The BF Time Warp 014: The Holy Terror

[SiHart]

The TARDIS lands in a forbidding castle in a time of religious upheaval. The old god has been overthrown, and all heretics are to be slaughtered. Obviously it isn't the sort of thing which would happen there every day - just every few years or so.

And when the Doctor and Frobisher are hailed as messengers from heaven, they quickly become vital to opposing factions in their struggle for power. But will they be merely the acolytes of the new order - or will they be made gods themselves?

An evil destructive force is growing deep within the crypt. And the pair soon find out that they will be lucky to escape their new immortality with their lives.

Rob Shearman makes his BF debut with this story, but what are your thoughts on it?

Si xx

[stuartdg]

I enjoy this story because of its big ideas,it's well cast and theres something almost majestic about the drama.As for Frobisher I do feel he works better visually(his accent tends to grate on me) somewhat.

[Rob McCow]

Listened to this today - my first BF in years!

Anyway, it wasn't as amazing as the first time I heard it. It's a very clever post-modernist tale, struck through with Rob Sheraman's trademark wit and a brilliant twist that works wonderfully the first time round.

It's quite a padded story, but the padding is entertaining. There's great performances from the guest cast, especially Peter Guinness as the Darrow-esque Clovis, Roberta Taylor as the imperious-but-suicidal Berengaria and the outstanding Sam Kelly as Eugene Tacitus. Kelly is a vastly under-rated actor in my view.

Despite appearing fun and lightweight at first, this soon becomes an extremely bleak and pessimistic tale, with it's surrealist confined setting. In many ways it's a proto-version of Chimes of Midnight, with pseudo-real characters unaware of the strangeness of their existence.

[SiHart]

All hail Frobisher! All hail the big talking bird!

I love this one. And it's got my old friend Dan Hogarth in it too. That's a good thing. He gave me a free copy

Great performances, deliciously dark storyline that as Steve says starts all odd and funny and gets worse and worse as it goes on, and a very solid production make this probably BF's first real classic.

Si xx

[Paul Monk]

I once upset Rob Shearman by telling him that I listened to this on random for at least 15 minutes before realising that it was on random.

[Anthony Williams]

This is my favourite BF play.

One doesn't need to say more.

Ant x

[MacNimon]

It's a favourite of mine as well, and it certainly helped that I was a big fan of the DWM comic strip in the era when Frobisher was the companion. Certainly one of the best BF's that I've heard. 5/5.

[Jon Masters]

5/5 - I'm horribly biaised but this remains one of my all time favourite DW stories of any kind, let alone BF audio. It has great characters (who you realise are supposed to be stereotypes but then start to care about anyway) with equally great performances, and a true fan as a writer who plays with our knowledge of e.g. Castrovalva and then twists it all up again. Frobisher makes a very good companion and Colin is on top form.

More importantly, it did (and still does to some extent) make me cry. With a son of nearly a year old when I first heard it, and all the psychological changes of parenthood that you don't realise have happened, the final confrontation between father and son just ripped my heart out (even thinking about it while typing this has me going a bit ). That means I can't listen to it very often . DW isn't supposed to do that to you.

Hell man, get a grip - let's move onto some Red Hot Dalek Action !!!

[Rob McCow]

The great thing about the characters is that they have always realised that they are cliches. There's a marvelous bit where the Doctor is telling Clovis that he can't trust him. Clovis complains that he never wanted to be evil and that he doesn't understand why he is so trecharous, but he just is! They both agree that Clovis would sell out the Doctor at the first opportunity - he can't help himself.

There's similar stuff from Beregaria, the deposed Queen. She's the one who points out that fathers always hate their sons and that the new Queen always tortures and murders the old Queen - it's the way things are done, it's tradition.

Strangely, it's not the Doctor's influence that immediately threaten to break the cycle. Clovis' machinations to release the 'Boy' and the new King's disregard for tradition are already causing huge problems. It's not until the Doctor forces Tacitus to confront his son for the first time that he really impacts on the prison-world.

[Junkyard]

This is one of my favourite BF audios. Listening to it for the first time I was immediatly hooked by the first scene with the recanting forms. Not just that it's amusing, but the realisation that there is something very strange going on. The plot moves from comedy to mystery and back again very smoothly, finally shifting to horror and tragedy in Part 4. I must admit that the ending left me feeling numb with shock the first time around. All the cast are very good, but Sam Kelly as Eugene Tacitus is superb. 5/5.

[Anthony Williams]

Coming back to this, I think one does actually need to say more!

On my recent re-listenings, it struck me just how much I love this play. It's difficult to believe that this was Rob Shearman's first foray into writing for Doctor Who. Even Robert Holmes, arguably Doctor Who's greatest writer, started out with a dud in the shape of The Krotons.

This was in the era where perhaps Big Finish were at their most innovative. Immediately prior to this, we had the New Adventures line-up of the Seventh Doctor, Ace & Benny. Soon after, they would be bringing back Paul McGann to give him a proper chance to shine as the Eighth Doctor. Here, we have the Sixth Doctor with a companion from the comic books. Not only that, but we also have an insanely dark story that could never be made for TV (sadly).

Ultimately, Shearman manages to pack SO much into this play without it seeming like there's too much. There's the theological aspect of it, the plays on mythology, the torture, religious persecution. Then, he also perfectly introduces a companion that many fans may not have heard of before (I'd certainly never read the comics that Frobisher featured in, and it didn't throw me at all). And, of course, the various shifts in genre through the entire play. Shearman's a brilliant, brilliant writer.

Everything in this play is so wonderfully oddball - there being nothing beyond the castle, the various repeated rituals of the religion/monarchy etc. And then there's the child, and the way that he's raised by Childeric, and his overall purpose.

Oh, and the bloodbath - which doesn't seem too horrific on audio, but it would ultimately make this play a no-go for a tv adaptation.

I would be awfully amiss if I didn't mention the performances. Colin is absolutely brilliant, showing a wide range of emotions. The softer Sixth Doctor that Big Finish has developed is well on show here, almost from the very beginning - the scene in the TARDIS over the "fish" that Frobisher is hunting in the bath is a perfect example. His empathy for Eugene when he realises what happen is absolutely fantastic - the way in which he absolutely begs Eugene not to commit suicide is one of the most powerful scenes in all of Doctor Who, IMO.

And then there's Frobisher. When I initially heard that a talking Penguin would be in this play, I was very sceptical indeed. But it really worked rather well. This play was written perfectly for the character, and Robert Jezek does a wonderful job at bringing him to life. In my opinion, it really is a shame that there are only two audios featuring Frobisher. I'd love to hear more!

Aside from the Doctor and his companion, there are some other fantastic performances. I simply must mention Dan Hogarth - friend to a number of people on here - he was fantastic as the chief guard, playing it with a wonderful combination of drama and humour. But the real stand-out performance comes from Roberta Taylor, as the cruel and bored Berengaria. She absolutely steals the show in pretty much every scene she's in. And, of course, Sam Kelly as Eugene Tacitus - the way in which the character is played and the level of pathos generated through that performance, it's really difficult to not feel sorry for him, even if he did murder his own child!

Of course, what this play really makes me wish for is another tv story written by Robert Shearman - his plays are always extremely clever and well-written. And this is no exception whatsoever. This was a 5/5 the first time I heard it, and is still a very strong 5/5 ten-or-so years on.

[Nyder]

I really didn't know what to expect from this episode, but I was pleasantly surprised! The story lurched alarmingly in tone from Monty Python at the start to gothic horror, which was very refreshing. I was most impressed by Sam Kelly's performances. I'd only ever known him from 'Allo 'Allo.

The one downside for me was Frobisher's accent. I used to read his exploits regularly in DWM and always had his accent in my head as rather posh & clipped (a bit like Hugh Laurie) so it took me a while to warm to his Bronx accent!

4/5 from me - great stuff.

[Simon R]

Sam Kelly is in On The Up too!