The High Price of Parking

 


The High Price of Parking by John Dorney

John Dorney brings his characteristically witty pen to a Seventh Doctor adventure ala Paradise Towers with a Russell T Davies style "Gridlock" tinge. This is very by the numbers Who, and I suspect it was certainly even intended as such, but the result has so much of an infectious sense of fun to it and enough twists and turns that I can't imagine anyone hating it - I could see why someone could dislike Maker of Demons for example, and I myself, can't stand Life of Crime, but I can't imagine anyone in the world not finding this story at the very least fun. That sounds like faint praise, but High Price is just a really good two hours. It has an excellent sense of scale - the story opens up and just keeps getting bigger as it goes on. The characters get good material, and it's while not riotously funny, certainly humorous, and it has a lot of clever wordplay to it too. This is exactly the kind of story you'd expect to find on the television, but it's got a timeless energy to it that doesn't fit any real era in particular. It's just a really fun two hours. Our regulars are all well treated - I appreciate how they are all a real unit now, working together, even when separated. Ace is a character that I either love or don't understand the usage of in a particular story, and I just don't get what High Price does with her - she has this big pacifism speech which (albeit delivered with a nod and a wink) really doesn't suit her and would have been better given to Mel, although Sophie Aldred does perform it very well. It's a weird one for her. Mel on the other hand is delightfully autonomous and clever, and just everything she wasn't on television. Perhaps one of Mel's best outings, she really shows her teeth here in this story, constantly pulling her weight on this TARDIS team, wry and delightful in her manners, and she gets a few great one-liners. Mel's reinvention at Big Finish is so complete that she may be now one of my favorite companions. McCoy acquits himself well too - never sinking into the background as his character can sometimes do on audio, while not being too much of an overbearing presence either. I don't want to get into the twists (as they're better as a surprise,) but they're really quite good. You get quite a few stories this one, to be sure - it's nowhere near Dorney's most inventive script - and Paradise Towers-2 may be a genre that has been done before (check out the nigh immaculate Spaceport Fear) but High Price just really made me smile. 8/10

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