PREVIOUS
NEXT
Sympathy for
the Devil
JUNE 2003
The second of the Unbound
series, Sympathy for the Devil, is my favourite of the
lot (although
Full Fathom Five does come a close second). Diverging from the
established timeline
between Seasons 6 and 7, we join the alternative third Doctor at the
beginning of his Earth exile. However, something has gone wrong. Instead
of arriving in the England of
the 1970s, his TARDIS has set
down in Hong Kong, 1997… the eve of the Handover.
Playing the Doctor is none
other than David Warner, star of innumerable blockbusters and certainly one of
Britain’s greatest actors (my Mum used to know him, you know. True fact.)
As an actor who was long interested in the role, Warner approaches
the part thoughtfully, playing it dead straight, and I have to say he
absolutely nails it. His Doctor is intelligent, composed and, simply put,
pure class. After the first few moments after his arrival, during which
time he’s seethingly angry with the Time Lords, he takes on an air of
complete auth-ority and remains unflappable. It’s also amusing to imagine
him in the second Doctor’s ill-fitting clothes, something he apparently
never gets a chance to change out of. Watching
The Omen became a
sort of Two Doctors movie for me after listening to this.
The play is
set out as a sort
of alternative
to the UNIT days of Jon Pertwee’s
time.
As such, the Doctor soon bumps
into
none other than Brigadier
Lethbridge-Stewart (retired), who is now running
a small bar on the Hong Kong waterfront. Coincidence, or the hand of
fate? Either way, it’s just fantastic to have “Alistair” back, as it always
is. Nicholas Courtney
is as good as ever, perfectly portraying
a version
of the man who never got the chance to become the hero we all knew him to
be.
Bitter at his abandonment by UNIT, it’s a deeply sad thing to hear the
Brigadier like this. Without the Doctor around to help, UNIT was forced to use
crude military means to stop the various alien threats it encountered,
causing irreversible destruction to many areas of the planet. References to the ‘Plastic
Purges’ and other such parallel versions of familiar stories adds to the
feeling that things are not right in this world. However, once the Doctor
is here, the Brigadier becomes more of his old self. It becomes clear that
the two men need each other.
Adding to the Brigadier’s problems
is UNIT commander, Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood. A competent soldier, but
nevertheless an unpleasant slimy git, Wood is played by a young Scots
actor named David Tennant. Wonder what ever became of him? UNIT are in
Hong Kong to pick up a defector from the People’s Republic of China,
trying to escape to the country before it becomes Chinese territory. One Ke Le, he is head of a mind-controlled army used by the Chinese military,
and he needs something that’s in Hong Kong, some-
thing he can’t let his
superiors get hold of. However, events don’t go according to plan.
After a
plane crash, and an unexpected regeneration, we learn who Ke Le really is…
Ke
Le = Keller = the Master. Having fled to the Communists with the mind
parasites seen in
The Mind of Evil, he’s
now after the last one in existence, guarded by chanting monks in
a Buddhist temple.
The Master is played by
Mark Gatiss,
under the pseudonym of Sam Kisgart.
The Unquiet Dead writer plays a
much
younger,
more flippant version of the old
renegade that could be seen as a pre-
cursor to
John Simm’s. He’s powerful,
sinister and quite, quite mad.
What’s
more, he’s been trapped on Earth for
years, unable to reach his
TARDIS and
hoping for rescue from a fellow Time
Lord, now that one has finally arrived,
he’s not slow to show his anger. In a
spectacular explosion of rage, the Master verbally attacks the Doctor,
blaming him for the Plastic Purges, the lizard attacks, and the Probe 7
disaster. Had the Doctor arrived when
he was supposed to, things would have been better. Without skipping a
beat, the fictional terrors of this timeline shift into the horrors of the
real world:
“I
didn’t see you in Mai Lai, Doctor, I didn’t see you in East Timor.
No
interfering in Rwanda, I see. Gonna pop back later on, and sort out
Cambodia, are we? Pol Pot killed every Doctor he could find, and none of
them was you!”
The Master’s tirade makes its
point. We know what a world without the Doctor is like – we’re living in
it.
The
approaching handover adds an air of urgency to the proceedings, and the
use of an historical event that’s still in recent memory is effective. The
plot progresses rapidly, but
has time for thoughtful exchanges between the
main protagonists, and the Abbott, played
by Trevor Littledale. References
to alternate versions of classic stories will provoke a smile
on fans’ faces, but are not so intrusive as to spoil things for a more casual
listener, making the play a good choice for both a hardcore fan and
someone new whose interest has been peeked by the new show. All told, Sympathy for the
Devil is a cracking story, and I for one can’t wait for the
long-anticipated sequel.
|