The BF Time Warp 015: The Mutant Phase

[SiHart]

In the 22nd century, the Daleks have occupied planet Earth. By the 43rd century, only a handful of humans survive. Still further into the distant future, a Thal scientist must choose whether to betray his heritage, or see the universe destroyed.

When the Doctor and Nyssa find themselves trapped in this deadly chain of events, they must decide who their real enemies are. What is certain, however, is that no matter where the Doctor turns… his arch enemies, the Daleks, will be waiting for him.

What could possibly be worse than that? The Mutant Phase...

What are your thoughts on The Mutant Phaaaaaaaaase?

Si xx

[Rob McCow]

A pointlessly grim tale with utterly daft twists and a 'so it never happened' ending. Big Finish's first truly awful Dalek story.

[SiHart]

I absolutely hate this story. It's too long, dull and comes to the paradox end that makes you wonder wy you bothered listening to any of it in the first place. Of all the first phase of BF stories (which to my mind this one closes) this is my least favourite. Sorry- I just can't stand it.

Si xx

[stuartdg]

I'm indifferent about this story,because it is largely forgettable

[SiHart]

I'd agree with that Stu. The ending wouldn't be nearly as annoying if there'd been a worthwhile story leading up to it. As it is it's just a stab in the eye after 2 hours!

Si xx

[Simon R]

I don't remember much about it apart from someone sounding like Martin Clunes and "Nyssaaaaa...get...baaaaack to the TARRRRDIIIIIS" which might be on the trailer.

There's a lot of legs in a story set during the Dalek Invasion and not set in London but this doesn't tick the box.

[MacNimon]

I can't remember too much about it either (apart from that ending!) but that in itself suggests it wasn't all that bad...I'd remember more about it if it was! On the other hand not particularly great either...2/5

[Andrew Curnow]

From memory, just awful - the first BF I ever listened to, and it put me off for several years. The future Earth bits were the worst, with Mark Gatiss playing some kind of 'Basil Exposition' character. A real turkey, IMHO.

[SiHart]

On the plus side, I do quite like the cover.

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

I don't much like those concentric circles.

Si.

[SiHart]

I quite liked them.

Si xx

[Lissa]

Here's the thing - I've always hated the Mutant Phase but looking at the reviews I occasionally write I've discovered this (from 2006) which I'd completely forgotten about. I've not heard the play since 2006 so I can't vouch for it but it seemed plausible at the time. Probably.

Six years on and I’ve forgiven the Mutant Phase because I think it actually does make sense. The problem with messing around with time is that you risk changing the future which caused you to change the past in the first place. Like the man who goes from 2006 to the 1920s and kills Hitler before he does any real damage. The death of Hitler means the 2006 he came from never happened, there never was a need to go back in time and so he never went back. The standard Doctor Who idea of the web of time would (most of the time) have us believe that the "correct" version of history would thus repair itself and Hitler would survive.

The Mutant Phase would seem to fall into a similar trap. A future is established where the mutants and not the Daleks are the dominant life form. The Emperor goes back in time and his actions mean that the future we’ve seen doesn’t then happen. Thus is should be that the Emperor never needs to go back in time and so is never present at the critical point and never intervenes.

Here is my take on why the Hitler example and the Mutant Phase differ and why one cannot happen while the other can.

The Daleks create a time corridor from the year 4000 (which isn’t really 4000 but its near enough and is easier to remember) to 2150 (again, not precise but it is the year engrained by the movie). The Doctor gets caught in that time corridor and is propelled to 2150 where Nyssa gets stung by a genetically modified wasp. Everything else that happens – principally the Dalek getting stung – would’ve happened with or without the Doctor being there.

He then leaves, ends up back in the time corridor, and is taken to 4000 where he and the Daleks’ scientific allies attempt to solve the riddle of the mutant phase. With the help of Nyssa’s sting-wound they are able to deduce exactly what caused the mutation. This only happened because the Doctor was there.

They then go back through the time corridor to 2150 and, using the knowledge gained by the Doctor and Nyssa, the Emperor tries to cure the mutant phase. Had this worked then a Hitler paradox would’ve occurred – the Emperor would not have gone back to cure something that in the new time line didn’t happen. But the key thing is that the Doctor realises that the Daleks in 2150 have already discovered the problem and will solve it themselves if the Emperor can be prevented from helping them. The Doctor stops him, they cure it themselves (without any foreknowledge) and the entire mutant phase time line ceases to have ever existed. The Doctor and Nyssa are back in the Tardis and on their way to wherever they were going before the time corridor caught them.

So the prevention of the mutant phase time line cannot be wiped out by the changing of that time line because the decisive action was an omission rather than an addition. By not doing anything, the Emperor might as well not have been there at all. And, thanks to history rewriting itself, he wasn’t. Or isn’t.

The conversation at the end of the episode – normally the point at which things become clearer – actually seems to be deliberately trying to make things more complicated. Witness this key exchange between Nyssa and the Doctor.

"You forced the Dalek Emperor to realise he was the one who caused the mutant phase"

"Yes"

"That doesn’t make sense".

My point is that it DOES make sense because the events are essentially the same in both versions of history – in the "wrong" version the Doctor convinces the Emperor not to interfere. In the "correct" version the Doctor and the Emperor aren’t there to interfere. The end result in both cases is that the Emperor doesn’t interfere. If I can paraphrase The King Maker, "the details change but the end remains the same".

The only part which doesn’t make sense is the question of how the Emperor managed to create the "wrong" time line in the first place as it is established that the Daleks time corridor isn’t really up to the job of transporting people back in time with that degree of accuracy. We can only assume he got lucky and went back with the supposed antidote. Except that the antidote wouldn’t exist without the Doctor and Nyssa. Perhaps the Daleks and their allies synthesised another antidote. One that would be just as ineffective. It is a stretch but it is plausible.

[Rob McCow]

The trouble is, if you need 600 words of comprehension to establish whether or not the story makes any sense, the story has probably already collapsed into boring incomprehensibility.

[Lissa]

Oh I know - it took 6 years and 600 words to work it out and I still forgot I'd done it. So it's not only probably rubbish, it's unmemorable rubbish. Much like the Mutant Phase itself.

That said I'm still secretly quite impressed with my explanation.

[Jon Masters]

3/5 for me - of the three Dalek stories in this batch this is the one I prefer. It has a John Peel BBC Book feel to it - for good and for ill - but it presents some great ideas - the possible future destruction of the Daleks, the Doctor teaming up with them to prevent something worse, the Daleks being afraid of another creature, the struggling survivors on Earth. The DIOE setting works quite nicely, and I enjoyed the Time paradox stuff, though we could have done with more of a build up to this in Ep 1 & 2 rather than it just being a new plotline in Ep3.

Two major niggles though - the mind transference of the Emporer is crap, no matter how you look at it. And, possibly the worst of the 3 Dalek stories so far, the variation in Dalek voices. I am more than happy for every Dalek to speak in the same way, because I can differentiate them in story terms by what they are saying rather than how they said it. Here we almost run out of Dalek voice variations in an attempt to make them all different - any more and we'd have had to hear from Cockerny Dalek and Geordie Dalek as well.

Not as bad as others seem to have found it.

[Anthony Williams]

I used to love this story. Admittedly, that was when I first heard it, 11 years ago, and I was 13 years old.

When I re-listened to it earlier this year, I was actually surprised that, it was, well... just not very good.

It's not that it doesn't make sense, because it does. Lissa's explanation shows that. But, as Steve says, it's just pointlessly grim. It paints a very dark picture of Earth's future, and few characters come out of it well, or even as vaguely likeable. Something's even gone wrong with the Daleks, making them even more deadly than before, even to themselves.

Listening to it in 2012, I just couldn't enjoy it.

And I honestly can't bring myself to write more on this one than this! 1/5 from me.

[MacNimon]

I haven't listened to this for years in case it's worse than the 2/5 I gave it...I love Lisa's explanation though which deserves 5/5!

[Nyder]

I didn't think it was that bad actually! The story kept me interested and I enjoyed all the references to DIOE, but I agree that the ending was a bit confusing with temporal paradoxes and all that guff.

Not a classic by any means, but certainly not as bad as The Land Of The Dead