The BF Time Warp 028: Invaders From Mars

[SiHart]

Hallowe'en 1938.

A year after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York state, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast weren't just imagining things?

Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.

With some genuinely out of this world 'merchandise' at stake, the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as 'The Phantom'.

And slowly but surely, something is drawing plans against them. Just not very good ones...

Awesome Wells or just not very good wells?

[Rob McCow]

I think my main memory of this was how wasted Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg were!

Apart from that, I think it was quite funny and quite clever, just not particularly brilliant.

[Paul Monk]

I listened to this recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a historical piece or an in depth portrait of Orson Welles its fairly poor but it succeeds brilliantly as a spoof of 1930's gumshoe type thrillers.

[SiHart]

In contrast to Paul, I really didn't like this one much. Although the premise was quite clever, I don't think I quite "got" the humour. It just seemed dull and rather uninvolving, which i thought was a pity because it had a great cast. The start of the second Paul McGann series wasn't a classic for me.

[stuartdg]

This didn't sit comfortably with me,the humour didn't appeal and it all felt a bit "so what?"

[Anthony Williams]

This one seems to be one of the more divisive plays by Big Finish. But is that surprising when it was written by the man who wrote the likes of The Unquiet Dead, The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks for the telly-box?

The first thing that I noticed about this was just how terrible the accents were. Big Finish seem to have a real problem with getting actors with American accents that are even remotely believable, let alone authentic. And this story is absolutely no exception to that. It's a shame, because that one little thing ruins what would undoubtedly be otherwise excellent performances from the likes of Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson.

But the bad accents are just a distraction from the real issue. The fact that the script just isn't particularly good. Even if people had put in superb performances, it would only put a small amount of gloss on it. The real problem is that what should be humour just utterly falls flat for me. And that's the entire crux of the play - it should be funny. From the pathetic aliens, through to the clichéd characters, it just doesn't quite work.

There are some really good, solid ideas here, that seem poorly executed to me. The idea of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds happening concurrent with an actual alien invasion should have been absolute genius. Yet, the aliens in question never actually hear it, and so they had to re-stage it later on in the play!

The real redeeming factor here is in the production values. This play, like much of McGann's second Big Finish "season" sounds so wonderfully epic. The scale just sounds huge. And so it should - this is audio. They can make things sound huge in a way that they never could on television, even in this day and age. There's also a subtle story arc going on here - things being laid down for later in the season. The references here are so subtle, that they're only really noticeable in retrospect - Welles not recognising works of Shakespeare, for example.

Finally, a word about Charley. Lovely Charlotte Pollard. She's rather neglected in this one. With everything else going on around her, and with her being the main focus of the arc of the season, she really shouldn't be in the background in the way that she is here. And yet she is. Disappointing.

In all, I struggle to like this. The humour doesn't click, and there are just too many characters. This gets a rather disappointing 2/5 from me.

[Si Hunt]

One of my least favourite Big Finish plays ever!

Si.

[Simon R]

I tried re-listening to this on our flight to New York last year and couldn't finish it. Awful. Even Katy Manning's cameo can't save it.

[Stuart Wallis]

Heard it once. Never again. Very forgettable.

[Nyder]

I sort of get what they were trying to do, including the "Dragnet" style musical stings. I loved The Doctor's line about once in a while he likes to have a complete makeover. I wasn't expecting the "grown-up" aliens to be quite so comedic. It jarred a bit with the tone of the rest of the story. Still, it was far better than Minuet ....


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