Power Play (2012)

The latest Lost Story has quite a big selling point. It sees the return of Debroah Watling as Victoria Waterfield. The character which was last ‘seen’ on TV in Fury from the Deep pops up occasionally in the Companion Chronicle series but this is the first time she has played the character is a full cast adventure since 1968. The story was written by Gary Hopkins however when it was originally written for TV it was to be called Meltdown and it was changed because at the time of promoting this story the terrible events of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Planet in Japan was happening and it was thought to be in bad taste. I understand the decision to change the title and actually prefer Power Play because Meltdown sounds a bit bland.

The main thing about this story is that when listening to it you just want that scene where the Doctor and Victoria meet for the first time. Like when Sarah Jane meets the Tenth Doctor, there is a big emotional reunion and everyone’s happy. However in Power Play what we get is a first encounter which defies logic. Victoria has been hypnotised so when she hears the name of the Doctor she doesn’t recognise it. I thought that this was very clever of Hopkins.  When you have something big like the reunion of an old companion its easy to base the story on that and kind of use everything else as a B plot. In many previous releases we have had this happen and when  the novelty has worn of we are left with a very lacklustre play. Thankfully Hopkins has kept his eye on the ball and manages to keep the rest of the plot strands going so when the eventual proper meeting of the Doctor and Victoria happens we can get that out of the way and enjoy this adventure.

It’s good to have Debroah Watling back as I think that even though the character of Victoria isn’t a particularly well thought out one, she always comes across as a very likeable and warm person who like many of her co-stars from that era, always talk about that period of the show with the warmth that later companions don’t. I think that Hopkins has written the character of Victoria very well and she is a lot stronger than at any time during her TV tenure. I don’t know whether it was deliberate but Watling sounds different to how she sounds when she is doing a companion chronicle. Anyway that is irrelevant because she works well with the script and with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. Nicola Bryant is in an unusual position because she has to take a back seat in most of this story but she does very well with what she is given to do and I thought it was a very subtle performance. Colin Baker’s was his usual brilliance and seemed to be enjoying himself having two companions from different periods of the show.

Of the supporting cast I found Miles Jupp’s performance to be very good. He’s been on several BBC comedies and does very well as the baddie in this story. It’s a bit of a ropey start but very quickly becomes a believable baddie and one that I actually quite liked. The idea of being a sort of planet assassin is quite a bold one but one that sadly isn’t given enough time to develop due to the number of characters and the story having to move along but Jupp is good in this. Another good piece of casting was David Warwick who was last seen in Doctor Who being a policeman in Army of Ghosts back in 2006, I thought that I recognised his voice but wasn’t sure until the end that it was him. As Dysart he was another good character that I enjoyed from start to finish.

The end of the story saw the inevitable scene where the Doctor asks Victoria to come back on board with him and Peri but quite rightly she says no. I think that its nice when the old companion is given this choice as it reaffirms their decision and brings a bit of closure to the companion. They came back but that’s that and I thought it was played brilliantly by Colin Baker and Debroah Watling. I liked the nod to the Terrible Zodin at the end. I was hoping for a moment that this would lead us into another Lost Story but I think those hopes are destined to be dashed.

The problem that I have with Power Play is that it seems to lose a bit of steam in the last episode. I cant figure out why but it seems to spend a lot of time building things up in the first three quarters of the story so that when we have to have the pay-off in part four it doesn’t quite have the same level of pace or drama that I would have expected. It’s not terrible by any means but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel slightly short changed in part four.  As it is I think that it’s a far better story than Guardians of Prophecy and even when you take away the Victoria element from the story what we are left with is a sound adventure that would have worked back in the 1980’s and works very well as a proper Big Finish main range adventure. Very enjoyable stuff.

Rating 7/10