The Monthly Adventures #037 - “The Sandman" by Simon A. Forward

It’s really hard to talk about audios like The Sandman. I mean, what is there to say, it's a story with nothing to it. Frankly, I don’t know how this script even lasted two whole hours. Now Simon A. Forward is far from a popular writer - looking at his Doctor Who oeuvre, I see practically nothing unanimously considered at least passable - so I somewhat knew what I was getting into. I’d already listened to and failed to understand Dreamtime later on in The Monthly Adventures and it seems Mr. Forward’s problem persists even here. If you want a comprehensible story, then feel free to look elsewhere.

The Sandman: the boogeyman of the Galyari people, a multicoloured creature that steals the hides of young and kills those who look upon it. When the Doctor and Evelyn arrive, they find the Galyari’s home - The Clutch - in turmoil over a spate of recent deaths, but things are only going to get more complicated. For, you see, the Sandman is also known as the Doctor.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Simon A. Forward is a writer I’d describe on the whole as frustrating. He clearly is a talented world builder and his stories are often injected with this galactic mysticism fuelled by the bombastic stylings of the classic space opera. Central to The Sandman are what seems to be Forward’s crowning achievement - the Galyari - a reptilian race of nomadic traders that have returned a couple times again in the audios and make for a relatively interesting extraterrestrial species that lay the groundwork for some really enticing worldbuilding, mostly pertaining to the fascinating setting of the Clutch, a massive fleet of ships sort of bundled together into one big flying city. Unfortunately, due to the many issues with the script, we never really get to properly explore the Clutch and most of the other little bits of lore we’re drip-fed are mostly explained to the viewer poorly. However, I can not deny the innate brilliance of Forward’s greatest idea here, and that is the premise. The Doctor preventing a species’ warmongering efforts by becoming they’re generational boogeyman, an urban legend told to the children before bed, is f**king brilliant. Genuinely one of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen for a story in a while and it’s such a shame it had to be written into this one. Still a concept we should definitely return to, perhaps with some better writing. However, I don’t think I could wish for a better performance, Baker pretty much knocks it out of the park playing the Doctor pretending to be a fearsome creature of the night. I actually want to stop a moment to congratulate the whole cast, even when the story was at its slowest, they were the shining light in the darkness. Especially Robin Bowerman (Lisa Bowerman’s older brother as it happens), who plays the “space gypsy” Mordecan; not a particularly enthralling character but Bowerman makes him at least fun to listen to.

What is not fun to listen to, however, is the rest of the story. Something I find Forward really struggles with is that ever so pesky task of visualisation on audio. Perhaps the biggest problem an audio writer will face is conveying meaning aurally without resorting to characters just saying what they’re seeing. It’s a tough issue to overcome but a talented enough author can easily do it and, whilst I certainly hate the tell not show approach, you also do need to make it clear what’s happening half the time. Which is where we run into a problem with Forward, who has a plethora of grand, high-concept ideas to show us but with no actual means of, well, showing us. There are still so many little complexities of Galyari society I’m still unclear on because we never had a moment to understand what they were, things were just introduced without giving the audience any context clues. Maybe Forward is just suited better for novel writing but I found it really difficult to follow along with what was happening, which was also an issue I faced listening to his later story, Dreamtime. But what I find even more of a blatant sin is how utterly dull this script is. I’m not sure if there really was a plot here, this felt like 50% exposition and 50% wandering around until the plot wrapped up. It felt almost aimless, like every problem was just floating about the place until the climax. The entire second part of this story is a Galyari explaining the backstory of the Sandman and let me tell you that a full half hour of exposition followed up by another half-a-story where I was still lost by the plot was frankly insulting. And, whilst I praise the performances, most of the characters here are cookie-cutter role fillers, and most of them feel lacking in personality. And don’t even ask me to try telling the Galyaris apart.

The Sandman was a disappointment in my eyes, full of good ideas that are never fully realised by a seemingly blind script and a lack of explanation. It’s beyond me how a story that dedicates half its runtime to expositing lore dumps still manages to miscommunicate enough for the whole thing to feel undefined, but Simon A. Forward managed to do it. Much better in concept than in execution, The Sandman isn’t an audio I’ll be rushing back to any time soon.

4/10

Pros:

+ The core idea of the Doctor being the boogeyman for a whole species is genius

+ Has a lot of interesting but poorly conveyed ideas.

+ Boasts a cast of particularly great performers

Cons:

- A real lack of adequate description that makes The Sandman an unnecessarily confusing listen

- Almost plotless to the point where entire parts can just be pointless exposition

- Full of indistinguishable if well acted characters

- Devoid of motive or drive

MR 037: The Sandman

Something something two sides to every story. Or the one where the Sixth Doctor’s coat causes literal physical damage to people's eyes.

There is a legend amongst the reptillion Galyari people of a monster with a rainbow coat who kills children in their beds and weaves their skins into his coat. A bedtime story to scare children into behaving. Except it is absolutely true. Sort of.

The Doctor returns to the Galyari who live on and operate a big fleet. The Doctor uses the term "space gypsies" quite a lot to describe the people who live in the fleet. It actually kind of reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, this massive fleet that sticks together for protection.

When the Doctor meets the Galyari in charge he suddenly starts acting like a comic book super villain and Evelyn is like lol wtf. She's not exactly someone who could be easily fooled by that posturing. She's just annoyed that the Doctor won't get to the point. Which is hilarious and makes sense. Someone older like that doesn't have the patience for that posturing.

The legend is that the Galyari were driven off their homeworld by the Doctor who made this little species of rodent sentient to kick them out because he just hated them in particular.

Naturally, though, the truth was that the Galyari consider every planet they conquer to be their homeworld and the sentient rodents there were the native species. So they were colonizing another world. The Doctor maintained his monster image for thousands of years to try to keep their conquering in check.

Now however we've got a copycat killer on the loose who is emulating the legend and really skinning Galyari alive instead of using the skin of already dead Galyari.

And this is where the story lost me a bit. There was something about the skins of the Galyari being used in a big monument and the copycat killer being able to puppet their skins to attack others? No idea what that was about.

There's also a subplot about a criminal enterprise where one of the rodent species came to offer that monument to the Galyari in exchange for them leaving their homeworld alone this time.

In general though this one was pretty ok. It was cute to see Colin acting like a monster. And because it's the Sixth Doctor you don't know if it's true or not. So that's fun. But it's nothing special, particularly when it starts going into the whole using skins thing and it doesn't make sense.

📝2/10 = VERY UNENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

THE RONETTES DID IT BETTER!

I struggle with audios that feature confused or muddled beginnings, and The Sandman is just that. It’s a mess of strange sound effects and editing that make it very difficult to grasp what is going on. The only takeaway of Part 1 is that Sixie and Evelyn arrive in a world where the Doctor is believed to be the mythical, child-murdering Sandman. This puts the Doctor in a unique position among the aliens he comes across: they fear and loathe him, forcing the Doctor to use this status to slowly uncover the hidden secrets of the Clutch.

Part 2 doesn’t help much in terms of making sense of things—we still get strange sound effects, voice-modulated performances, and a plot that is all over the palace yet nowhere at all simultaneously. This audio flies way over your head, and Simon A. Forward clearly doesn’t grasp how to write an interesting Doctor Who story. You could say that he gets it all backwards!

This story is so dull and full of itself that I have completely zoned out by the time we hit the second half of it. I couldn't tell you a single thing about what is going on in it, and that's never a good sign. And what's worse is that the climax in Part 4 is a lengthy scene of incomprehensible bugger.

It's always a joy to hear Sixie and Evelyn together, but this time around Colin Baker and Maggie Stables don’t inject a lot of energy into the story. Stables drown under all the confusing stuff.

This audio goes all in with the supporting cast, mostly consisting of the lizard-like Galyari, all with weird voices. Anneke Wills, best known for playing companion Polly alongside William Hartnell’s and Patrick Troughton’s Doctors, is part of the cast but completely wasted in a performance you don’t even notice.

There are certainly some really interesting concepts in this story, especially to do with the Doctor and his relationship with everyone in this story. I do like the dynamic between him and Evelyn a lot. That being said, this story really comes across as the writer felt very clever, but in actual fact I got very lost in the latter half when the explanations came. Unfortunately not a big fan of this one!

What even is there to discuss with this Story, a totally unremarkable Outing saved by its Concept, its World Building and solid Performances. Regardless of the Material, Colin always delivers, even if this one is one of his weaker one due to the Material being a bit of a ´Nothing´-one. I love the Idea of the Doctor being basically a Bogeyman to a whole Species, yet I don't feel like we actually do ANYTHING with it. Well that would be a lie, we do something with it in Part 1 but the further we go, the more I felt like there was just nothing to it. Doesn't help all the Alien Voices have this really unpleasant Filter, making me dragging hearing them. It's not the worst, that Glory goes to *The Last of the Titans*, but my God I really do not like this.
And even the Things I praised don't do much for me. The Performances are solid, but we have gotten better ones, the Concept is great but not used to a great Extent and the World Building.. well it's good, but by far not the best.