The year is 1997, and a stranger arrives in Hong Kong,
decades later than he thought he would be returning to Earth. It’s the eve of
the Handover, the return of Hong Kong to China, and the Doctor finds a world
that’s had to survive without him for the last few decades, and it’s a world
that is not the better for it.
An advanced Chinese stealth bomber, capable of flying
while completely invisible, crashes into the Hong Kong countryside, sending the
Doctor in pursuit of a mystery. Along the way he finds an old friend who is
desperate to forget the horrors of his own past, a disgraced version of
U.N.I.T. led by a less than ethical commander, and an old enemy as trapped on
Earth as the Doctor now is.
And in the midst of it all, an ancient evil is awakening…
I’m still surprised by how often I come across Who fans that
are completely unaware of the audio adventures of the Doctor as produced by Big
Finish. It’s not even fanboy wonderment by someone who collects everything Who
(I don’t) while looking at others who don’t, but rather just based on the fact
that the various Who stories they’ve done are so damned good.
When Big Finish got the license to do Doctor Who, the original concept was to
have the actors who played the classic Doctors give life to new stories, fully
dramatized, full cast audio adventures that were to take place in between the
established television adventures. As time went on they also added Paul
McGann’s Doctor into the mix as well as original adventures featuring the
various companions and villains. Then they created Unbound.
The concept for this series of stories was a fairly
simple one. They would write a series of Doctor
Who stories featuring Doctors that had never existed before and who might
even not be based on concepts found in the strict Who cannon. One story looked
at what might have happened to the Doctor and Susan had they never left
Gallifrey. One story had the Doctor as a woman (played by Arabella Weir)
following her adventures as she hides out from the Time Lords on Earth after
the War Games rather than having been
caught and punished. Still another looks at what would have happened if the
Valeyard had won the Doctor’s regenerations after The Trial of the Time Lord, and still another got really weird and
meta by looking at what would have happened had Doctor Who not made it to TV.
While they and a couple of others in that line were all
interesting and enjoyable to greater or lesser degrees, there was one that for
me absolutely fired on all cylinders and told a great alternate universe Who
story. That would be Sympathy for the
Devil.
For this Doctor, his story picks up immediately after his
forced regeneration by the Time Lords at the end of The War Games. But rather than landing on Earth, in England, in the
1970’s, he ends up in Hong Kong in 1997. Confused by at least momentarily
thinking he was where and when he had been originally intending to be, as well
as seeking what answers he can find, the Doctor follows a couple of strangers
to a small pub run by a former English Brigadier hiding from his old life. His
name is Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
The Doctor gets Lethbridge-Stewart alone and learns what
the world has been like without him, the devastation caused by event after
event that the Doctor was not there to prevent. During their talk an invisible
plane carrying a scientist named Ke Le crashes into the hills of Hong Kong
while trying to sneak out of China. This unusual event brings U.N.I.T. into the
picture, and the Doctor learns that U.N.I.T. isn’t the organization that he
remembers and that former Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and U.N.I.T. aren’t on
the best of terms.
From that point forward, everything spins out of control,
and it’s up to the Doctor to save the world.
Sympathy for the
Devil is an amazingly tight little standalone story by Jonathan Clements,
and it benefits with regards to accessibility for those uninitiated or just
newly initiated in Who fandom from not being too strongly tied to the classic
or contemporary Doctor Who
continuity. The technical aspects of the production are absolutely top notch.
The music and sound FX are deep and rich, creating a very full and real
sounding world for the actors to inhabit.
The cast assembled for the production is amazingly
talented, and perhaps none more so than the Doctor himself, David Warner. David
Warner’s résumé is stacked with iconic genre performances on both the big and
little screens, and he gives everything here that he’s given in many of those
past performances. It’s the type of performance that makes you feel stirrings
of regret that Warner didn’t officially take on the role at least once in the
50 years of the show’s television history.
Nicholas Courtney is at the top of his Lethbridge-Stewart
game, bringing a slightly different take to the character that reflects the
darker history he’s lived through. This is a Lethbridge-Stewart who has seen
everything he once stood for crumble, and Nicholas Courtney plays him with a jaded
weariness while still keeping true to the character we’re all familiar with.
Mark Gatiss (now of Sherlock
fame) plays the dark and mysterious Ke Le, a “scientist” responsible for the
monstrous, mind controlled killers known as the Ke Le Divisions. He plays the
character with an unnerving calm for most of the story, as well as playing him
as a perfect foil for the Doctor.
***** Spoiler about
Ke Le. Highlight the text with your mouse to see. *****
I was thinking about not mentioning
this one since someone unfamiliar with Big Finish might actually be surprised,
but even their website (where you have to go to order the thing) spoils it
these days despite the lengths they once went to in order to hide both the
actor’s true name and the character’s big reveal. Ke Le is actually the Master.
***** End spoiler
about Ke Le. *****
Oh, yeah... And then there’s some guy named David Tennant
playing the head of U.N.I.T., Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood. Coming out just two
years before he became the Doctor on television, it was neither his first nor
last work for Big Finish’s Doctor Who
line. He plays the character with a great bit of gusto, making him a jerk that’s
still rather enjoyable to listen to. He and Nicholas Courtney also play off
each other rather well in the story.
Sympathy for the
Devil is an amazingly good story, and you’ll enjoy it whether you’re a
longtime fan or new fan of old Who, new Who, or all of Who. While the story
does play off of some established classic Who history, it’s building its own
world here. It uses the references to the past in ways that you don’t actually
have to know the specific details of the referenced Who stories to understand
or appreciate what the events in them mean to this story.
Sympathy for the
Devil is easily my favorite of the non-cannon Doctor Who stories out there as well as one of my favorite Who
stories in general. It’s a story that even ten years after my first hearing it
I can still listen to and enjoy every bit as much as the first time. The story
itself is a standalone on a single CD, but it does end in a way that opens the
door to additional stories (and at least one other was recorded.) You can find
it for a very nice price at the Big Finish website here in both CD and digital
download formats.
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ReplyDeletesorry messed up and had to start again
DeleteI have this one but haven't got round to listening to it just yet, I have listened to the Masters of War also featuring David Warner and Nicholas Courtney which is excellent. I was disappointed by Exile with Arabella Weir not one of Big Finish's best in my humble opinion, which is disappointing as I liked the idea of a female Doctor but it just didn't work for me. I will give Sympathy for the Devil a listen to after I finish the current batch I have on my phone, great review on a section of Big Finish stories that tend to get looked over
ReplyDeleteThanks for the complement and the comments.
DeleteAnd, yeah, the reality of Unbound is they're either hit or miss. I know several people who find the Arabella Weir one an interesting take, and it is, but it's not one of the ones that I can listen to on a regular basis. Full Fathom Five is another with an interesting concept that I'm hit or miss on depending on mood. But Sympathy for the Devil is, for me, the absolute best of the original Unbound stories. It was great getting to actually meet Warner last year at Dragon Con and talk to him about it and his other work for Big Finish.