BF 158: Wirrn Isle

[Si Hunt]

After beaming down to Scotland in the future from an odd unseen adventure aboard Nerva Beacon, the Sixth Doctor and irritating new companion Flip engage in a tense, ice-covered adventure with a particular family of colonists. And, gloriously, one of them is Jenny Funnel from "As Time Goes By". Only Dame Judy and Moira Brooker to go.

This play has many strengths. The small cast is welcome, and for once things arn't too confusing. The opening episodes are extremely tense and action-packed, with Flip flying over an icey lake in a hover-fly thing before eventually crashing down amid the strange "branches" protruding from the ice. But they arn't, of course, branches. They are spindly Wirrn legs!

After Episode 2, I was all set to hail this one as the best Big Finish adventure for many years. It was easy to understand, atmospheric, and well played. Sadly, although it just about makes it over the finishing line without being TOO much of a disaster, a number of factors pop up to spoil the second half.

For a start Jenny Funnell turns stupid, becoming yet another character who refuses to believe her son isn't an evil alien insect despite masses of evidence to the contrary. Flip gets sidelined (again!) and there is a (thankfully short lived) character on Nerva Beacon with a terrible African accent. Worst of all is the play's obsession with transmats. People, things and all sorts of beamed this way and out, half people are beamed up, then beamed back and into Wirrn, then the transmat is "adjusted" to copy a creature ten thousand times, as if a slight fiddle can turn it into a cloning generator. The writer is obsessed with transmats!

It's biggest strength is its focus on family, and (at least in the early stages) a good claustrophobic setting and some solid writing.

Worth a punt, anyway. But does Flip survive/stay in the TARDIS at the end? Ha, listen and find out!

Si.

[Rob McCow]

Mostly agree with Si on this one. The transmatting got terribly confusing in the last half and who didn't think that the Doctor would solve the story with transmit magic?

Roger and Veronica deserved everything that happened to them in this story. Why? Because they named their children 'Toastie' and 'Iron'. Surely this is enough to warrant a call from Social Services. And they keep saying their names in ludicrous circumstances - 'Save my Toastie!' and 'We need to worry about Iron.' that kind of stuff.

Inevitably with a Wirrn story, appalling Wirrn pun story titles start flying around my brain. We could have the simple 'Wirrn Trouble', 'Wirrn - the Money' a team up with the Foamasi and 'Wirrn Competent' a social satire as the Wirrn try to run a railway service.

So imagine my horror when the Doctor says 'Wirrn Business!' at one point. NOOOOOOO.

The Doctor also says NOOOO a couple of times, most NOOOtably at the end of Part Three, where he gets a big echoe-y NOOOO...OOO...oooo...ooo.

Flip's third story; Flip's third personality. She still holds onto 'Feisty' but in this story she's more mature and less prone to making quips.

I thought the first two parts were good though. If they'd have scaled this down and made it a story about an isolated family fighting for survival against the Wirrn, it might have been great. Sadly it descended into wailing gibberish. And I was disappointed that the family 'Wasn't as they seem'. All too predictable.