The Lost Resort and Other Stories

 

The Main Range got fucking murdered, so the lovingly titled "Marc Arc" came to a close not within it, but in a rare four disc boxset (it's getting depressing how few of those there are now) that essentially covers what would have been the last two releases in the "second marc trilogy" that began with Thin Time/Madquake. This is a arc with some issues, some real flaws, but it's also got some real highs next to it's low lows - both excellently portrayed within this set. Although I could have done without the lows. I'm just saying that they exist here. Today we're gonna review The Lost Resort and Other Stories! 

The Lost Resort by AK Benedict

Everyone will agree this is the highlight of the set, it's just a question of how much you're going to like it. The best way I can describe The Lost Resort is "Time-Flight," but better. Not the weird Anthony Ainley in a vaguely racist costume Time-Flight, but the aspect of Time-Flight where we see Adric appear and we deal with the emotional impact of his death. This is very cool. It takes place in a weird floating organically created health resort. This is also very cool. It's got some really insane side characters and is just generally eloquently written across the board. It's got the crazy Doctor Who stuff I like in my crazy Doctor Who, I'm just not sure how well it pulls off the Adric elements post-part one. I think that he's too majorly involved in the story and the story allows Fivey a little too much closure. That's just me though. Having Five, Nyssa, Tegan and Marc actually present for two hours instead of one works to the story's benefit. The double length does properly help it to feel momentous, and allows the twists within to play out and work excellently. Davison does his best performances these days, he really does, I'm just not sure about certain tiny-bits throughout the whole thing. It's quite good, but it's far from the immaculate brilliance we got in Warzone/Conversion - there are issues to be found here. But ultimately it's just a good slice of classic who, one of those rare few stories that actually earns it's length - I've felt a lot recently that each episode being 30 minutes rather than 20 means some tales feel bloated, but luckily, it allows some others to flourish even more. Lost Resort's quite good, really. 9/10

The Perils of Nellie Bly by Sarah Ward

I understand why people love pure historicals, and I understand why people hate them. When done correctly, a pure historical can be a magical creation - a story like The Peterloo Massacre needs no aliens to be one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. A story like The Romans doesn't need anything more than it has to be an entertaining romp. The Perils of Nellie Bly needs something though, because it's everything wrong with the pure historical as a story genre you can imagine. It's using that dreaded old chestnut of "companion gets confused with historical figure" and "oh no some average humans really don't like the doctor oh dearie me" and honestly it leaves me so tired, so unbelievably empty as a concept I sort of went ballistic and swore off this entire arc for ages as one of the worst doctor who arcs. It's not, obviously, because most of the Marc Arc is pretty good (minus Interstitial and Feast of Fear) but this is everything I didn't want. This story is simply that bad. The moment where for NO REASON Nellie and Tegan decide to swap clothes made me want to shriek, because quite frankly, it's the level of contrived stupidity you'd expect from a 60s sitcom misunderstanding. So much of this arc is about consequences, each story deftly blended into the next so excellently - the run from Warzone to Lost Resort is back to back character progression, and then it sort of stops in this story for us to have wACkY sHEnAnIgaNs, and please. please stop. This sort of story is exactly like things were in Tartarus, Interstitial, Feast of Fear, I think that after all the TARDIS team has been through, all these traumatic events, there would be at least a change in one of the character's characterizations. especially after all the trauma, meeting dead companions, and you know, the cyber conversions, But no. Character progression is something that's too much to ask for from the perils of nellie bly. This is one of the most unbearable experiences, there's nothing to latch onto but some VERY thin action setpieces, and you know how I feel about action on audio. I can't be any more blunt than this - this story has not a single idea minus "OOH, TARDIS TEAM MEETS AND JUST KINDA TALKS TO NELLIE BLY! PEOPLE TRY TO KILL NELLIE OCCASIONALLY" While Nellie Bly is a interesting and feminist historical figure, her on her own is not an idea that can fulfill an hour. Most pure historicals - like the Peterloo Massacre, or the Fires of Vulcan for instance, two wonderful examples, tell their stories based around events, not individual figures, because no matter how interesting they are, there's just not enough material there. Perils has just got so much flack in the script, so much meaningless runtime, and it also struggles to deal with the companions. Nyssa has large sections of the story where she's in "her cabin because of seasickness," which never develops into anything, it's just the writer did not want to write nyssa right now. I could rant about how bad this story is for hours, because it's one of those stories that is both incredibly fucking stupid. But it's also a story I don't want to actually listen to again, because despite it being stupid when you look back on it, it's also terminally boring. Stories like The Perils of Nellie Bly are why the pure historicals were killed. 3/10 

Nightmare of the Daleks by Martyn Waites

Nightmare of the Daleks is one of those rare Dalek stories that works despite you really being unable to describe why it works. It's got this sort of momentum to it, which really helps, some great ideas, and honestly, really nice Dalek characterization, which is a rare compliment. So often do I get annoyed when the Daleks kidnap humans and have them work in a mining camp from which they will inevitably escape. Nightmare of the Daleks has the Daleks being wonderfully ruthless, defined only by their hate and not an evil plan, and it's a simple narrative choice that really helps to fulfill the whole thing.  Beyond that, there's not much but more simple concepts - people on board a sea rig have bad dreams, and the daleks are in them. It sounds boring when you say it so simply like that, but the way it's evolved, the way it's written and progressed, it's an average Dalek serial but it's cut down by two parts just to the bits that matter - it's all in the execution, and it's an excellent one. Peter Davison and Nicholas Briggs have some electric scenes together - it's sort of funny that Five can pull this much of a dramatic scene out of a simple Dalek and not like, an actual important Doctor Who figure. Goes to show you how good an actor Davison is, and how Briggs really can match him if the script's good enough. Marc leaves at the end of this story, and frankly, it is odd. You could very easily make the argument that his arc should have gone on longer, and I agree, but at the same time, both Nellie and Nightmare don't do much to further his character arc like the Warzone to Lost Resort run did. In a way, I'm sort of glad he doesn't drag on, because just "generic Tegan/Nyssa/Marc stories" would probably not work for me, it's better he leave on a high note, even if that high note doesn't have much to do with him, even if it's a normal story, you know? Once a character stops being progressed, well, I tend to feel that they should be removed while the getting is good. Besides - the best parts of this arc were never really about Marc himself anyway. 8/10