STORY PLACEMENT

 IN SOME STRANGE

 PARALLEL UNIVERSE,

 This STORY TAKES

 PLACE AFTER THE

 NOVEL "ISLAND OF

 DEATH."

 

 WRITTEN BY

 TERRANCE DICKS

 

 DIRECTED BY

 JOHN AINSWORTH

 

 RECOMMENDED 

 PURCHASE

 BIG FINISH STAGE PLAYS

 CD#2 (ISBN 1-84435-

 374-3) RELEASED IN

 OCTOBER 2008.

 

 BLURB  

 A newly-regenerated

 Doctor takes his

 young companions,

 Jenny and Jimmy, to

 the desolate world

 of Karn. There they

 must face terrifying

 monsters, and brave

 SOME fiendish traps

 to locate THE seven

 crystal keys.
 
 If they fail in their

 task, the Doctor’s

 arch enemies, the

 Daleks, will unleash

 their evil upon the

 entire Universe! 

 

 PREVIOUS                   

 

Seven Keys

To Doomsday

OCTOBER 2008

 

 

                                                       

 

 

The second of Big Finish’s stage play adaptations jumps back fifteen years to the second stage outing for Doctor Who, the first to feature the Doctor himself. 1974’s Doctor Who and the Daleks in ‘Seven Keys to Doomsday’ featured Trevor Martin, previously seen as a Time Lord in 1969’s War Games, as an alternate incarnation of the fourth Doctor, and rather wonderfully, he now returns to the role in the new audio version.

 

The production starts just as the original did, with the cutesy device of two young types in the audience being caught up in the adventure. The Doctor falls from the TARDIS, desperately injured. In the original play, Jon Pertwee was shown to change to Martin via a transition on

a projection screen. Here, stalwart Nicholas Briggs is the ‘old’ Doctor, regenerating in front of Jenny and Jimmy’s astonished eyes (I like to think that this is part of a strange, stage play parallel universe, in which the Doctors run Nick Scovell; Nick Briggs; and then Trevor Martin, following the regenerations seen on stage / heard on CD).© Big Finish Productions 2008. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

Trevor Martin is a fine Doctor. He has a wonderfully

rich, gruff, throaty voice, bringing a real authority, and

slight plumminess, to the role. He has the authoritarian

confidence of Jon Pertwee; the grouchiness of William

Hartnell; and a definite vein of Patrick Troughton. He

dominates every scene in which he appears, which is most of them.

 

Jenny is played by Charlie Hayes, daughter of Wendy

Padbury, who played the original Jenny and, of course,

television companion Zoe Heriot. It’s a nice touch, and

Hayes performs well in a limited role. Jimmy, played in

the audio adaptation by Joseph Thompson, is a rather

more interesting character - a mouthy yet resourceful young man - and Thompson puts in a fine performance.

Jenny and Jimmy, despite sounding like a twee kids’

show pairing, work very well together, and are swept

into the Doctor’s adventure with agreeable swiftness.

Everything gets going very quickly – there’s no chance

to get bored.

 

The play is set on the planet Karn, apparently the same

world that writer Terrence Dicks used in his later serial

The Brain of Morbius. It’s not much like the Karn seen

there – more like the radiation-addled Skaro – but this

could easily be another era in the planet’s long history.

We learn that it was once the centre of a huge galactic

empire, ruled by the Masters of Karn, of whom only one survives. It’s now inhabited mostly by

bizarre mutants; the absurdly-named Clawrantulas, faithfully reproduced on the cover looking something like a cross between a Quark, a Kroton and a fiddler crab. They come across as relatively generic monsters, but serve their purpose well. There’s nothing especially original here; there are some hard-bitten mercenaries, on a grim, grisly planet, and the TARDIS trio get involved in suitably a grand alien scheme. At the close of Act 1, the Daleks turn up, ably voiced, as always, by Briggs. The Daleks are searching for the Master of Karn’s final prize, the ultimate weapon, formed from seven crystal shards - the seven keys of the title. These are then collected with astonishing rapidity. The second half of the play is lighter on incident, and comes across as more a collection of Who clichés. We have a character climbing into

a Dalek casing to infiltrate them from The Daleks; the quest for keys to a powerful weapon from The Keys of Marinus; the redeemed traitor from, oh, just about every Terry Nation story ever. Indeed, it’s slightly surprising to learn that Nation didn’t write it!

 

However, I don’t wish to suggest that this

isn’t an enjoyable production. Unoriginal

it may be, even for the 1970s, but it’s

tremendous fun. The adaptation from

visual spectacle to audio drama is far

superior to that of The Ultimate Adv-

enture, and it’s a better story too; far

more coherent. The Daleks’ plan feels

genuinely threatening, as they seek to

construct a weapon that will annihilate all

animal life in the Universe. Briggs brings

another frightening performance as the Dalek Emperor, stealing the scene from Martin for the only time in the play. The open ending also leaves the possibility open for a few more adventures for this effective TARDIS crew.

 

The extras on these discs are serviceable. Remembering Seven Keys to Doomsday is a diverting little bit of history, whereas Growing up with Doctor Who explores Charlie Hayes’ childhood as the daughter of the Doctor’s companion. Only Remaking Seven Keys is less interesting than I’d have hoped.

 

Overall, this is nothing special and nothing groundbreaking, but it was never supposed to be. Nostalgia for some, for me this is a chance to experience some Who that I never thought I’d get a chance to, and a brand new Doctor to boot. More than that, it’s a good, fun romp, and will surely remain an enjoyable bit of ‘light listening’ in future.

 

Copyright © Daniel Tessier 2008

 

Daniel Tessier has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2008. No copyright infringement is intended.

                                                       

 

 

Prior to this year’s extravagant live tour, Doctor Who and the Daleks in ‘Seven Keys to Doomsday was the most fulsome stage production ever mounted under the series’ banner. Designed to be performed in West End theatres before huge audiences, this 1974 production had more money thrown at it than most Doctor Who television serials did at that time. As a result of spiralling costs and dwindling audiences, it ended up making a loss of several thousand pounds, but in doing so it gathered a number of most favourable reviews, prompting its writer, Terrance Dicks, to christen it his very own “flop d’estime.

 

CLICK TO ENLARGEWith new Doctor Tom Baker busy filming Genesis of the Daleks,

a four-week festive tour was completely out of the question for him.

As a result, well-respected character actor Trevor Martin (The War

Games, Flip-Flop) was cast in the play’s title role. However, unlike

the 1960s Dalek movies, which made no real attempt to link Peter

Cushing’s Dr Who to the continuity of television series, Seven Keys

to Doomsday opened with an ambitious regeneration scene that

saw a bouffant-postiched Martin stumble out of the TARDIS doors and promptly change from Pertwee look-alike into a new and distinct

incarnation of the titular Time Lord - one who would then stagger into the audience and pick out a couple of plants for companions. It’s an enchanting way to kick off a Doctor Who stage production, not only

drawing the audience into the world of the play in the most literal of

ways, but making that world a world that they already know and love.

 

Dicks’ storyline takes itself much more seriously than The Ultimate Adventure would, but as one would expect it’s still abounding with profuse pantomime elements. There isn’t much in here that a keen follower of the show won’t have seen before - both the planet Karn and yet another quest to find Keys would appear in the television series shortly after this play toured, and a flood of plot devices (companions clambering into empty Daleks etc) were old news even back in 1974. Of course, what originally made these things so extraordinary was that they were happening just a few metres away from the spectator. Who cares if it’s a ‘best of’ if, it’s a ‘best of’ in the flesh?

 

Regrettably, an audio adaptation

could never hope to match the

appeal of the real thing, although

to their credit all involved do their

best to invest it with the urgency

and proximity of a stage play.

The performances in particular

are all perfectly pitched - they’re

just on the right side of hammy;

never sending the material up

too much, yet leaving the listener

in no doubt that they’re actually

playing to a theatre full of gleeful

kids and not a disparate bunch

of cynical old men with their eyes closed. The sound design is similarly suggestive, though at

times Richard Fox and Lauren Yason’s score veers dangerously close to disproportionately

impressive.

 

Richard Martin’s stage Doctor is a little too generic for my taste, though I can see how such a portrayal would be a boon in a production of this type. Martin sounds a bit like Pat Troughton, looks a bit like Bill Hartnell (back in the day he even wore a silver wig) and acts a lot like Jon Pertwee. Joe Thompson’s brash companion, Jimmy, is a little more inventive, and arguably even a little ahead of his time, although his friend Jennie is far more… quaint. Charlie Hayes (Jade in Master) still does incredibly well in the part though, imbuing the sanctimonious sixth former with just enough spunk to make the character palatable.

 

Nevertheless, having remained to so faithful to the original material, I was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find that Jennie had been re-cast for this audio adaptation. Originally played by Hayes’ mother and former companion Wendy Padbury (begging the question as to how she could expect to go unnoticed in the stalls at the start of a performance!), I’d have thought that any adaptation of this type would see Padbury reprise her role. Fair dues, she’s not quite a school girl anymore, but she has done a very credible job recreating Zoe Heriot for Big Finish in other audio productions, and if she can still bring the young astrophysicist

to life, then I’m sure she would have been able to resurrect Jennie too. Still, if Padbury was going to be passed over, then it is at least fitting that it was to her daughter’s benefit.

 

Whereas having an audio adaptation of Seven Keys to Doomsday is a remarkable luxury, what really endeared this release to me was the wealth of bonus material accompanying the main feature. Unlike the other two stage adaptations in the Big Finish armoury, Seven Keys to Doomsday is so short that it could almost be squeezed onto a single CD, leaving plenty

of room for two carefully-crafted and tremendously engrossing half-hour documentaries that take a look back at both the original stage play and this adaptation of it, respectively. These featurettes were probably of more interest to me than the adaptation itself, which is lovely to have preserved for posterity, but not something that I think many of us will visit over and over or stick on our top five lists.

 

The original incarnation of Seven Keys to Doomsday was blighted by both its own reckless ambition and the prevailing political climate, which saw theatregoers sit at home and watch Doctor Who on the telly rather than risk an IRA bomb in the West End. But even so, it was the best received of all the classic series’ stage productions, steering clear of the potentially offensive theatrics of The Ultimate Adventure, yet delivering a rollicking escapade that was much better suited to its target demographic than the much grimmer Curse of the Daleks. It might not have made any money, but it got good reviews - and now Uncle Tel’s got another one to add to the pile.

 

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2010

 

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

 

  

The original theatrical production of this story opened with the third Doctor regenerating into Trevor Martin’s fourth, suggesting that these events take place in a parallel universe prior to what would have been Planet of the Spiders.

 

However, as the audio production’s doomed Doctor is played by Nicholas Briggs, one could equally surmise that the 2008 version of Seven Keys to Doomsday takes place after earlier, unofficial productions that saw Briggs play the titular Time Lord.

 

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