Unbound 3: Full Fathom Five

[Anthony Williams]

Full Fathom Five
Starring David Collings and Ed Bishop

What if... the Doctor believed that the ends justified the means?

Fan opinion seems generally fairly divided on this play. It certainly has it's faults.

I mean, Siri O'Neal's character is a case in point. Ruth spends most of the play being disgusted by mutated babies and other methods of death. She's disgusted by the Doctor's decision to shoot her father. So disgusted, that she then shoots the Doctor. Again and again. It just doesn't quite ring true with her character.

Here, we are presented in a play where not one character shows any form of morality. We have a ruthless Doctor, we have naieve scientists, we have evil scientists, we have a bastard of a General, and a companion who satisifies her lust for revenge with a firearm. At one point, the Doctor is force-fed the TARDIS key. There's very little about this play that isn't nasty.

But at the end of the day, I can't help but feel that this is the play that really takes advantage of the whole Unbound format. I mean, there are some fairly obvious "what if" questions that can be asked with regards to Doctor Who, but it's with this play that we really see something a bit different. Who'd have thought that we'd ever see a Doctor who's a bit of a bastard? Who'd have thought that we'd ever see a Doctor Who story end with the Doctor being repeatedly shot until he can't regenerate any more? (Well, until The Impossible Astronaut, anyway!)

I must say something about the actors, too. David Collings was just superb. His gravelly voice suited this nasty version of the Doctor perfectly. I can't see any of the regular Doctors pulling off what the Doctor does here. Ed Bishop is brilliant in his role as General Flint - a role that could have been so cliched, yet thanks to the writing by David Bishop, and the acting by Ed Bishop, was so much more. The only character who I found unbelievable at times was Ruth, for reasons mentioned previously.

While this play is undoubtedly flawed, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable. It's never going to be considered a masterpiece in the way that Sympathy for the Devil was. I would personally give it a solid 7/10.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

If I told you the truth I'd have to kill you...

Very interesting re-listening to this today for probably the first time since I originally heard it. I could clearly recall my shocked reactions from first time around. Again bearing in mind this series was written and recorded before the new series had been commissioned this play really does push the envelope as far as Doctor Who is concerned.
It could of course be argued that in the series the most Unbound of the six original plays from 2003 is actually Robert Shearman's Deadline but when we get there I intend to argue (unless relistening radically changes my mind) that it's not really a Doctor Who play as oppposed to a play about a fictional Doctor Who writer and therefore sits in the same bracket as the BBC Radio plays Regenerations and Blue Veils and Golden Sands
Anyway getting back to FFF - I think the main thing that stayed with me down the years was the final image of Ruth shooting the newly regenerated Doctor and her final line.
Based on the fact that she had three bullets left I liked to think that Collings was possibly the Tenth Doctor, which of course was still a future incarnation back in 2003 although on the way home I did come up with a silly idea of how in an alternative universe in which Rose had died from meddling with the Time Vortex, the Ninth Doctor had been left once again as damaged and grief stricken as he was by the climax of the Time War and the Collings Alternative Tenth Doctor could have been produced as a result (it occurs to me even now that the fact of the Collings Doctor being stranded on Earth for 27 years suggests there are no Time Lords for him to call on!)
Getting back to the actual story I'd somehow deleted the shocking image of the General Flint creature killing the Doctor (in my head I actually misrembered Ruth shooting him before he regenerates into Ian Brooker) likewise the shock of the Doctor letting his mask slip when he pulls the gun on Lee and kills him in cold blood.
This incarnation of the Doctor is played with utter conviction by Collings and much more sinister than he was when playing Mawdryn pretending to be the Doctor, and the thought that he is still a possible future of the Doctor adds a whole extra layer of chill to the proceedings. When taken in the context of Doctor Who as we knew it in 2003 really was something new and I think at that time I found this to really be the most memorable of the series despite its claustrophobic setting and some fairly standard character types as contrasted with the varied settings and colourful array of characters in the first two plays.
Before we move on can I just throw in two forgot to mentions from the first two plays - loved the ridiculousness of the talking elephant in Auld Mortality, especially once the Doctor acknowledges his ability to speak as a narrative convenience although having Hannibal and the Elephant turn up in the Panopticon does perhaps push this a little too far.
Secondly, in Sympathy Trevor Littledale's perfectly understated portrayal of the Abbot really deserves mention. The subtle contrast between his conversations with the Doctor and the Master add a great deal of depth to the proceedings.
Anyway, time to move on to a somewhat more familiar incarnation of the Doctor (or so we might think) and after being transported to other universes by three pretty good plays, time to come down to Earth with a bump!