To the Death

Okay the last five minutes or so are probably my favorite scene Paul McGann has ever done as the Doctor (at least regarding main range and the EDA). At least it's up there with his performance in Scherzo, Chimes, , Neverland/Zagreus, Natural History... It is what makes me rank up this story from a 4/5 to a 5/5. The rage, the way he can make you feel how out of control the Doctor is. Man, just give him three seasons with 10 or so episodes each. Please BBC. Anyways...

The script isn't as tight or as epic as I would like it to be (nor what the excellent performances deserve), but I found myself loving it anyway. It's always cool when these stories act as sequels to a 40+ years old serial made in black and white (that everybody thought it would never be watched again when the credits rolled).

Lucie is bleeding amazing, her sacrifice is really emotional, but, as I said, it's what comes after that is the highlight of this episode, and probably this 4 seasons...

So, as this is the last episode, I want to share my opinion of the EDAs. Coming from the Main Range (where we had amazing, thought-provoking, experimental episodes which more than made up for the handful of bad or uninteresting ones) to this run has been a disappointment for me. The first 3 seasons were riddled with dull or plainly bad written episodes, and uneventful finales. Only exceptions for me personally were Max Warp (a politically-driven murder mystery I loved), the Human Resources finale (which was okayish) and maybe Morbius (because I love when they tie in to other, and better, serials). The biggest exception is this 4th season, as its arc is well thought-out and the individual episode are above and beyond what we have listened before. It's a shame Lucie's exit is in the first episode. And even if she still appears in the majority, she is no longer the Doctor's companion. As a result, I haven't really felt a connection to Lucie as I felt with Charley (one of my favourite companions btw), so while I loved her in her final moments, I wish I could have felt the same in the other 30 episodes she is in.

Anyway, a bad 8th Doctor story is better than no story at all, so I have enjoyed this  run for the brilliant mess it is. Dark eyes is next!

PS: Didn't think they would kill Alex off, as I know he is in other audios, although I surmise it has something to do with timey-wimey stuff. Liked his character actually, wish it was more developed though.

Nick Briggs, I am sending you my therapy bills.

I could talk about Paul McGann's excellent acting - how utterly outraged and scared and angry the Doctor is, and how well it's sold. I could talk about Susan and how her losing Alex nearly brought me to tears in public. I could talk about the Monk - how he's  this snivelling coward who thinks he knows best until things go wrong and he loses something. How it made me care about Tamsin dying despite me not liking her, or how Lucie dying broke me.

But what I will talk about is that ending. With the Doctor playing that recording and filling in his parts. Broken, alone, friendless and having lost everything. Haunting stuff.

11/10. Dark Eyes, you better be as good as this.

Just a note that this review was written in 2020 as part of a Doctor Who marathon I was doing and chronicling on Gallifrey Base. Therefore there may be references to other reviews in that marathon which will make no sense here.

I watched the entirety of the classic series and then attempted to bridge classic and new with an 'Audio Era' in between; picking some Seventh Doctor ones, watching the movie, doing all of the Eighth Doctor audios (out at the time), watching Night of the Doctor and then doing all of the War Doctor audios (which were only the 4 John Hurt boxsets at the time) before picking up the new series with Rose.

I have not relistened since then but was asked over at the forum to post this review when I mentioned what I thought of this story. As with the new series two-parters I reviewed story rather than episode so this review is for both parts.

Pitchforks at the ready, gang...

Lucie Miller/To the Death

I begin this post with a reminder that, when this was originally released, I had only heard half of the Lucie Miller adventures. Stopping at the end of their second series with what I thought was the turgid return of Morbius, partly out of budgetary reasons at the time but also because I felt the range had very much dropped off, I didn't partake of the latter two seasons until this marathon and, well, aside from the third season having a strong second half and the odd story here and there, you know that they haven't exactly been setting my world on fire.

Nevertheless, in the decade since they came to a culmination in this two-part finale (comprising the episodes Lucie Miller and To the Death) I read an awful lot about how fantastic this range was, a bar for Big Finish to aspire to reach once again, and particularly how stellar these final two episodes were.

And I really don't get why.

I mean, I think I know why but that's to make massive assumptions with regards to how people think so I won't do that but speaking personally, this range of stories ends as it (mostly) lived... Jarringly inconsistent and infuriating. If ever you want to journey through the Lucie Miller stories and have reached today not knowing how they end then I suggest not reading this post because there'll be some spoilers which will likely impact that journey...

These episodes feel like they're trying very hard to be mature and grown up yet actually result in being the opposite, making the air they have about themselves not only feel unjustified, but yet another irritation as well. You see, with a title such as this, you can expect a body count but simply providing one does not a valid piece of drama make, and I feel that's all this really does. There needs to be substance behind it and this just offs characters for what genuinely feels like the sake of it and as such there's nothing like the impact to them that either the story thinks there is or that there should be. These are characters we've come to know, I would have liked to have felt something beyond, “Oh for **** sake!”

It just all feels rather juvenile to be honest.

Not to mention this is another story whose structure I really cannot get on with. The gist is that the Daleks have returned to invade Earth once more and – yet again – want to pilot it around like a giant ship. It's The Dalek Invasion of Earth Round Two basically and the Doctor's a little slow in arriving. This is why Lucie left him that message at the end of the previous story, to come and help them. So to catch us up with what's been happening, we get a lot of narration from Lucie and man does that drag. Again, it feels like it thinks it's heaping on atmosphere and being portentous in taking such a tack but it really only makes me very bored very quickly. Which is quite some feat considering the rather busy nature of this story.

We get the returns of the Daleks, Susan, Alex, Lucie, Tamsin and the Monk and what should be a crescendo of excitement is instead a languid, plodding infodump. Thankfully, there's more incident later on when the Doctor enters the fray but even then there are moments when everything grinds to a halt, an absolute absurdity the more I think about how much could actually be done here. With the Monk and Tamsin having returned, we get a moment of realisation for Tamsin as she's presented with the truth about the Monk and Niki Wardley conveys it well. Graeme Garden is very strong too as he hurtles towards the conclusion that he's very much out of his depth with the Daleks and is then faced with the consequences of his actions as he loses Tamsin.

For, yes, Tamsin doesn't get out alive and while Wardley has been really very good, Tamsin's arc has meant we've barely got to know her. As soon as she feels like she's beginning to make her mark, off she goes with the Monk instead and we don't see her again until this story... Where she dies. The story doesn't leave it there and goes for much closer to home as Alex also comes a cropper at the end of a Dalek extermination. Of course, this devastates Susan and it's not an exaggeration to say that this is the biggest thing thrown at Carole Ann Ford as an actor in the whole of this marathon so far. And she does wonderfully.

Alex's death by itself is (I'm sorry) no big deal. We barely know the guy after all but the fact that it's Susan's son and the Doctor's great-grandson, it's their reactions to it which make us feel it. Jake McGann's fairly stilted performance has actually worked rather well for Alex, making me wonder if it was a performance choice all along having never heard or seen him in anything else. His demise is rather shocking in its matter-of-factness and the obvious ramifications it has on the other characters. In fact, it's easily the most effective character death in the story in my opinion.

Which is nuts because (seriously, look away if you're going to give these a go and don't know the end result) the big death is, of course, Lucie Miller herself. One of the very best companions in all of Doctor Who and her death elicits less of a reaction from me than Alex chuffing Foreman's. Why is this? Well first of all, it's nothing we haven't seen before. She sacrifices herself out of necessity and with such plot beats having been done before (even in this very show) it's all just written so flatly that it just proceeds to happen, rather than happening to us. Because Lucie has been so bloody brilliant, she deserved better. I'm not against killing her off as an idea but it has to be done better than this.

But then, she's deserved better than many of the stories she has been given in my opinion. That she has been so good is solely at the hands of Sheridan Smith, who I cannot praise enough. She hangs heavy over the final scene between the Doctor and Susan, both McGann and Ford being absolutely brilliant in it. But it does kind of focus on Lucie a little too much considering Susan has just lost her son. Which is understandable in terms of character hierarchy, Lucie is a lead and Susan might have been a former regular but is now a guest.

But when what happens has happened, Lucie taking precedence in that scene with the Doctor and Susan so much over Alex feels really weird and adds to the disjointed feel. But it becomes one of a handful of excellent scenes in a really clunky story.

I will miss Lucie dearly but I'm afraid I won't miss this chapter of Doctor Who at all. It's been far too much of a hodge podge for me to agree with the consensus on it unfortunately. I'm glad I've finally listened to it in its entirety, but there won't be that many I feel the urge to revisit.

After 942 episodes of this marathon another new chapter is about to begin, the third act in the Eighth Doctor's life. For want of a better word, I'll call this next one The Boxset Era since that's the format his stories began to take. The format becomes more serialised, though there are still definitive break points, making it tricky to determine which are single parts, two-parters or even three-parters. I'll give it a good old go, though. But be warned, if you're familiar with Dark Eyes, you may not agree with how I cluster the episodes into 'stories'.

Highlight
McGann and Ford in the final scene really do amazing work, even if the script doesn't.

Lowlight
The structure here, and approach taken, is all over the place. It seems like the calling-card of this range as a whole.

★★