The Contingency Club

 

The Contingency Club by Phil Mulryne

When Fifth Doctor stories blaze to life, they truly succeed beyond any other, but when they falter, this somewhat nondescript of Doctors can begin to struggle. Five more than any other Doctor utterly and completely depends on an excellent script to really get up there, and while it has effective moments - mostly due to the excellent performances of Janet Fielding and guests Lorelei King as The Red Queen and Olly McCauley as Edward, the Contingency Club is very much a classic runaround. It's scene setting is unique and intelligent, the idea of a Victorian Gentleman's Club being up to illicit dealings is nigh perfect in terms of setting to a Doctor Who story, and the atmosphere it could invoke would be absolutely brilliant and set the story up to high standards early on, but immediately the Contingency Club has little interest in it's non de plume, opening the story with an uncomfortably long and irritating bout of arguments in the TARDIS, approaching TV Sixth Doctor and Peri levels of annoyance. Tegan gets berated unfairly for owning a Cassette player, and then said Cassette Player is key to saving the day but she still doesn't get any credit. It's quite annoying, actually, especially when Janet Fielding is quite honestly the stories best performer (under stiff competition.) Tegan always tends to get the best one-liners in these, and particularly memorable is when a club member disparages Australia while she's disarming a bomb. So in-universe Tegan's having a really shitty day and deserves more and I can see why she wants to get back to Heathrow. But okay, ignoring that massive divergence, (which actually proves my point) the audio has no interest in it's most interesting thing, it's setting. The Contingency Club is a story that would be a lot better if there was a lot less running around. There's a sequence of events near the climax in part four where Nyssa gets captured so Adric and The Doctor go in to rescue her. This is followed by Adric being captured and The Doctor and Nyssa escaping. The Doctor and Nyssa split up to go find Tegan, and Tegan and Nyssa get kidnapped one after another, before The Doctor rescues Adric only to get captured himself. I wish I was joking about all of this but it is overly elaborate, grating and unnecessary to the tale when what we would really like is some nice creepy victorian club atmosphere, which the story almost tries to do with the one character of Edward but that's it really. Edward's actor, as stated previously, really gives his all here, and his presence gives the biggest emotional impact of the story near the end. I've also noticed a pattern of both Big Finish and television stories to disregard Nyssa in favor of giving The Doctor, Adric and Tegan more importance. She's given some lines, but honestly, she deserves so much more. It's very much a Yaz and Thirteen scenario where Yaz is irrelevant until she's the only companion present. Give Nyssa credit please. Honestly while Adric is a good companion (unlike on television for the most part) I feel he detracts from the central trio dynamic of Five, Nyssa and Tegan which worked so well in the last Big Finish trilogy. Anyway, I can't help but feel there's a lot missing here. Big Finish has the tendency in the monthly range to have padding sometimes, but there's a lot more than usual in this admittedly fun tale, and this one could have served as yet another brilliant episode if only it focused on atmosphere over kidnaps. If not for me liking this TARDIS team of disparate characters that work together so well, it might be much worse, but as it is, it's good yet uninspiring. 6.5/10