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Project: Twilight

AUGUST 2001

(4 EPISODES)

Big Finish demonstrate their faith in their star duo of Colin Baker and Maggie Stables by giving them two adventures on the trot – an honour thus far reserved only for Paul McGann and India Fisher. Whereas Big Finish broke new ground with this team in earlier stories

such as the brilliant historical “The Marian Conspiracy” and the epic “The Apocalypse Element”, Cavan Scott and Mark Wright’s “Project: Twilight” once again pushes the envelope. Their gritty story of darkness and despair set in a dingy Bermondsey casino makes even the most macabre story from Phillip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes’ infamous ‘gothic horror’ era look like “Delta and the Bannermen.”

With the exception of the first episode that has to set up the eponymous Twilight Project

and introduce us to The Dusk Casino, this play is a story about just six fascinating

characters – the Doctor, Evelyn, Reggie ‘The Gent’ Mead, Amelia, Cassie, and the enigmatic Nimrod. If you have ever seen both an episode of Eastenders and the movie The Krays then you can imagine the setting of this story. From the start the play has a bleak sense of claustrophobia, “…Saarf East London” (as Evelyn mockingly calls it) and its few inhabitants that we meet making even the wastelands of Skaro look welcoming.

I must have been one of the few listeners to go into this story without reading the CD liner notes, completely oblivious to the surprise revelation at the end of the second episode that Reggie and Amelia are Vampires, created by the government during the Great War as an exotic breed of super soldier. This makes for some of the scariest ‘monsters’ that I can ever recall being in Doctor Who.

Rob Dixon plays Reggie as an utter psychopath; one gets the impression that this is not the result of all the suffering he has endured because of what was done to him in the military, but because he has always been a nutter. Even before he is revealed as a Vampire, his shady activities combined with his uncontrollable temper makes him a credible human threat. When his true nature is eventually revealed, he is an absolute monster. His scenes with Cassie in particular are extremely harrowing.

Nimrod, on the other hand, begins the story as a potential menace but as the play progresses he is revealed as the scientific mind behind the Twilight project and even a reluctant ally of the Doctor. However, it is Rosie Cavaliero as Cassie who really steals the show. By the play’s conclusion you cannot believe how much suffering this poor girl has endured – it clearly leaves it mark on both the Doctor and Evelyn as well as the listener.

Baker and Stables are as delightful to listen to as ever, “Project: Twilight” giving Evelyn the chance to show her compassionate side and for the sixth Doctor to be wrong about something or someone (as often occurred on television, “Attack of the Cybermen” being a prime example) without compromising the slightly softened, more likeable attitude of his character.

One final point that impressed me about “Project: Twilight” was how the writers tactfully approached continuity. After the “Dust Breeding” debacle with the Master, a Vampire story was another opportunity for years of elaborate back-story and Time Lord lore to be casually thrown out of the window. Thankfully, Scott and Wright took the much more sensible approach of not making explicit, sweeping statements about the Vampires that could cause problems with other stories. In fact, were it not for the Doctor’s evident prejudice against them (which was vital to the plot) the word ‘Gallifrey’ could quite easily not have been mentioned.

All in all, this four-parter is perhaps the sixth Doctor's most impressive outing to date on audio. A classic.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

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