Wirrn Isle

 

Wirrn Isle by William Gallagher 

Wirrn Isle finishes off the first Flip trilogy with style - It's a very atmospheric tale, brilliant in that you feel it could geniunely slot into a Classic Who run as one of the best serials - and does what it does do well exceedingly well. It does however have the tendency to devolve into the Doctor saying "well, if we localize the transmat emissions, we may be able to isolate Character Y's DNA from the Transmat Dematerialization buffer, using-" and the amount of transmat technobabble does get incredibly tedious. Transmat is like EVERY OTHER WORD. As a matter of fact, to prove this point, I will now substitute all further uses of the word 'transmat' with "Carrots" because that is about the amount of sense it would make anyway. Nonetheless, some positivity. Wirrn Isle has a breathtaking first half, and it's really where the story does shine. The story starts with the Doctor and Flip carrot-ing in on a carrot to an inchfad isle, in loch lomand scotland where a family is starting to settle in in a new house, and the scene is set absolutely wonderfully, really using some oddly investing character drama, some mild horror, and the sense that not only are there Wirrn (obviously) but there's something incredibly off about this family too. This gradually evolves into a base under siege story. These first two parts are absolutely meticulously crafted, and some of the most diverting audio I've experienced. The way this dysfunctional family is portrayed is just stunning. And the music is absolutely perfect - a soundtrack like nothing I've ever heard before in a Big Finish audio, it perfectly establishes the mood. As the story goes on, we get some nice character beats and discover more gradually about this family, but then it splits them up, exactly as I was really adoring this really fragile sense of calm about them. And then it goes off a bit, and the father who is a carrot scientist decides to use the carrots to try and take his probably dead son back. Which is yet more affecting character drama, although I wish Tim Bentinick played him a bit less villainously. This is all really good drama, and I'm giving you the play-by-play here because it really is! And then this family and atmosphere that's been so built up wonderfully really goes to the offside because GUESS WHAT GUYS! LET'S GO TO SPACE NEW YORK WHICH IS NOW NERVA CITY FROM THE ARK IN SPACE! WOOO-HOOOO! NO MORE ATMOSPHERE! ONLY CARROTS!

You start to see the problem. Not every story needs worldwide stakes, this one especially. The family, and their dead-son which was taken by the Wirrn, the lodge on the loch, this is all perfect stuff, and it's really kind of disregarded to do something a little more generic. Not only that, if anything goes wrong, the solution is always for the Doctor to use the Carrot. There's a running joke about the Wirrn being carrot-ed back onto the loch again over and over and this isn't really the best way to build up your threat, because as the story goes on, it makes the Wirrn feel a little more like an inconvenience. 

But there's so much good here that I still find it a difficult story to get mad at, even if the second half is absolutely riddled with problems. Mainly that it has a lack of respect for it's own ideas. The psychological angle of this family, their dead son being taken by the Wirrn, and them returning to the lodge he once lived in is brilliant enough. But we have to talk about Carrots. Because the Carrots can be used to take the Wirrn out of the son, because the Carrots are cool, and then the Wirrn try to use the Carrots to take over the world, because the Carrots are bad, and the Doctor uses the carrots to melt the loch and the whole solution is the carrots and oh my god could we stop with the fucking technobabble

If the story stuck to it's guns and delivered a base-under-siege story for the whole thing (and it's not like it would be hard to do, it had EVERYTHING in place) and kept the story limited to the small-scale that made it so investing, this could be one of my all-time favorites. But as it is, it's still too damn good to give a bad score. And a lot of people love it still, despite it's issues. And you know what? For as much as it annoyed me like hell, I still loved it. It was excellent. But it could have been the best of all time, and that's so disappointing: 8.5/10