Charley Pollard, Meet the Men From Mondas

Big Finish Productions

Doctor Who: Sword of Orion

Written by: Nicholas Briggs

Directed by: Nicholas Briggs

Released: 26th February 2001

Characters: Paul McGann as the Doctor, India Fisher as Charley Pollard with Michelle Livingstone as Deeva Jansen and Bruce Montague as Grashe and Nicholas Briggs as Cyber Leader

Timeline: This story takes place after the TV Movie

Summary: When the Doctor sets out to educate Charley on the darker side of her race's future, he does not anticipate being embroiled in the protracted Orion War. The front line may be light years away, but the human race's struggle for victory has led to desperate measures.
Trapped aboard a mysterious star destroyer in the Garazone System, the Doctor and Charley find themselves cast as scapegoats. But the real danger has yet to awaken...
The Cybermen have received the signal for reactivation.

Introduction: After the very succesful start of this new Eight Doctor range of audios, the production team has decided to return to the classics in this second story. They wanted a known villain and at the same time a good enough story set in the distant future.

The Daleks were very well known adversaries but were a too obvious choice and besides they already featured in audio with the Seventh (The Genocide Machine) Doctor so the Cybermen were due to make an appearance.

In the foreword of this audio the author Nicholas Briggs (also giving voice to most of the Cybermen) notes that the original story was written on an old type-writer machine and was left aside years ago, until it was finally edited and adopted for audio.

Storywise Mr Briggs shows his preferance for the Robert Holmes/Phillip Hinchcliffe era and of course his love for the cybernized humanoid race and if you’ve ever got your hands on any of his creations you’d know his affinity for certain deadly pepperpots from Skaro.

One thing good to note is that this story doesn’t resolve that ‘sort of’ small cliff-hanger-like ending to the Storm Warning, though there are some references to it.

(I recommend you get the previous story anyway because some things still might confuse you.)

And so after an eerie preview the story begins with the Doctor and Charley already being on some kind of an alien planet and wandering through the bazaar, looking for medicine for the apparently ill Ramsay – the vortisor they rescued in the previous story.

In their search they stumble onto a shop whose owner originally works on a scrap-ship but as the Doctor correctly points out he’s also into smuggling of stolen goods. The shop-owner - fearing to have been discovered by the authorities – informs his accomplice of the two strangers.

After some time it ends up being pretty similar to any other Doctor Who story – the Doctor offers to take his newest companion somewhere she’s never been before but before they even enter the time ship, it’s been pulled on the ship of the shop-owner’s accomplices - leaving the Doctor and Charley temporarily stranded. But soon enough the Doctor finds some kind of a flying craft (imagine the one Tom Baker piloted in The Pirate Planet) and shows his flying skills.

Robert Holmes type of storyline comes into play here, when the Doctor and Charley arrive on the space ship and pretty soon get accused of murder of one of its crew. (Robots of Death anyone?)

But of course the murder accusation is the least of their problems as something deadly lurks in the background, pretty soon taking out the members of the crew, one by one and the ship’s captain who is not who she appears to be…

I really enjoyed this play, not for its originality, because it’s obviously been done before but for its execution and performances from the cast and crew.

Once again McGann shows his enthusiasm for the role by perfecting his performance and showing us how great of a Doctor he might have been if the series was commisioned after the telemovie.

India Fisher is also brilliant and shows her character’s intelligence, stubborness but also bravery when confronted by the men from Mondas.

Other members of the cast are also good, especially Michelle Livingstone as the ship's captain Deeva, who appears to have hidden agendas of her own and Bruce Montague as the rebbelious Grashe.

Overall this is a very good play, well written – though at times you could have a hard time distinguishing who is who of the scrap-ship's crew…but on another listen everything becomes perfectly clear and then you wonder why it wasn't in the first place.

I would give it 9 out of 10 for the above mentioned reasons. You can get it here.

The Never Realised TV Pilot

Big Finish Productions

Doctor Who: Storm Warning

Written by: Alan Barnes

Directed by: Gary Russell

Released: 22 January 2001

Characters: Paul McGann as the Doctor, introducing India Fisher as Charley Pollard, with Gareth Thomas as Lord Tamworth

Timeline: This story takes place after the TV Movie

Summary: After a dangerous encounter in the space/time vortex, the Doctor finds himself on Earth, October 1930. Or rather above it, aboard the British airship R101 on it's maiden voyage over France. Also on board is a young stowaway, Charlotte 'Charley' Pollard, seeking adventure and excitement away from her stifling family atmosphere. What Charley doesn't know but the Doctor does is that the flight is destined to end in tragedy, although no-one really knows why. Not even the Doctor, although maybe the passenger in Cabin 43 can help...

Introduction: So as the summer draws to a close and our TV channels are swamped with reruns of reruns, I’ve decided that eighth Doctor audio adventures deserved another listen to and I must say it’s completelly true that you find out things you didn’t know before on the second or third time. This was a great story with a lot of interesting characters and introducing the new companion which was a stroke of genius on Mr Barnes side.

Charley Pollard is such an interesting and lively character and is so thoughtfully written that you just can’t help but care about what happens to her and cheer when the Doctor disregards one of the primary temporal laws and invites her aboard the good time-ship TARDIS, despite the Vortisors (reminescent to the new series’ Reapers in appearance and concept) and a huge paradox glooming in the background.

Storywise, Barnes traditionally uses a historical event as the background of a much greater scale of events, because if you listen more closely this is not about the alien invasion, or about morality, humanity or war, or even the disaster featured – those are just plot devices – no,

this is really about a certain Edwardian adventuress, or Charley to her friends, a soon-to-be companion and best friend to a certain Time Lord. She is the key and she is the beginning of a story arc almost on an epic scale.

Like I said Barnes’ cleverly used a historical event as a background plot device and set it on the British airship R101 and described one of the lesser known disasters, that happened before the Hindenburg one.

It crashed in the early morning hours on October 5, 1930 in France during its maiden voyage, killing 48 people. The horrific event hindered the international public opinion of lighter-than-air craft and effectively ended British employment of rigid airships.

According to historical files the R101 departed on October 4 at 6:24 p.m. for its intended destination to Karachi (then part of British India) via a refuelling stop at Ismaïlia in Egypt under the command of Flight Lieutenant Carmichael Irwin. Passengers included Lord Christopher Thomson, Secretary of State for Air, and Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation. The airship had to drop 5 tons of water ballast to lift off.

Over France, the R101 encountered gusting winds that tore back the outer covering, exposing and rupturing the first gas bag. The R101 crashed into a hillside near Beauvais, north of Paris, at only 13 mph (20 km/h). The crash ignited the leaking hydrogen and fire quickly engulfed the entire airship.

46 of the 54 passengers and crew were killed. Two men who survived the crash died later in a hospital bringing the total to 48 dead. According to survivors, the top layers of the outer cover and some of the forward gas bags had been torn in the wind, causing a loss of the flammable hydrogen lifting gas. On impact, an engine had struck the gas bags, igniting the gas.
Of course like any historically-based story this one also had the names of real people changed and a couple of things were also changed to fit the plot but other than that everything was as it happened.

I wonder what would have happened if the producer of the TV Movie commissioned Alan Barnes to write the script for the pilot – how different would the fans take it and McGann as the Doctor, who unfortunatelly still stays underrated in the role. But then again if that happened would we have this new series to look forward to every Saturday?

We can’t be sure but if things were different back then we would probably have McGann as the eight Doctor for a while, before some other actor, perhaps Eccleston took over. Maybe we’d even get a chance to see how the Doctor regenerated and how he fought in the Time War.

Besides Barnes’ there were so many other great scripts for these plays, Justin Richards’, Robert Shearman’s, Nev Fountain’s, Joseph Lidster’s – just to name a few. But let’s not dwell on the past and let’s look at his audio series as a huge success because it’s just that.

Without a doubt Paul McGann is brilliant as the romantic Darcy-like, angst-ridden with an almost child-like sense of wonder and curiosity but witty Doctor and India Fisher shows us a few great glimpses of her vocal acting skills and what to expect from an intriguing character Charley Pollard. From the supporting cast, the most memorable is Gareth Thomas (formerly Roj Blake from another cult sci-fi series Blakes 7) as the duty-bound ex-military man Lord Tamworth who drops his original intent and after a heroic end decides to stay to help instead of fight the aliens.

The only little nitpick I have is the annoying character Rathbone – whose accent borders on German and at times it was hard to understand what he was saying and that didn’t do him any favours - infact it made him even more irritating.

Other than that this was a great reinvention of McGann’s Doctor and introduction to the new series of Big Finish plays. Also worth a mention is the new variation on Ron Grainer’s original theme made specifically for the eight Doctor range. It’s a mix of something old- the classic series' and the TV Movie’s theme with a touch of something new.

Overall I give it 9/10 for the story but mostly for the excellent performances from the main cast and supporting crew.

You can get it here.

Next time I’ll tackle The Sword of Orion, featuring the eight Doctor’s first encounter with the original Cybermen.