The Song of Megapetra is a story that I could only really see working on audio. A story which sees a large chunk take place inside a whale is clearly something that couldn’t be realised on a miniscule BBC budget. Written by Pat Mills (Scapegoat, Dead London), this story is like those two stories and slightly strange. The story was originally meant for the Fourth Doctor then for the Fifth Doctor where it would have introduced Turlough. Then it was rewritten for the Sixth Doctor and Peri before being abandoned. The story sees Space Whales in it. It seems slightly unfortunate that this story comes out just after The Beast Below aired on TV.
The story sees the Doctor and Peri answer what they think is a distress call but in fact turns out to be a call to lure a space whale. The plan would be to lure as many space whales as possible and then effectively kill them. The ship is led by Captain Greeg who is slightly unbalanced and it seems borderline crazy. The story does seem at times to skirt pretty close to Moby Dick which isnt really a bad thing. When the story moves into the whale I did find that the story was starting to run away from what I thought it was going to be about. By that I mean a battle between the Doctor and Greeg but alas that didn’t happen and we get a story about people who have been living inside the whale for 30,000 year years and that’s when the story started to lose a bit of momentum.
Colin Baker was on usual good form but this wasn’t his best story by quite a long shot. Nicola Bryant had another good story and her highlight was when she was talking about keeping a Dalek as a pet and how they ‘get a bad rap’ and then she starts singing in a drunk way. Very funny. John Benfield is very good as Captain Greeg. He does fall into that stereotypical captain that is driven purely by money and will quite happily step over morals to get to the case. Quite like Commander Uvanov in The Robots of Death. Susan Brown pops up again after her run the Stockbridge Trilogy of stories at the end of 2009. She plays two roles in this but her best is as the Chief Engineer. The level of disdain that she had for the two security guards was enjoyable. But my favourite of the guest characters were the Security Guards played by Toby Longworth and Alex Lowe. Both gave the double act a lot of heart and in this grim story it was nice to have these two pop up and make me smile. John Banks played a character that perhaps in any other story I would have found annoying as the Ship’s Computer but in this story the weird and oven bewildering voice was very different from what we normally get.
The Song of Megaptera is a story that isn’t perfect but ultimately isn’t a bad story either. I quite liked some of the characters and the story moved along at a good pace however the first half was better than the second and had the story stayed on the ship as opposed to inside the whale with the inhabitants. Its one of the better stories of this season.
The story sees the Doctor and Peri answer what they think is a distress call but in fact turns out to be a call to lure a space whale. The plan would be to lure as many space whales as possible and then effectively kill them. The ship is led by Captain Greeg who is slightly unbalanced and it seems borderline crazy. The story does seem at times to skirt pretty close to Moby Dick which isnt really a bad thing. When the story moves into the whale I did find that the story was starting to run away from what I thought it was going to be about. By that I mean a battle between the Doctor and Greeg but alas that didn’t happen and we get a story about people who have been living inside the whale for 30,000 year years and that’s when the story started to lose a bit of momentum.
Colin Baker was on usual good form but this wasn’t his best story by quite a long shot. Nicola Bryant had another good story and her highlight was when she was talking about keeping a Dalek as a pet and how they ‘get a bad rap’ and then she starts singing in a drunk way. Very funny. John Benfield is very good as Captain Greeg. He does fall into that stereotypical captain that is driven purely by money and will quite happily step over morals to get to the case. Quite like Commander Uvanov in The Robots of Death. Susan Brown pops up again after her run the Stockbridge Trilogy of stories at the end of 2009. She plays two roles in this but her best is as the Chief Engineer. The level of disdain that she had for the two security guards was enjoyable. But my favourite of the guest characters were the Security Guards played by Toby Longworth and Alex Lowe. Both gave the double act a lot of heart and in this grim story it was nice to have these two pop up and make me smile. John Banks played a character that perhaps in any other story I would have found annoying as the Ship’s Computer but in this story the weird and oven bewildering voice was very different from what we normally get.
The Song of Megaptera is a story that isn’t perfect but ultimately isn’t a bad story either. I quite liked some of the characters and the story moved along at a good pace however the first half was better than the second and had the story stayed on the ship as opposed to inside the whale with the inhabitants. Its one of the better stories of this season.
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