can't walk but the Doctor and C'rizz wouldn't ever leave her behind of course. Excelsior also kills one of her ministers for attempting to tell her about everyone being dead.

The Doctor helps repair a rocket to get people off planet. It was originally built for space travel, but was repurposed for war. Now it's being repurposed againt for space travel, but Landscar scares the last minister to his death and/or kills him, doesn't matter. Landscar is going to stay behind. So the Doctor, C'rizz and Excelsior go up in the rocket. Excelsior kills C'rizz and the Doctor absolutely refuses to help her escape. He calls her the most amoral person he's ever known and that's pretty accurate. She just does whatever she wants, plays with the lives of her people, because they are her pawns to do with as she wishes. She doesn't need to justify herself to anyone.

The planet pulls the rocket back down and when Excelsior goes out of the ship, she gets eaten up in a forming volcano. Which just leaves the Doctor. The Last. Landscar says that when everyone dies, the cycle will begin again. Earlier in the episode, Excelsior didn't understand the concept of children. When people die, they just don't replenish their numbers. Because once everyone's dead, they all come back and begin this whole thing again. So Landscar tells the Doctor to kill himself. He says he never considered himself suicidal and does it anyway.

Which brings everyone back. Charley and C'rizz are watching a parade and Excelsior gives her victory speech as the war has finally ended. Charley calls her an inspiration, which is all ironic to us. I'm not sure if the Doctor is meant to remember everything that happened, but it certainly feels like he does.

And that's that. I suppose it is accurate that one power mad, insane despot can absolutely cause the destruction of the planet. Along with self serving ministers who will say anything she wishes to hear to keep themselves alive. It's wild, to me, that we're all still alive after the Cold War. At least for now. We shall see. The story itself, though, was pretty mediocre. I wasn't exactly thrilled by it, but it wasn't the worst story either. Mostly just inoffensive.

A decent story in the Divergent Universe arc. Not particularly interesting, but some good acting from Paul McGann and India Fisher.  Not sure if this one is crucial to the plot or not? Haven't listened to The Creed of the Kormon yet, so not sure.

23.09.2024

This play was so boring it put me off from Big Finish for like 9 months. I tried to start over at least 4 times.
Anyway, Chibnall-level of message depth. Non-sensical conclusion, feeling out of nowhere despite being setup from the beginning. Chekhov's guns of "beware the lone cybermen" caliber that make you literally groan out loud when they're resolved.
1/5 if I've ever seen one.

It is not often that I get genuinely angry at an audio adventure, since I am usually taking a lovely walk 'round my city or out in nature when listening to them.
However, this is some of the most boring, drawn-out, nothing-of-a-story, thinks-it-has-something-to-say-but-everything-it-says-is-a-tired-cliché Doctor Who story I have ever come across. The biggest compliment I can give this waste of 2-and-a-half hours is that the 'nothing' which makes up this entire story is somewhat competently written.

Now I don't necessarily have a problem with a story that has nothing new to say, I have enjoyed quite a few of them, but I have a problem with a story which has nothing new to say, yet is delivered with the gravitas of a story which is new and bold and untrodden territory, really saying some deep, dark truths about society, and that is exactly what this is.
It's like Jubilee without the wit or quality, it's like The Daleks without the fun or worldbuilding, it's like The Haunting of Villa Diodati without the characterisation or ability to juggle oodles of plot points and characters, it's like Creatures of Beauty without the weight or conceptuality, it's like Jim Mortimore and Rob Shearman were the only ones who had any ideas about what the hell to do with the Divergent Universe Arc.

Now, Paul McGann is Paul McGann and Paul McGann is amazing, but even he cannot give weight to a scene where The Doctor yells to the sky asking why he is being tormented, because, no matter how well that is delivered, outside of deliberately pulpy horror, it is patently ridiculous.
These Monthly Range releases vary in length, but given how slowly every line is delivered, and how lackadaisically every plot point is trodden through, you'd have thought that this was a story artificially lengthened for the sake of format. At the half-hour mark I genuinely yelled out "30 minutes!? But nothing has happened yet!"

I did not care for this all that much.

3.5/10