WRITTEN BY DAVID BISHOP
DIRECTED BY JASON HAIGH-ELLERY
RECOMMENDED PURCHASE BIG FINISH 'UNBOUND' CD #3 (ISBN 1-84435- 014-2) RELEASED IN JULY 2003.
BLURB
The Deep-sea Energy
Exploration
Project
was
destroyed by
dirty
bombs in 2039,
turning
the sea bed
into
a radioactive
tomb.
Rumours SAY
THAT
the DEEP was
conducting
illegal
experiments...
In 2066, the Doctor
LEARNS
THAT the DEEP
remains
intact. The
terrible
truth about
what happened 27
years
ago will be
revealed.
The Doctor
is
determined to be
the
first to uncover
and confront the
secrets
of the DEEP.
But DREDGING UP the
past
can OFTEN have
consequences
FOR THE
FUTURE... |
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Full Fathom Five JULY 2003
Full Fathom Five remains one of my favourite Big Finish releases after several repeat listenings over the years. It’s certainly one of the least typical, and perfectly encap-sulates what the Unbound series is, in my view, truly about. Rather than, as in the previous two stories, taking a point in Doctor Who continuity and asking what things would be like if that event had occurred slightly differently, Full Fathom Five takes the Doctor as its focus and decides to look at him in a bold, new way. Just how different could the Doctor be, while still remaining the Doctor?
David Collings, a frequent guest actor in the classic series, takes on the role of the Doctor. His distinctive voice is a joy to listen to, and he makes the part his own. His Doctor retains the intellect and curiosity of the other incarnations, while adding a hardness that we’ve not heard before. This Doctor’s character is only slowly revealed throughout the course of the story; gradually we realise just how different this Doctor is from the one that we know and love. Although this Doctor is harsh, ruthless, even brutal, he is still on the side of good. He is simply willing to go further than his predecessors than securing his goals. He takes the view that the ends justify the means further than even the seventh Doctor did in his coldest moments. While many fans may balk at the idea of a Doctor who swears, throws punches and packs a gun, I love the idea of taking a fresh look at the character. I wouldn’t want this Doctor all the time, of course, but for a one off play he’s fascinating and frightening to listen to. There’s also the worrying possibility that this isn’t a ‘parallel’ Doctor, as with the other Unbound incarnations. The most we get of his background beyond the play’s immediate storyline is that he’s used up most of his lives. What we have here is a chilling indication of what our Doctor may eventually become…
The story itself is tremendously affective. The narrative follows two time zones, jumping rapidly between them on occasion, yet without ever becoming confusing. The excellent direction and sound design see to keeping things clear. It’s 2066, Doctor has been on Earth for twenty-seven years, and has acquired an adoptive daughter, Ruth (played sympathetically, if perhaps a little melodramatically, by Siri O’Neal). Ruth has never gotten over her father’s disappearance whilst working in the Deep-Sea Exploration Project in a submarine seabase. She knows the Doctor knew him, and that he’d promised to look after her. When the Doctor discovers the seabase is intact, he resolves to go down there, risking radiation poisoning. He insists Ruth stay behind, but she sneaks aboard his hired sub.
In the past segments, we discover the terrible truth of events. The Doctor was at the base before. He arrived in his TARDIS, determined to stop the genetic experiments occurring there. My second favourite moment in the play is when the Doctor arrives for the first time, nonchalantly introducing himself as “Smith. Doctor John Smith. I’ve come to save the day.” Which he does. Just. Face to face with the amoral General Flint (a note-perfect portrayal of arrogant American brass by Ed Bishop), events start to unravel. He is forced to leave his mission half-completed. We discover that the Doctor is returning, not to discover the truth of what happened, as Ruth thinks, but because he wants to destroy the base once and for all – and, more importantly, get his TARDIS back. However, he hadn’t bargained for Ruth coming along.
I’ve mentioned my second favourite moment; so, what’s my favourite? To tell would be to ruin the play. Avoid any spoilers for this one, for the closing moments present a stunning twist that left me reeling...
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Copyright © Daniel Tessier 2008
Daniel Tessier has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. |
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Big Finish’s third Unbound story was the first to really challenge its audience’s preconceptions about Doctor Who. Auld Mortality had been a wistful romance, coloured by love for the universe that we all know, whereas Sympathy for the Devil had provided us with an “unbound” world, but a model Doctor. Conversely, when David Bishop sat down to write Full Fathom Five, he set out to inflame. His tale doesn’t tackle what might have happened had the Doctor not been languorous or late or turned right instead of left; it sweeps us up and carries us to a darkened corner of the multiverse inhabited by a Doctor who believes that the ends justify the means; a doubly cold-hearted, manipulative bastard who’s in grave danger of “doing an Anakin”.
The actor cast as the loathsome Doctor is another who was once mooted for the role on television – David Collings, star of Revenge of the Cybermen, The Robots of Death and Mawdryn Undead. His gravelled tones are perfectly suited to the embittered interpretation that he’s required to play, yet he still manages to engender a real sense of Doctorishness, albeit a perverted one. Impressively, his portrayal does little to glamorise the foul-mouthed, gun-toting Time Lord. It would have been all too easy for Bishop and Collings to paint this Doctor as an admirable, Bauer-like anti-hero; ruthless, but proportionate. Instead, Collings’ hoarse performance highlights the Doctor’s angst and resentment. Further, his pairing with Siri O’Neal’s Ruth – a woman who he seems to have looked after since his rueful actions separated her from her father many years prior – only serves to emphasise this Doctor’s dearth of redeeming features, Ruth’s presence continually reminding the listener that there isn’t anyone that this man wouldn’t betray; there isn’t any life that he wouldn’t tear apart in order to protect his precious greater good.
However, the play’s masterstroke is its depiction of the Doctor’s failure. Prima facie, if you have a character who is prepared to sacrifice innocent lives, putting anyone who poses a threat or knows too much to the sword, then he should have a much better chance of saving the world than a character who’s incessantly trying to protect friends and innocents and look for another way out. But as Bishop’s script skilfully illustrates, it doesn’t work like that. When we meet the Doctor at the start of his play, he’s a man without a TARDIS and without friends; the only thing that appears to be going for him is Ruth. And then as events unfold, in sticking to his quick and easy path despite being offered ample chance to deviate, the Doctor ends up hoist by his own petard, the sufferer of the most brutal of fates.
The narrative itself is suitably moody and suspenseful, and is backed by a grand score that put me very much in mind of Zagreus. Bishop’s DEEP underwater setting provides a suitably claustrophobic cage for the Doctor to drown inside, each character and threat that he encounters painstakingly positioned to reflect the cuts and dents in his morality. Ed Bishop’s Flint, for instance, is the Doctor’s equal and opposite number in every sense. A hard-nosed American General, Flint is also prepared to save the world “by any means necessary” – all that he and the Time Lord disagree on are, ironically, what those means are. Even the monstrous genetic experiments carried out on the base could be seen as a reflection of the Doctor’s own transformation into a monster, as a crippling late twist suggests that this bad ass Doctor might not be a parallel incarnation like his Unbound peers, but a future one…
“How many more lives does this bastard have left?”
Given its contentious subject matter, it isn’t hard to see why Full Fathom Five has long been such a divider of opinion. Nevertheless, I would urge those whose heckles were raised by it to take a step back and look at what David Bishop has to say, for this isn’t an endorsement of the aggressive, pitiless Doctor, but a clamorous condemnation of him.
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Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2010
E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. |
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