The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Conflicts of Interest

 

Fifth Doctor Adventures: Conflicts of Interest

Much like the reaction image that circles the internet, Conflicts of Interest is a Doctor Who release that slows down, and has to awkwardly ask: “Are we the baddies?” 

Two and a half stories themed around the nature of humanity sometimes being the monsters, Conflicts of Interest stars the classic team of the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa, as played by Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton. Having long been one of my favorite TARDIS teams, when I saw how interesting the synopsis’s were, and that aside from our regulars, Conflicts is entirely original IP, it very quickly launched into one of my must haves in terms of Big Finish releases - despite my usual choices in life not to do so, I actually pre-ordered this one.

Themed Boxsets can be both interesting and effective if done well, but if done poorly, you can sort of forget that the boxsets have themes. Luckily, this sets theme is quite strong. However, it’s also got an Interlude attached to it, (one of three sets this year to have one) and while that Interlude is good and also interestingly important to the set - it doesn’t quite fit the theme.

Yes, the Interlude - the free audiobook that comes with the story if you purchase it directly from Big Finish’s website (some kind of strange subscriber short trip equivalent?) is something that I’ll cover in this review. I debated whether or not to, but eventually I thought it to be relevant - and it is quite quietly a sleeper hit, so before we move on to Friendly Fire, let’s begin with a look at Interludes: Gobbledegook!

Gobbledegook by Frazer Lee

Gobbledegook is actually a prequel to Friendly Fire. It adds to the context of said story in a simple and marvelous way. It is very subtly quite important, and yet it is never advertised as such - I had no clue that the Interlude would be important to the set, but apparently they are. Considering this story is connected so heavily to Friendly Fire, I had expected the story go the extra mile and have the story be connected to the theme of the set, revolving around the question of human villains and the nature of good and evil. Gobbledegook doesn't actually do this, and while that is strange - it would be worse to the story it DOES end up telling if it did. 

Gobbledegook feels like a short story in a Doctor Who Annual, one of the proper ones, before they were designed for the 6 - 10 demographic. It spends the vast majority of it's story painting a very pretty picture of a disgruntled armadillo man in his favorite library, helping to curate it's shelves as worried students study for the impending final exam. Eventually, he begins to notice discrepancies in the books that he is looking for - and soon after, The Doctor shows up. 

Gobbledegook, for it's credit, never tries to be terribly complex or ambitious, it's just a solid hour of atmospheric quality drama. It's wonderfully sedate as a story, and I don't think that it will change your life, but as someone who missed when Big Finish did narrated pieces now and then, Gobbledegook may feel like a delightful little trip back towards companion chronicle lane - especially considering it is focused around one character who is basically the narrator of the piece. 

Friendly Fire by John Dorney

It would be an utter shock if Friendly Fire was not your favorite of the set - a quick and emotionally strong three-parter that embraces the format with gusto. John Dorney's best work as a writer tends to either be a rip-roaring high concept yarn or exceedingly emotional, one of the two. Friendly Fire is without a doubt the latter. Friendly Fire is a quick moving script, and it's so, so easy to completely ruin in a moment if you go into it knowing the wrong things ahead of time, so please, listen to me when I say you'll definitely want to go into this one blind, it's quite a bit special.

What the basic concept of the story is, is essentially the part one cliffhanger, so I want to be very scant with what I say - get out now if you've not done it, but basically, Friendly Fire is about prejudice. It's quite a thin allegory, but I think it's purposefully so, the idea of a militarized group on a mining planet turning on literally anything that could be perceived as different. It's a heavy concept for The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa to explore, but it doesn't feel frustratingly so, in a way that a lot of EU content can sometimes miss the mark of the show by being too adult - the Fifth Doctor's era is actually, as John Dorney muses in the BTS, quite confrontational, and I think I could see Friendly Fire on the television in 1982... Which is certainly helped by the sound design.

The ultimate ending of the story can border on the preachy, considering the theme of the story to not be an awful person is fairly hammered in beforehand, but I suppose it comes with the territory, at least to an extent. Regardless, the speech Davison gives to not be racist is at the very least subtler than some other Doctor Who messages. And by other, I mean, it’s subtler than Orphan 55, and I’ll take what I can get, because at the very least it felt like Davison was talking to Nyssa and not the audience. Still. 

A highlight of the story is the Castrovalva-esque 80s theme that repeats throughout in ominous fashion. When I was listening to Part One of the story, I was quite moved by how strong the music is - and was more than a little surprised with how much the leitmotif of the story is used throughout. I usually don't commentate on music in these reviews, but over time the really good tune of the story's ambient music can become repetitive to the ears, especially considering this is a problem with the following installment as well - yes, The Edge of the War also uses the same tune. I really like this music piece, and it fits Friendly Fire wonderfully - but it's perhaps used a bit too much, and should definitely have stuck to this story alone. 

The length of Friendly Fire for what it's trying to do is rather perfect. It feels fast as all hell even though it's 90 minutes long - as long as some of the early Main Range releases - it is a testament to the pacing of the story that not a scene is wasted and it feels faster than some 60 minute tales I could mention. This is some Classic Fifth Doctor material that Davison, Sutton and Fielding clearly relish.

The Edge of the War by Jonathan Barnes

I (technically speaking) do end up liking The Edge of The War, but it is without a doubt the harder sell out of the boxset. An overcomplicated time anomaly story, while Friendly Fire really works perfectly almost precisely because of it's pacing, The Edge of the War is constantly punched down by it. The story is trying to do a hell of a lot - it may even end up slightly difficult to summarize.

The story begins with Nyssa waking up in a village on the French Border in 1936, where war is about to break out. (Already a phenomenal idea for a pure historical, but the story doesn't go there.) She, and Tegan and The Doctor, all living in the nearby village, do not remember their past lives outside of tidbits, and believe they are a painter, an innkeeper and a detective respectively. As events begin to repeat, temporal ghost anomalies from the past and future begin to attack the village. 

See, it's a bit difficult to sum up so quickly, and the story never stops throwing ideas at you, even until the last minute. The story has a frustrating ending, where after the plot is resolved quite nicely, the story puts Tegan through some needless trauma that I find it hard to believe that Tegan "It Stopped Being Fun" Jovanka would tolerate. Or perhaps she could, but it's not like the story can explore said idea either - it's ending! If Friendly Fire is the Happiness Patrol, The Edge of The War is Ghost Light, leaving you ultimately in a state of: "Wait, it ended??!" 

The sheer amount of ideas present in this one would make an overstuffed two hour tale - just when you're getting used to Nyssa not remembering who she is while bicycling in France, the scene is repeating, and then Tegan is an innkeeper and in a relationship with a Frenchman, and now they're investigating the Maginot line, and then there are time ghosts, and then The Doctor shows up, and he doesn't know who he is, but maybe he does, and suddenly there's a man running time experiments, and it's all very overwhelming indeed.

Luckily The Edge of the War is so charming most of it can be forgiven. It's overambition is ultimately quite likable, and the result of the strangely-paced and surreal tale is a probably unintended but marvelous dreamlike effect, where the story glosses from scene to the next ever so elegantly in a way that you can sort of process, but you still feel washed away. The Edge of The War, if it does anything well, really DOES make you feel like you're in the middle of some weird time experiment thing, and so it's difficult to truly hate. A mental story like this can be fine from time to time if executed well, and I’m not sure I’d call this one brilliant so to speak, but it’s at the very least enjoyable. 

Considering the three (or two) stories as a whole, Conflicts of Interest is a solid set but not one I can recommend in it's entirety. While Davison, Fielding and Sutton are all phenomenal actors who do a good deal with the material, I can't in earnest recommend this set as much as I can a few other recent volumes - and that's not me dissing this, that's just a testament to how good sets like Return of Jo Jones, Among Us 1, or Friend of the Family have been recently. If you're going to be that good, everything else is going to look bad as a matter of consequence. Still - if you're a diehard Davison fan, Friendly Fire at the very least is an incredibly solid 90 minutes, and I'm sure you wouldn't necessarily hate The Edge of the War. Certainly I'm rather glad to see my favorite Fifth Doctor TARDIS team out and about again.