The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Far From Home

The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Far From Home

It's rare one can feel woefully underprepared for starting to listen to a Big Finish Production. They've put in such effort to be accessible of late, but equally some of their choices can be impenetrable. Not only have I not bothered to listen to UNIT: Nemesis due to my prior allergic reaction to the series, but I've not really listened to Sullivan And Cross AWOL either. And if that's not enough, nobody's really prepared, because Big Finish made the fascinating choice to release all of it in the wrong order, nobody's heard Harry and Naomi's upcoming first appearance with the Fourth Doctor. One could quibble with this for ages -- imagine how newcomers feel when even the diehards need a flowchart. 

But I was in the mood for some classic McCoy three-parters, and so here I am: attempting to see if it's all as impenetrable as it first appears. Bravely charting new waters. One could note that if things don't make sense, it would entirely be my fault, but I have two responses to such an accusation:

1. It actually did make sense

2. Not to mince words but do you really think I'm going to buy UNIT Nemesis it's 144 bucks

But before we begin, how's that bonus audiobook that comes as a package deal?

Frozen Worlds by Katherine Armitage

Frozen Worlds is an "Interlude" release that comes packaged with the boxset, a story that's definitely not a longer short trip.  It's a simple Seventh Doctor and Ace journey, set relatively early on those character's emotional journey, fairly close to their television escapades. It's not an action piece, but a purely character based one that hardly follows the format of a typical Who story, focusing on Ace's experiences when she makes the conscious choice to go tripping balls in the multiverse even though the Doctor told her not to. Which if anything, isn't that classic Ace behavior? It's an enjoyable story, although the fact that we've explored Ace's character so much before means that it really can't say anything new. 

The Main Event

Operation: Dusk by Alfie Shaw

From Operation: Dusk's sudden onset, it feels immediately less like Doctor Who and more like an episode of a television murder procedural, with Doctor Harry Sullivan and his team being called to investigate a corpse in a British tram. The difference is, it's 1940 and the woman was killed by shadows during the Blitz. And her pet Cat is completely fine. From those beginnings though, which evoke something like X-Files, it becomes a bit more Ian Fleming. Operation: Dusk is very in-line with something like you might expect from the Pertwee era, with straight-laced characters (mainly bureaucrats and worried women) being continually irritated by this Doctor chap and his persistent questions, while Harry and Naomi get in trouble. It's all about espionage, and how various forces have been working to co-opt alien resources to their own ends. 

I'm not certain Operation: Dusk has the best pacing under the sun, with bits in the latter half of part one and early part two operating in the rather dull area, but it really improves as it goes on, and has a quite good conclusion. The concepts are what keeps this story afloat, and it's marvelous ideas continue to allow the Vashta Nerada to flourish in the audio medium when on television, they were a monster via circumstance. Both Operation: Dusk and stories like Red Darkness keep that in mind when characterizing the Vashta Nerada, and that makes them all the more interesting here -- the Vashta Nerada of all things being used as a metaphor for capital punishment was far from what I was expecting. This was a charming start for me for Naomi and Harry's characters at Big Finish, though neither of them are really focal points of the narrative -- it's very much done in the Classic Who sense of characterization, where what you get out of them are proactive likability and not much else -- although Naomi does happen to have two quite nice and personal conversations with the Doctor. Appropriate, considering she really seems to be the side of the duo the series is more interested in.

Naomi's Ark by Alison Winter

Naomi's Ark is a story that gets by with a lot of charm, the central thesis of the story being that in a random Doctor Who story, a character "wanders off" a really really long time away, and it becomes a question of if, not when they'll get back. This allows the story to really put the Doctor and Naomi in a very interesting place of desperation. It's one of those stories, that even without a real main antagonist, somehow feels quite dangerous. As a matter of fact, it feels so dangerous and monumental, that it's disappointing somehow when the story ends and we're back to the status quo with no real change.

It's definitely a story that's meant to highlight Naomi's character, even if I wouldn't say it's entirely a character piece exclusively. Naomi is stuck in the middle of nowhere in space with a crew of juvenile immortals who are exceedingly intelligent but have no common sense. Naomi's dynamic with these characters is very appealing, and brings me to that lot of charm I mentioned. It's possibly the best thing the story has going for it, with characters like Captain Rocky and Engineer Fixer slotting in quite nicely with someone you might find in Delta and The Bannerman, The Happiness Patrol or Paradise Towers. The earnestness of these crew characters really helps endear to what's going on.

Naomi's character can sort of confuse. Due to her experience as a time traveler, she's lived in both the 1970s and 2010s on a long term basis. And she's immensely enjoyable here, but not once in either story in the set did I ever believe that she existed in the 1970s originally. She has a voice that sounds like she knows what a Twitter is, and even in her most likable moments: such as chanting the 2001 Space Odyssey theme aboard a space station, you do sort of wonder how that 70s stuff even clicks in beyond her relationship to Harry himself.

But in a story that's supposed to be about Naomi Cross, the ultimate performer is Sylvester McCoy, who really goes off the deep end in that way only the Seventh Doctor can. How far is the Doctor willing to go for his friends?? It's such an interesting question, as The Doctor weighs the survival of a species versus him getting back to his TARDIS, and while in some other stories simple morality plays like this could be viewed as spurious and unconvincing, here McCoy treats it with the utmost severity in a way that really compels. While Naomi's Ark is probably the highlight of the set, what it really did was make me yearn for more of this level of McCoy material. It's the perfect balance of the character, dark but not sacrificing his likability for masterplans of unbelievable proportion. My favorite version of the Seventh Doctor has always been in that balance, and while this set isn't the best thing they've put out in years, it was quite enjoyable, and like the best things, made me yearn for more of it.