Zaroff fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Jul 31, 2015

• The premise. There is a wonderfully creepy vibe to the whole thing, everything has a well-realized air of wrongness to it. On the surface it's just a standard English town, but even the barest scratching at the surface reveals that something is horribly, horribly wrong. For a time it even seems like they've wandered into a ghost story, but that doesn't explain the lack of seaside, the empty cans of food etc. Why is the military there? What's with the mysterious voice only the inhabitants can see? Why are the inhabitants so keen to avoid being seen by a military who can't seem to detect them even when their sensors easily pick up Lucie? The premises is creepy and raises a lot of interesting questions, and to the story's credit it tries to answer all those questions as best it can.
  
  
• The explanation. The answers, when they come, all mostly make perfect sense. As mad or out there as all of the weird things going on are, half of them have very mundane but feasible explanations and the rest all fit in fine with the world of Doctor Who. More importantly, those latter points aren't just thrown out there with a technobabble explanation made up to fit the script, but rely on a mixture of prior knowledge of Doctor Who and carefully placed foreshadowing/revelation of seemingly unconnected data. Everything ties together, both fictional and real-world issues, to form a cohesive (and satisfying whole). For example, the missing seaside is a result of the "seaside" just being a lake used as a placeholder for a Cold War experimental "English" town for training deep-cover spies. An oil drilling operation has drained the lake, that same oil is needed by the Nestene Consciousness to propagate its species, and this kicks off the "terrorist" acts that bring in the military. There is cause and effect, foreshadowing and linkage, for the most part nothing happens that hasn't been carefully placed within the context of the world the story presents us with.
  
  
• The parallels/callbacks. This story has some very obvious and deliberate parallels with/callbacks to Spearhead from Space, the first 3rd Doctor television story. This is most obvious in relation to the presence of the Autons, but they tie it in even more specifically by mentioning they came down at the same time as the meteor shower in that 3rd Doctor story. It works well for establishing that Earth and it's myriad invasions aren't just restricted to England (and specifically London), but that this is a global phenomenon. More parallels are obvious in the involvement of the Military, immediately bringing to mind UNIT, something that is brought up in the story itself with a few jokes about the Doctor becoming their Scientific Adviser.
  
  
• The "monster". This story takes an old-school Who villain and gives us an interesting twist on them. In previous stories, the Autons have not been much more than unthinking foot soldiers, with the only real exception being Rory in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang. In general, they've needed a mastermind figure to direct them, and it is that level of command that gives them their menace, the actual Autons themselves being little more than remote controlled plastic. The only real exception to this I can think of is Rose, but that was a story more about the titular character and her life, and how meeting the Doctor changed that (arguably) for the better. In Spearhead from Space there was Channing, in Terror of the Autons there was the Master, in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang the Alliance was using the Autons to lull the Doctor into a false sense of security. In this story, however, the Autons are without guidance, the Nestene Consciousness that controlled them fragmented and buried deep enough that its voice could not reach them. This left them to default to their normal behavior - to fit in and not attract attention - and for 17 years following the end of the Cold War/break up of the Soviet Union, they've continued to live in the training village being "normal" human beings. As a result, we see Autons with, of all things, autonomy, and a chance to finally see them become people in their own right. This makes them doubly threatened, not only by the military but by the resurgent Nestene Consciousness that is what would normally drive them/give them purpose, and now presents a threat to the people they have become.
  
  
• Lucie's actions. Big Finish seems to have gotten better by this point at figuring out how to make the companion in a story be more than just an audience conduit asking the Doctor,"But what does that mean?" or getting into peril for the Doctor to save them. Helped in part by Lucie being a rather brash/forthright character, she forces herself into the story seemingly by sheer force of personality alone, making a point of dominating most scenes she is in with supporting characters (with Paul McGann, they have a good back and forth that puts them on equal terms) or otherwise having some integral part to play in the plot. It's helped by Sheridan Smith sounding like she does have personality herself, Lucie's character feels mostly natural.
  

• Lucie's reactions. Unfortunately, Lucie's personality is also strong enough that writers seem to have a tendency to make her throw out witty/snarky comments in ALL situations, rather than picking and choosing their moments. This can make her seem almost painfully detached from the actual story at times, such as one particular scene in this story where she just seen multiple murders take place and is standing in the midst of bloody death and destruction... and she's on the radio still mostly cracking the same jokes/being catty with the Doctor as she explains the situation. It feels like Lucie has had a firm character established for all the writers to use (thus avoiding wild shifts in personality between stories) but they are allowing it to dominate their writing, rather than letting it flow naturally out of the context of the story being told.
  
  
• The competence of the Military. It is hard to take them seriously when these guys appear to be most incompetent boobs. They grab Lucie when she pops up on their sensors, but insist that there are no other people around despite Lucie having seen several since arriving in the village. It boggles belief that in all their time there, they've not only never spotted one of the inhabitants with their own eyes, but that they haven't noticed any sign of their presence - shifted objects, the fact the place is still "lived in" and not overgrown with foliage or overrun by wildlife etc. They're present in the little town because of "terrorist" activities, but they seem content to just kind of hang around at their base and just send out the odd patrol which spots nothing, despite those activities continuing. Lethbridge-Stewart would be outraged at such lax behavior, and it doesn't exactly make for giving the military much more than a sense of being out of their depth, incompetent and generally useless.
  
  
• The Doctor's morality. While Paul McGann gives his normal fine performance, the story does a disservice in its writing in the way he so quickly and apparently unconcernedly decides to prevent most of the Autons from discovering who/what they are, cutting off their true selves and burying that almost desperate spark of the Nestene Consciousness once again. While it is true that he points out that the concerns of the "voice" are hardly altruistic, they are essentially the same as that of the Military - it is trying to protect its own, and the Doctor seems entirely too eager to just cut it off/bury it instead of attempting either diplomacy or finding some other third way alternative. When he's done, he doesn't seem to particularly care one way or the other what happens the inhabitants of the town, and freely admits what he suspects MIGHT happen but comments on it in a joking way. After the story takes it time wallowing in the (very good) creepy atmosphere of the first half, it seems to rush itself to get through the rest, and the Doctor is hauled along for the ride acting very untypically in the process.
  
  
• The sinister undertones of the resolution. Tying in to the above, the entire resolution has a rather sinister (and tragic) edge to it. The Autons are effectively left to suffer the same fate that they were "saved" from when the Doctor reburied the spark of the Nestene Consciousness that was taking control of their minds. The military's rather callous attitude is straight up vocalized by the commanding officer who makes no bones about what he intends to do, and to make matters worse it is made clear just how bad/evil these plans are because he includes the Doctor (and Lucie, I guess) as part of the same group, and the Doctor and Lucie's jokey "escape" is very much made up to be a good thing, avoiding a bad fate.... but that other group is still facing the same thing, only most of them have no idea what is coming for them, and they certainly don't have a time machine to escape in. After lip-service was paid to the idea of allowing these people to retain their individuality (itself tying in to the 1991 date and the parallels with the break-up of the Soviet Union), it is very much suggested they are going to lose that... and then the story is over and as far as we know, that is exactly what happened. Not exactly a feel-good ending, which is fine in itself except the way the story is presented the ending is treated as light-hearted and a bit of a lark.
  

cargohills fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Aug 2, 2015