The Forsaken

 

The Forsaken by Justin Richards

The Forsaken is accurate, incredibly accurate to the Second Doctor era, almost so that it might slot comfortably into the Lost Stories range - a base under siege story set in Japan where the TARDIS team encounters an evil figure in a black cloak that feeds on fear. Yeah, It's a Second Doctor story before anything else. That's the thing, your enjoyment of the Forsaken is entirely equal to how willing you are to just suspend caring about the plot and just let this enjoyable yet oddly uncharacterized TARDIS team take you along for the ride. There isn't much meat to be found here. It's a good story, and it's immersion is, to it's merit, part of what makes it good, but it's never good in originality. You have to have this mindset or it will be dull. This is very tried and tested Doctor Who, it does not break new ground, and it does not try to for that matter. The villain is legitimately an alien that appears as a man in a black cloak. You can feel the 60s energy pouring out of it, I'm certain classic Troughton would have done a low budget alien like that if they had the idea. Entirely tied to the 60s in next to every way - note how Polly sort of stands around while the men do pretty much all of the work in the four episodes. Also worth noting is the, shall we say, historical values present about the Japanese throughout. It's not Talons, but there is language throughout, people keep using words I'm pretty sure are slurs but aren't entirely sure are slurs. I mean, it does help make you kind of - feel the era, I suppose, to think 'oh yes, these are soldiers in world war two, of course they are mildly racist' and it really does suck you in, but also, like, there really isn't a need for it either? Maybe it's not offensive and I'm just being sensitive. I don't know. I don't want the Forsaken to sound bad, really, because, well, it's kind of the opposite of The Yes Men in that while that one does everything right and sort of ends up average this one does everything average and sort of ends up right. I can't describe it, really, because ultimately, the lack of character development is especially egregious for a story that should tie in so heavily into Ben's character - his goddamn father is in it, and this isn't really ever explored! And the villain is, oh so disappointing! But somehow, it works, it just does, and I can't describe it. I don't know. Maybe it doesn't, I listened to it in two sittings and I had a vastly different experience the first night I listened to it to the second, and I don't think it was the quality of the story changing, I think it was probably just my mindset. I don't know, I'll rank it the same as The Yes Men for safety - I think that if you're to grab one of the two, they’re rather equivalent, so whichever’s synopsis grabs you more. While they’re nothing special, they’re both real fun: 7/10