September 01, 2010

Nevermore (2010)

Nevermore is the third story from this fourth series and its written by Alan Barnes which probably explains why even after two listens I understood very little of it. The Doctor and Tamsin arrive on Corinth Minor which is a planet where the rich and powerful lived and after a little war with another planet. The General on the other planet created a bacterial bomb which pretty much wiped out Corinth Minor. It was later renamed Nevermore.

The idea that Nevermore is essentially a prison for Morella Wendigo who created the bomb as somewhere we she can think about what she has done is a good one. It is perhaps what should be done for a lot of criminals. I also get the stuff with the robotic ravens and how the prosecutor created all this stuff based on Edgar Allan Poe but for me after about 20 minutes of Edgar quotes I got bored with it all and wondered just where on earth (or nevermore) this story was going. This was the second story to feature Tamsin as the companion. I don’t really think she shone in the story. There were moments where I thought she was given some snappy dialogue and I definitely see potential in the character that doesn’t make me fear for the series or the character.

There were three big names in this story. The first being Fenella Woolgar who appeared as Agatha Christie in the 2008 TV adventure ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’ and also appeared in the 2009 Eighth Doctor adventure ‘The Company of Friends’. She plays Morella Wendigo and I thought that her American accent was very good. I often get annoyed by American accents and think that they are cheesy and distracting. In this it was pitched just right and if I didn’t know better I would have said she was American. The character of Morella was very good as she was cold but believed what she did was right. There was no remorse about what she had done. Eric Loren was the second big name in this story. He appeared as Mr Diagoras and as Dalek Sec in the 2007 TV adventure Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks and also appeared in the 2008 audio play Assassin in the Limelight. He played the pilot and Edgar Alan Poe. I found his portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe to be very well done. There was sadness about him and that really stood out for me. The third big name was Emilia Fox who played Berenice. She currently stars in the BBC drama Silent Witness. The character of Berenice was very underplayed to begin with but her involvement was quite important and I thought she should have been given a more prominent role in this story or in another.

This is one of the weakest stories of 2010. I thought they over did the Edgar Allan Poe stuff by quite a bit and there was more than enough plot there for Alan Barnes to make a good story. This is what I thought of the story after I finished listening to it the first time, so when I gave it a second listen I was expecting to get it a bit more. However on the second listen I found it just as bad. I’m very reluctant to call anything Big Finish do bad but unfortunately there’s very little for me to actually say good about this.

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