Trouble in Paradise

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

Previous Story: Year of the Pig

I've been loving Destiny of the Doctor, if only for a glimpse at each companion actor's impression of their respective Doctors (and 11). This story is a fairly fun one, the main part that I really like is how it challenges a lot of things that are problematic with celebrity historicals. It especially challenges the Doctor's idolisation of these historical figures by having Peri outright call the Doctor out on his treatment of Christopher Columbus. Nev Fountain seems to be fairly accustomed to subverting expectations when it comes to historical figures (see The Kingmaker which turns Richard III into the "good" guy and Shakespeare into the bad one).

Nicola Bryant's performance of this story is excellent and it's especially noticeable just how much work she puts in when she's narrating this story as you can really hear the differences between her natural accent and her Doctor Who accent. I'm not sure I'm a big fan of the resolution, I'm mixed on the idea of a time-traveller creating the myth of Satan by appearing throughout Earth's history when stories like The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit have a much cooler explanation for the imagery of the Devil appearing everywhere. Overall a great installment to a series that I'm intrigued to hear the end of.

Next Story: Revelation of the Daleks

This is a great story where we finally get to hear the Doctor meet Christopher Columbus!

Here, we get a story that feels more involved with the greater 'Destiny of the Doctor' story arc, with the Eleventh Doctor specifically tasking the Sixth Doctor and Peri with tracking down something known as an 'Omni-Paradox', explained as what happens when time collides against time itself.

There's some brilliant exploration of the Sixth Doctor & Peri's toxic relationship, and I like how it tackles the problematic side of Christopher Columbus. Peri really takes the Doctor to task for being so eager to spend time with Christopher Columbus when he enslaved the American population upon discovering America, and it really makes you question other instances where the Doctor gets giddy about meeting important historical features with problematic attitudes. Not only that, but Peri even directly challenges the Doctor over his less sympathetic side in this incarnation, when he refuses to treat a guy with a disease currently not curable in this time period, when he has the cure in his TARDIS. It's great to have a full-on acknowledgement that this Doctor and companion had quite a toxic relationship.

It's a bit of a slow burner, but there's some genuinely captivating character moments captured in this audio. This is the Sixth Doctor and Peri story we should have got in the TV Series!

Trouble in the Paradise is the sixth instalment of the Destiny of the Doctor audio series that BBC Audio released, in collaboration with Big Finish, for the 50th Anniversary.

I’ve listened to the previous five instalments and they have been a very entertaining bunch.  In terms of Big Finish, they are closest in style to their Companion Chronicles.  Each release is narrated by a relevant companion actor (with the exception of the 9th Doctor release) and so, in the case of Trouble in Paradise, we have Nicola Bryant performing as Peri.

Each story also has a second voice artist portraying a principal guest character.  For this story we have Cameron Stewart as Christopher Columbus – making this what the revived series often refers to as a ‘celebrity historical’.But Nev Fountain, this story’s writer, takes a very different tack to the revived series’ cavalcade of famous writers, monarchs and political figures.  With even Winston Churchill being presented as much more amiable than real history would suggest he actually was, the revived series has skewed towards showing famous historical figures as fun, open-minded and, in the case of Charles Dickens, the subject of a definite fan crush from the Doctor.

Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, is written as the most arrogant, unlikeable human Peri has ever had the misfortune to encounter on her travels.  There’s a lovely scene where Peri berates the Doctor for doing exactly what he does later in The Unquiet Dead – fawning over famous people.  She reminds him of his behaviour around George Stephenson and HG Wells and this draws a nice parallel between the 6th Doctor’s era and the revived series and shows how, actually, the hallmarks of the  ‘celebrity historical’ were already patented in the 80s (far more so that the way history and its main players had been presented during the Hartnell era).

So, Christopher Columbus is presented as a thoroughly horrible person.  He narrates his journal to the audience making disparaging comments about uncivilised natives (including the Doctor and Peri who he assumes are locals to the islands they are ‘discovering’) and Peri proceeds to give the Doctor a history lesson in what happened when Columbus did discover ‘the new world’ and how he treated the indigenous people.  There’s a lovely postscript too, after the Doctor and Peri have departed, where Columbus states confidently that he has discovered Japan – so poor were his navigation skills.

Much like the celebrity historicals of the revived series, Trouble in Paradise faces its historical figure off against an alien foe – this time a space buffalo.  The script slowly reveals details about the aliens which, initially, made me think we were about to get a sequel to The Daemons.  Even the voice given to the alien (also voiced by Cameron Stewart) is Azal-like.  However, this devil-like alien is of no relation to our church-destroying Pertwee era monster.  He is the leader of a race of aliens – the Bovine Herd – who, apparently, have existed on Earth since prehistoric times.  The last of his kind (at least, of sentiency) the hairy beast wishes to manipulate time to restore his race to greatness.  Rather convolutedly, his machinations are revealed to be why Peri exists!  The leader has used his technology to bring Columbus to the new world with the intention that they will wipe out the natives – who have been killing and eating his herd (the buffalo) meaning he can restore his race to greatness.  Without his plans, Europeans may never have come to America, and Peri might not have existed.

It’s all a bit silly and odd – although it is a script by Nev Fountain, so I’m not hugely surprised.  That said, though, it is entertaining and Nicola Bryant and Cameron Stewart bring it all to life brilliantly.  Nicola’s 6th Doctor impression has just the right amount of bombast to suggest Colin Baker’s performance and Stewart is clearly having a lot of fun as the intolerably smug Columbus; there’s a hilarious scene where Peri is falls overboard of Columbus’s ship and his response to the Doctor’s distress is to query innocently whether, in their culture, her drowning is considered a bad thing!

Historically we obviously have Columbus and his discovery of the new world (alien intervention notwithstanding) along with his inability to actually know where on earth he was.  Much of the action in the first part of the story occurs on the Santa Maria, Columbus’s ship and reference is made to his two smaller, accompanying ships, the Nina and the Pinta.  Peri highlights some of Columbus’s less attractive accomplishments including slavery and his violent treatment of the natives.

Despite an ever-so-slightly silly monster and a convoluted timey-wimey back story, this is a fun story bolstered by two good performances.  The brief cameos of the 11th Doctor in each instalment of this series are intriguing and I am looking forward to how it all fits together at the end of the series.

Man this Columbus guy is a real ass

Overall very fun and imaginative and the ending might just be one of the funniest ‘reveals’ of the entire franchise.