• The radio-drama feel. Especially in the first episode, the entire story has a neat old-fashioned radio-drama feel. Brewster's narration and the cliffhanger ending/final line to episode 1 are a great set-up that stands apart from the general feel of Big Finish audios. Though the narration is abandoned from that point the story retains that Dickens-esque feel, with the Doctor very much playing the eccentric Victorian Gentleman scientist ("I only tell them what they already know.... must be why I'm so popular") working with his valiant assistant to race around London attempting to solve a crime. The supporting characters are straight out of Dickens - a raspy drunk uncle, disapproving aunts, the cruel school master, the heartless money-hungry common crook ruling over his own little fiefdom, even Thomas' best friend seems to fit right in. Listening to the whole thing took me back to my childhood listening to drama serials on the radio or tape - I found that very appealing personally but if you don't have the same nostalgia factor the older format may feel a little weird.
  
  
• The Doctor's competence. As usual for the Davison era, the Doctor is completely out of his element/swept away by events, but what makes it work is that he handles it all so smoothly/takes it all in stride. Where sometimes Davison's Doctor could feel like he was in over his head (which could have its own charm), in this story it's a nice change of pace to find him absolutely in control of himself if not the situation he's in. The way he calmly assesses and handles the crises as they unfold is well written and acted, and there is great satisfaction to be had in the way he continually manages to adapt and change. Reversing the rather bizarre situation seen in The Kingmaker, it is the Doctor who spends a year slowboating his way through time to get to where Nyssa has instantly arrived, and he uses the time well to ingratiate himself into London society (and even grow a beard!). When he grasps the nature of the bootstrap paradox they are dealing with, the quick way he comes up with a solution feels earned. When he finds himself in a very troubling situation involving the TARDIS, his solution is elegant and sensible and provides a simple solution to a complicated problem - exactly the say a Time Lord should be able to deal with odd temporal concerns. The Doctor here is effortlessly competent without undercutting the drama of the situations they're in, he isn't smugly just solving everything but using his intellect and common sense to deal with difficult issues as they arise. It's.... nice.
  
  
• Robert McIntosh. In a story that introduces a new companion for the 5th Doctor, I would have had no problem with Robert McIntosh played by Christian Coulson (the young Tom Riddle in the second Harry Potter film) being that companion. McIntosh is played as an earnest if somewhat repressed young man (well it IS Victorian London!) who is the Doctor's keen and willing assistant right up until the moment he discovers the Doctor has been hiding the truth from him, and his hurt reaction feels genuine if a little misplaced. As far as he is concerned the Doctor used him and condescended to him by not feeling he was worthy/capable of knowing the truth. And yet despite his offense and hurt pride, the moment danger rears its head and threatens the Doctor and Nyssa he doesn't hesitate for a moment to stand up to try and defend them. He is a worthy man limited only by his lack of exposure to the new and weird ideas that the Doctor and Nyssa by now take for granted, and I wouldn't have minded seeing him stick around a bit more to serve as a foil to their easy acceptance of the fantastic. Also his part in the,"You had me up till bootstraps" joke is great.
  
  
• Peter Davison's enthusiasm. Davison's performances seem to match up with the general quality of the script - or rather, HIS take on the general quality of the script. If he likes what he is reading then his performance lifts, if he doesn't like it then he seems to go through the motions. In this story, for whatever issues I might have with the writing I can't deny Davison's enthusiasm. He bites into the script with relish and won't let go, and it lifts the overall quality of the final product as a result. There's one particularly great scene where he asked Nyssa to explain a complicated concept... then immediately takes over when she has barely started to explain. This wasn't scripted, but rather emerged naturally during the production when Davison - clearly having a great time - suggested that in his absentminded enthusiasm the Doctor would be unable to resist waxing lyrical on the subject even after passing it over to Nyssa to explain. Essentially he steals her line, but it is so smoothly handled and fits in so nicely with his character that it works. Listening to the behind-the-scenes footage, you can tell there was a great deal of fun for the cast in making this story, and it comes across in the final product.
  

• The Mother. The "villain" of the piece has a lot of potential, but she's so rarely used and the explanation of what she is doesn't really hold up even with the Doctor's smooth explanations. While that's kinda understandable given we're dealing with a paradox, the potential horror of what she is meant to be (the waterlogged corpse of his mother who committed suicide when he was 4 years old) never really comes across outside of one EXCELLENT closing line at the end of episode one ("She'd been in the water for five days...."). Mostly heard as a disembodied voice, almost everything she says is designed to keep Thomas Brewster in line and she never really throws off the character, and a final conversation between the two feels like a cop-out as opposed to the feel-good moment it is intended to be.
  
  
• The paper-thin supporting characters. Even though their generic nature fits in with the radio-drama/Dickens serial feel, the characters themselves mostly don't have anything to add depth to their generic templates. They come and go without any real impact, the only character that really gets any solidity to them is Brewster's partner in crime, whose friendship runs deeper than Brewster realizes or Victorian London would allow, and then he's quickly gone from the story.
  
  
• The bizarre musical interludes. Though I like the radio-drama feel, the story unfortunately fills a lot of space with musical interludes that feel more like padding. It doesn't help that it isn't very good, and it's the one musical piece repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again.
  
  
• Who is Thomas Brewster? The titular character gets a LOT of "screen"time which is necessary, especially since this is the first of a number of stories to feature him, but while it does make him an interesting character for THIS story it does a poor job of selling the idea that he should be somebody the listener wants to hear more from. Brewster is quiet, unimaginative, easily manipulated and seems to lack any real moral compass. The ideas was supposedly to create a character more in keeping with the original IDEA for Adric - an Artful Dodger type who continually does the wrong thing/doesn't keep in line with society's ideas of right and wrong. But where Adric ended up nerdy and often frustratingly naive, Brewster goes too far in the other direction by being almost entirely self-interested without any of the charm and charisma (on display at least) that made Dickens' Artful Dodger compelling. Brewster is kind of a sad sack, a miserable loner who never does anything to warrant characters apparent interest/concern for him, stubborn to a fault and stupidly reckless with no impulse control. His final action of the story makes for a good cliffhanger ending, but doesn't really fill me with anticipation to see him appear in another story like we know he would. All that said, the actor - John Pickard - used to be in the absolutely wonderful 2point4 Children so I gotta give him another chance based on that alone!
  

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Jun 23, 2016

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jun 23, 2016