Scorched Earth

 


Scorched Earth by Chris Chapman

I've tried to write the review for Scorched Earth for around a month now, and quite frankly, no words precisely would do to describe this one. It's at both times, a fantastic showcase for the Sixth Doctor, genuinely immaculate and moved me to tears - and also for some reason I can't persuade myself to rate it incredibly highly. Like, no score I've given it makes sense to me in my head, because Scorched Earth is one of those stories that's kinda weirdly meh until it all comes together at the conclusion and then you see how it properly works. I already feel I'm being too harsh, but If I'm too nice, than I feel I'm being too nice. This is draft #47 for this damn review though, so I'm putting it out regardless, and I hope you aren't confused as hell by me contradicting myself every other sentence. Scorched Earth is good for a few reasons - it's essentially a character conflict that gets out of hand via alien means, and that's something you don't often see. Most of the early half of the audio has little to do with the fire demon and more with Flip and Constance's disagreements over what is right in a historical event. It also has quite a lot to say about collaborators during World War II, and also discusses Nazis quite heavily as Flip and Constance essentially take both sides on a debate over which, while one of them is wrong, neither of them is truly truly wrong. It's an audio doing a lot, and it sort of only really comes together and I understood what it was doing later on, but the end result was absolutely perfect. I still somehow have problems with this thing, because in the end, it sort of picked a big debate here that I'm not sure is satisfyingly implemented, at least for me. I already sorta had problems with how world war II Nazis were portrayed in Criss-Cross, and this is the second time in the Constance arc that they've been portrayed with more sympathy than they deserve. I fully understand what they're trying to do, prove the very real point that not all Germans were okay with what Hitler did at all, and even being German at the time made you labelled as a "collaborator," but this theme works better if the Nazi POWs didn't help The Doctor and gang in the final battle. The theme of letting go of your hate might have been stronger without that - but then again, it could have been a lot worse, and the story could totally have turned out like The Lovecraft Invasion or some nonsense (and believe me, I'll get to that clunker soon) As is, Scorched Earth is a magnificent masterpiece, but it's just not my magnificent masterpiece, I think. I can objectively say that it's great as hell, but I don't feel it was truly my thing, and you know what? That's fine. I fervently recommend it, but I can't pretend I'm not someone who is objective as hell: 9/10 

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