Finished the Divergent Universe arc of the Eighth Doctor Big Finishes on my way to work. Thoughts on the rest of the episodes and the arc as a whole, with spoilers, to follow.
Faith Stealer
I really liked this story. The idea of a kind of stock market of faiths was amusing, particularly when the Doctor & Co's "Tourist" faith started being hawked in the streets. I find the best audio dramas are those in an interesting locale with well-written dialogue; I could listen to characters I like chat about anything and be happy for the 2 hours of a serial. Now that it's been a week or so since I listened, though, I find myself unable to really recall the details of the plot, which is a mark against. The actual monster behind it all was once again an unfortunate bore. Yet another strange, ethereal entity that has deceived a group of people to use them for food in some way.
The Last
Another great premise, and a rare story in the Divergent Universe that actually has a satisfying ending. The premise - a dictator locked away in her bunker with no idea how much her war has cost her people - is something I don't think I've experienced before in other media. I enjoyed her advisers skulking and conniving to save themselves, and the ultimate revelation that the world was yet another Divergent experiment in evolution, doomed to loop and repeat itself until it could avoid self-destruction. All in all engaging from beginning to end, and very mildly though-provoking, a quality I don't often associate with Doctor Who.
Caerdroia
A third good episode in a row! Having the Doctor split into three selves, each a limited aspect of his personality, seems like a recipe for disaster, but it really worked. It in some ways served as a long-belated introduction to Eight. Two parts of him were very familiar to me - the cheery, happy-go-lucky, awestruck and reckless endorfiend, and the intellectual timey-wimey problem-solver. But the third part of Eight, an impatient, superior and ultimately violent alien, was something I'd experienced but not quite internalized.
Up till now I had thought of the "negative" aspects of the Doctor, when they showed up in Zagreus and onward, as a temporary and somewhat shallow exploration of his sadness over leaving his universe behind. I didn't care for it. But in this episode, they reveal themselves more to be the dark side of the coin for Eight's poet's personality. In The Last The Doctor says he hasn't hated anyone before Excelsior, but I think this episode reveals that Eight is an incarnation that *does* hate, and feels the full spectrum of human/Time Lord emotion fiercely and constantly. He's not so much a dark doctor as a moody, unstable one. I like this, as it feeds into his willingness to change himself in Night of The Doctor.
The actual mystery of Caerdroia makes little to no sense. The Kro'ka tricks the Doctor - or doesn't. The Kro'ka is an incompetent rube of the Divergents - or isn't. It never really lands in a satisfying way and it's unclear why the Doctor is split into three, or why his selves and companions are sent marching around this world and getting into danger before ending up back in the maze. The character bits made up for it.
The Next Life
Oh boy. Zagreus part 2, with all of the bad and none of the good. Personally I couldn't follow it. What happened to Guidance? Is Keep the sound monster from Scherzo, or some other evolution created by the Divergents? If the latter, how did he learn French from Charley? The universe has culminated with a Rassilon vs Keep faceoff 84 times, but how was Rassilon planning on escaping in every iteration before the one in which the Doctor brought his TARDIS? Is this Rassilon connected in any way to the shade in the The Matrix from Zagreus? If not, why does he seem to know so much about the Doctor? If so, how the heck did he end up here? Etc.
Then there's a lore dump about C'rizz, which reveals him to actually be an interesting character from a sci-fi perspective - a chameleon in mind as well as body, who meshes so well with the Doctor and Charley because that's what his species does - but fails to rescue him from the shit personality he still carries around. Who could have guessed that C'rizz's arc would all come down to a love for Lida, which we're told is so strong but never got the opportunity to see? Blech.
Charley does nothing, as is increasingly the case. Big Finish seemed to struggle to handle two companions in this series, and so favoured giving all the activity to the new, less interesting C'rizz.
At least Zagreus had this interesting kind of journey to the center of the TARDIS (well before the TV episode), complete with warring Doctors, a manifestation of her personality and Alice in Wonderland. In this, we separate our interesting characters so they can't interact, pair them up with paper villains (and bad American accents), and churn for 3 hours.
Overall
The Divergent Universe was a mixed bag. Scherzo was a phenomenal and weird start that promised a universe with rules completely foreign to our own, achieved in a way only an audio drama could, not limited by SFX budget or physical realities. But after that, we were back to business as usual, except that people did not understand the literal word "time". What a wasted opportunity!
However, it would be unfair to say they did not try. Almost every episode in this arc (the exception being Twilight Kingdom) features a premise and world above average on the Doctor Who weirdness scale. If we were in the normal Universe, I would count a series including a formless evolution chamber, Brave New World, religion stock market, nuclear winter, and maze world ambitious. Pretty much every episode started off intriguing, which is more than I can say for a lot of Who.
Most of those intriguing starts turned out flat. In my limited experience with Big Finish, I'd say they have even more difficulty with their stories paying off than the current television series. Better premises, better supporting characters, and better pacing, but the stories just fall back on evil people-eating monsters or mustache-twirling about the overarching mystery of the Divergent Universe. I'd say only Scherzo, Natural History and The Last ended on a node similarly high to where they started.
I guess on an episode-to-episode basis I rate this arc pretty highly, but I know the missed potential is going to kill it in my memory. When I look back on this in five years and think "what do I want to listen to again" I suspect I will skip pretty much the entire Divergent Universe, and that makes me sad.
Episode Ratings
Great episodes:
Scherzo
Good episodes:
Natural History of Fear
Faith Stealer
The Last
Okay:
Caerdroia
Bad:
Creed of Kromon
The Twilight Kingdom
The Next Life
