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...

 

 

 

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...

 

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.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2003. No copyright infringement is intended.

                                                       

 

 

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 hes 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.

 

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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