"Sympathy for the Devil" [review]
Nov. 8th, 2023 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverWith the September installment of "Once and Future" featuring the Unbound Doctor (David Warner) alongside the Ninth Doctor, I thought I would re-listen to the one audio that I've heard with the Unbound Doctor, "Sympathy for the Devil", to re-acquaint myself with the character. Here are my thoughts.
Random observation: Isn't it weird how we watch shows but listen to audios? And thus it makes "rewatch" okay but "re-listen to" awkward? I haven't found a single-word synonym for "listen to"; "hear" doesn't work because "hearing an audio" has a connotation of hearing it without actually paying attention.
I have to admit that I originally bought "Sympathy for the Devil" (back in 2014, when it had already been out for eleven years), it was entirely because David Tennant had a part in it - I was absolutely right in the middle of my Everything Tennant phase. I did know who David Warner was, at least. I'd seen a few movies with him in it, and we actually had a running joke in our house about him. (Somewhat early on in our marriage, I mentioned David Warner and my husband didn't know who he was, so I said, "He played Sark from Tron." This continued to happen - months/years would pass and his name would come up and my husband didn't recognize it, and I'd say "Sark from Tron," and it starting morphing in weird ways.) However, Tennant was the original draw for me, but the premise - what if the forced regeneration of the Second Doctor went in a different direction? - was really the hook. I love What If scenarios.
The short (spoilerific) summary of the story is this: The Doctor, having been forced to regenerate and exiled by the Time Lords, lands in Hong Kong in 1999, rather than in late 1960s as he had expected. Because the Doctor missed the past thirty years, the world is very different because he wasn't present to avert disasters. For example, to fend off an invasion of dinosaurs, Capt. Mike Yates and his volunteer squad were sent back in time to detonate a bunch of nuclear bombs, resulting in present-day London having a huge lake in the middle of it. More significantly to the plot, UNIT hadn't been entirely successful and the Brigadier had been unable to convince the Powers That Be that aliens were causing the problems, and so he was forced to retire in disgrace and ended up in Hong Kong, running a pub.
When the Doctor arrives, it's New Year's Eve and Hong Kong is about to transition from Britain to China, so the atmosphere is already uneasy, with Chinese troops on the border and Hong Kong citizens unsure of the future. Then a Chinese plane crashes in the hillside, carrying a defector - a Western scientist who took the name Ke Le and had defected to China years before. He'd developed amazing technologies for them, including cloaking tech and a machine that controlled men, making them into single-minded fearless soldiers. Ke Le turns out to be the Master (played by Mark Gatiss), and he was fleeing China because the control machine used a resource that was running out and the reverting soldiers were going insane, so the Chinese government is after him. However, there's cleanup to do - if the Master doesn't finish what he's doing, things will get far worse (not going to go into details), so the Brits can't just imprison him and move on.
I loved this audio. I liked it back then, and it's only better on re-listen. The actual plot about Ke Le machine (I'm sure you get this reference) was okay, but what really makes this audio is the characters and their interactions. All four main characters - the Doctor, the retired Brigadier, the Master, and Col. Ross Brimmicombe-Wood, leader of the UNIT squad in Hong Kong (played by Tennant) - are all well-drawn; the ones you think you know are different in many ways due to backstory, and at the very core of the story, none of them are sure who to trust and that's what really drives the audio, as they argue and plot and scheme with and against each other. The performances were stellar, too. It wouldn't have worked if the four main characters weren't equally strong; if even one performance had been weak, it would have thrown off the balance and the story wouldn't have been believable. But honestly, I loved listening to them playing against and off each other.
The one thing that was lacking here was a good sense of who the Doctor was. He definitely shared some traits with his real-timeline counterpart, being gentlemanly and stalwart, but was different in a number of ways, such as not being dismissive of the humans surrounding him. However, there just wasn't enough here to define this Doctor. I haven't listened to the other Unbound audios to find out more about him.
Another thing that I really liked in this audio was how it ended, and I'm talking about B-W here - we actually never got to find out what happened to him. Last we see, the clock has struck midnight, Hong Kong is now Chinese territory, B-W and the UNIT soldiers are stranded by the rescue boats which have already left, and Chinese helicopters (piloted by the insane soldiers) are uncloaking over the bay and opening fire. That's it. He was probably killed, but he might have been captured, or he might have found a place to hide and regroup. I like that we don't know, and that the most probable outcome was dark.
Okay, next time, "Once and Future: Time Lord Immemorial".
Random observation: Isn't it weird how we watch shows but listen to audios? And thus it makes "rewatch" okay but "re-listen to" awkward? I haven't found a single-word synonym for "listen to"; "hear" doesn't work because "hearing an audio" has a connotation of hearing it without actually paying attention.
I have to admit that I originally bought "Sympathy for the Devil" (back in 2014, when it had already been out for eleven years), it was entirely because David Tennant had a part in it - I was absolutely right in the middle of my Everything Tennant phase. I did know who David Warner was, at least. I'd seen a few movies with him in it, and we actually had a running joke in our house about him. (Somewhat early on in our marriage, I mentioned David Warner and my husband didn't know who he was, so I said, "He played Sark from Tron." This continued to happen - months/years would pass and his name would come up and my husband didn't recognize it, and I'd say "Sark from Tron," and it starting morphing in weird ways.) However, Tennant was the original draw for me, but the premise - what if the forced regeneration of the Second Doctor went in a different direction? - was really the hook. I love What If scenarios.
The short (spoilerific) summary of the story is this: The Doctor, having been forced to regenerate and exiled by the Time Lords, lands in Hong Kong in 1999, rather than in late 1960s as he had expected. Because the Doctor missed the past thirty years, the world is very different because he wasn't present to avert disasters. For example, to fend off an invasion of dinosaurs, Capt. Mike Yates and his volunteer squad were sent back in time to detonate a bunch of nuclear bombs, resulting in present-day London having a huge lake in the middle of it. More significantly to the plot, UNIT hadn't been entirely successful and the Brigadier had been unable to convince the Powers That Be that aliens were causing the problems, and so he was forced to retire in disgrace and ended up in Hong Kong, running a pub.
When the Doctor arrives, it's New Year's Eve and Hong Kong is about to transition from Britain to China, so the atmosphere is already uneasy, with Chinese troops on the border and Hong Kong citizens unsure of the future. Then a Chinese plane crashes in the hillside, carrying a defector - a Western scientist who took the name Ke Le and had defected to China years before. He'd developed amazing technologies for them, including cloaking tech and a machine that controlled men, making them into single-minded fearless soldiers. Ke Le turns out to be the Master (played by Mark Gatiss), and he was fleeing China because the control machine used a resource that was running out and the reverting soldiers were going insane, so the Chinese government is after him. However, there's cleanup to do - if the Master doesn't finish what he's doing, things will get far worse (not going to go into details), so the Brits can't just imprison him and move on.
I loved this audio. I liked it back then, and it's only better on re-listen. The actual plot about Ke Le machine (I'm sure you get this reference) was okay, but what really makes this audio is the characters and their interactions. All four main characters - the Doctor, the retired Brigadier, the Master, and Col. Ross Brimmicombe-Wood, leader of the UNIT squad in Hong Kong (played by Tennant) - are all well-drawn; the ones you think you know are different in many ways due to backstory, and at the very core of the story, none of them are sure who to trust and that's what really drives the audio, as they argue and plot and scheme with and against each other. The performances were stellar, too. It wouldn't have worked if the four main characters weren't equally strong; if even one performance had been weak, it would have thrown off the balance and the story wouldn't have been believable. But honestly, I loved listening to them playing against and off each other.
The one thing that was lacking here was a good sense of who the Doctor was. He definitely shared some traits with his real-timeline counterpart, being gentlemanly and stalwart, but was different in a number of ways, such as not being dismissive of the humans surrounding him. However, there just wasn't enough here to define this Doctor. I haven't listened to the other Unbound audios to find out more about him.
Another thing that I really liked in this audio was how it ended, and I'm talking about B-W here - we actually never got to find out what happened to him. Last we see, the clock has struck midnight, Hong Kong is now Chinese territory, B-W and the UNIT soldiers are stranded by the rescue boats which have already left, and Chinese helicopters (piloted by the insane soldiers) are uncloaking over the bay and opening fire. That's it. He was probably killed, but he might have been captured, or he might have found a place to hide and regroup. I like that we don't know, and that the most probable outcome was dark.
Okay, next time, "Once and Future: Time Lord Immemorial".
