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 MARCH 2011

(80-MINUTE EPISODE)

BBC Audio’s latest audio exclusive, The Gemini Contagion, comes from the quill of Jason Arnopp, who made his Doctor Who debut late last year with the title track on Big Finish’s Demons of Red Lodge anthology release. This time though, rather than wallow in genre cliché, Arnopp does precisely the opposite, telling a tremendously imaginative tale, the bonkers audacity of which I can’t help but admire.

Instead of centring his tale around an alien incursion, noted historical event, or even some sort of timey-wimey paradox, Arnopp took the decision to make his story about handwash, and a product recall gone appallingly awry. Saying that the series is at its best when it turns the most mundane things into the most terrible threats would have been a tired observation even forty years ago, but it is still holds true, as this adventure bears out.

The plot sees the Doctor and Amy arrive on board a starship loaded with vast quantities of a handwash that has been laced with “meme-spawn” - essentially an intelligent virus that enables those infected with it to be able speak and understand every single language in the universe. The trouble is, the handwash wasn’t tested properly, and as a result it packs a few nasty side effects, such as flooding a person’s brain with every language concurrently, and causing double-faced green starfish with nasty teeth to gestate inside them, Adipose-style. It’s a delightfully daft premise that is sure to appeal to younger listeners especially, particularly if they aren’t over-keen on washing their hands.

What I liked most about this escapade was its shameless sense of fun and its wry humour. The scene in which Pond asks the Doctor if the Time Lords had their own language, or “were like Belgians” had me in stitches, and the image of a burly, shaven-headed and red-shirted security chief called “Musclebrook” was almost as amusing. The Doctor too is at his humorously eccentric best, Arnopp’s prose being extremely evocative of the lighter side of Matt Smith’s television portrayal, if not always the more profound.

The frolic is narrated by actress Meera Syal, who, despite having enjoyed a major role in last year’s Hungry Earth two-parter on television, isn’t quite the draw that Matt Smith, Karen Gillan or Arthur Darvill would have been. She is, nonetheless, very good indeed. Buoyed by a multi-ethnic script worthy of Star Trek, she is able to give each character a distinctive - albeit heavily embroidered - accent, be it Welsh; Mexican; Yankee; or even Anglicised Scot. The latter is probably the most remarkable, as Syal absolutely nails Amy’s sound and spirit; her delivery is almost note-perfect. Her male characters aren’t quite as credible, as is often the way with female narrators, which really makes me wonder why the Beeb didn’t make this another multi-voice adventure like The Hounds of Artemis, which I was hoping would set the stall for future releases in this range.

And so The Gemini Contagion is nothing unmissable or magnifique, but it’s imaginative and endearing - and no doubt will be responsible for a chaos of grubby children’s hand-prints sullying their parents’ white walls for months to come.