Trouble in Paradise

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.