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Thread: BF: I - Real Time
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17th Jul 2012, 6:06 PM #1
BF: I - Real Time
Today, I shall be reviewing Big Finish's Sixth Doctor adventure for BBCi - Real Time.
On a planet known only as Chronos, two scientific survey teams have vanished. Inexplicably. Without warning. But with just one clue supplied - a single screamed word: "Cybermen!"
The Univeristy they worked for has called in the Earth security forces who despatch a third team, a mix of military and scietific might, under the auspicies of a University Administrator. If that kind of volatile grouping isn't bad enough, three strangers have been added to the mix - a young hum expert in Cybermen and a mysterious traveller in space and time, the Doctor, along with his companion, Dr Evelyn Smythe.
But can they solve the riddle of the vanished survey teams before the Cybermen harness Chronos' unique temporal gifts and rewrite the history of the galaxy?
This is a bit of an oddity in the Doctor Who universe, really. Even the writer, Gary Russell, has declared that he doesn't consider it to be canon any more. I recall watching it as it was originally released on BBCi back in 2002, and have fond memories of being excited for the next week's episode, just as I was once again when the series returned to the television screens. Heck, it's still on BBCi if you can be bothered to download Real Player.
Anyway, onto the story itself. This one is a bit of a bizarre mish-mash of previous Cybermen stories. On one hand, the first episode seems to be a homage to Tomb of the Cybermen, seeming very, very familiar. Then, we get what appears to be a cross between the violence and gore seen in Attack of the Cybermen and pre-empting the half-Cybermen of the Godawful Torchwood episode Cyberwoman. In this story, the Cybermen are desperate creatures, nearly destroyed - echoing stories like Sword of Orion or even pre-empting the backstory presented of the Battle of Canary Wharf in the aforementioned Torchwood episode. We even get a reference into the Star Trek universe, with a Cyber virus that converts people into Cybermen directly mirroring a Borg plan from Star Trek: Voyager.
But, beyond these echoes and foresights, is it any good? Well, that depends. If you're familiar with most of the Big Finish canon, probably not. It relies on the BF trope of the time paradox. Listening to this in the space where it would have been released on CD (around the same time as The Church and the Crown), the time paradox storyline is all-too-familiar. Honestly, by this stage, there are just too many to count. Still, there is one interesting thing here - the eventual fate of Evelyn. One that is never, ever expanded upon afterwards, as BBCi never commissioned a sequel, and Big Finish never getting round to doing one (I suspect due to the return of Who to the small screen). And it is this that led to Gary Russell declaring it to not be canon.
Still, regardless of how this fits into continuity, it's an enjoyable enough little side-step into a Doctor Who universe that never was. Russell wrote a script with an extremely tense atmosphere that really dragged me in as a listener. The characters are believable, and the half-Cybermen pityable. I recall that, at the time, the idea of them was quite horrifying. It's a shame that Torchwood had to go and ruin that prospect!
Finally, it's nice to hear the Sixth Doctor getting a nice, new blue coat (although I am getting bored at Evelyn's digs about the multicoloured coat by this stage). I wonder if it'll catch on...
All in all, this wasn't a terrible play. It's enjoyable, it does what it was designed for. It's just a shame that a sequel was never written - I'd love to see/hear how the Doctor prevents this universe from occurring. This one gets a 3/5 from me.
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