Big Finish Doctor Who Audio Reviews: Jubilee - Rob Shearman
Rob Shearman's Season 1 episode Dalek was the episode that fully convinced me that Christopher Eccleston really was the Doctor - so it was with some interest that I listened to his audio drama Jubilee which Rob Shearman reworked into Dalek...
And I have to say I prefer the audio drama, which is a little over two hours of intensely gripping drama. The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn arrive at the Tower of London (somewhere they're already familiar with) in 1903 and the TARDIS struggles to materialise. When it does, they find that the Tower is not a popular tourist destination and that things are not all that they seem, especially when Evelyn discovers a stained glass window depicting the TARDIS on a green hill (as shown in the CD cover).
They eventually discover that the TARDIS has materialised in both 1903 and 2003, creating two Doctors, two Evelyns and two versions of history, and they are now in 2003. In the Tower of London an alien creature has spent a hundred years being tortured, parodied and mocked. But back in 1903, the Doctor and Evelyn apparently thwarted a Dalek Invasion of Earth and in doing so inadvertently cemented England's status as a hegemonic power - as *the* hegemonic power as the English Empire now has complete dominion over the whole of Earth thanks to technology stolen from the defeated Daleks. Ironically, the "glorious English Empire" has become more and more like the Daleks it defeated back in 1903, with Rochester (superbly portrayed by Martin Jarvis) and his "little wife", Miriam, (played equally superbly by his real life wife Rosalind Ayres) ruling tyrannically over the masses.
Both are quite clearly insane. Martin Jarvis is quite gleefully malevolent at times as Rochester and Miriam is quite vaucous initially, reminding me a little of Lucy Saxon. Rochester gives a speech about heroes at one point which sounds like he's trying to be Shakespeare - which is quite apt considering that on occasion he reminded me of Macbeth.
At the start, Evelyn refuses to leave the TARDIS when the ship's struggling to materialise - just like all my favourite companions, she sticks by the Doctor no matter what (even if her life's in danger). And when Evelyn is teasing Six about "making the most of clues" (repeating back to him something he'd said moments before), I was reminded of Martha saying to Ten "So, not pompous at all then" when he tells her in Smith and Jones that he's a Time Lord (tangent: I really missed that aspect of Martha's character later in Season 3).
There were trailers at the start of Parts 1 - 3. The Part 1 trailer for the Dalek Adventure movie, featuring the Doctor as the tall, good-looking action hero with bulging muscles who blows up Daleks and sweeps Evelyn 'Hot Lips' Smythe off her feet was frankly hilarious... but the Part 2 trailer for Dalek Stain Remover was worrying, whilst the Part 3 trailer for a "Blue Peter"-style kids' show was very disturbing...
I think the reason I like Jubilee better than Dalek, is that the story works better over the longer time frame that the 2+ hours audio offers - there's more time for the Dalek to develop doubts about its existence, influenced by its interactions with Evelyn (and Maggie Stables is on top form during those scenes). There's also the fact that in Dalek, Van Statten is too much of a caricature of a spoilt rich man who wants everything, whereas Rochester is barking mad - but has scarily lucid moments. I also found I sympathised more with the tortured Dalek in Jubilee - and all hail to the mighty Nick Briggs for achieving that where the listener has nothing more to focus on than his voice.
One of the best lines from this audio is this comment from the Sixth Doctor: "Humans' lives so brief: a tiny splash of brilliant colour against the Time Stream and then - gone, forever."
I think that actually does a much better job of conveying how hard it is for the Doctor to connect deeply with his human companions than Ten's "wither and die" speech in Toby Whitehouse's School Reunion.
Having hopped forward in the Six and Evelyn releases to listen to Jubilee, I now really want to listen to Rob S's Eight and Charley audio The Chimes of Midnight, but I need to listen to Invaders from Mars first as I stopped at Minuet in Hell (which not even the presence of the Brig managed to save for me!), and I know the Eight and Charley audios do follow on from one another, as the Six and Evelyn ones tend not to do...
One final comment: I hope to hell that Steven Moffat asks Rob Shearman to write at least one two-part episode for his first season in charge of Doctor Who as I'm really intrigued to know what Rob S would do with Ten... Failing that, could Ten hurry up and regenerate into Eleven soon so that Rob S can do an audio for Ten (preferrably with Martha) !