Last year, William Gallagher gave us the highly gratifying ‘Wirrn
Isle’. This year sees him return to contribute to the first set of Mel stories
since 2007. The story sees the Doctor and Mel arrive at Tantane Spaceport where
a war is raging on between the tribes. Where a creature called the Wailer is
feeding on the unwary. This much is made clear via the Big Finish website
because the problem is that for a long time I didn’t really know what was going
on. It almost felt like there was a lot of nothing going on.
The first episode didn’t grip me in the way that I would
have liked. Now I have a three listen rule and it generally works as ‘if it
takes me three attempts to listen to the story then it there is a problem with
the story’ and I’m afraid to say that this was the case with Spaceport Fear. I
honestly can’t say that I understood what was going on. I found this story
difficult to follow and thought that it lacked anything that gripped me. It was way into the third episode before I
started to warm to it but that was only when things were explained that I started
to appreciate it a bit more but I felt that it came just a bit too late. Something
that did work for me were the cliffhangers. I thought the first cliffhanger was
the first moment when I thought something important was happening. The next two
were also quite good.
The central performances were all good despite the fact I couldn’t
follow what was going on. In particular I found Bonnie Langford’s performance
to be top notch and it shows what can be done with the character when you take
out all the screaming that she had to do on TV. Colin Baker’s performance was
also quite good and even when I wasn’t following things I still thought that he
was typically good form. Despite the story not necessarily hitting the mark I
still thought that there was good chemistry. The supporting performances were
all ok but I found myself rolling my eyes whenever Pretty’s name was mentioned.
Beth Chalmers was instantly recognisable as both Galpan and Beauty Swanson.
Ronald Pickup did have some good scenes but was again given a rather odd name
(Elder Bones). I thought that the fact that the supporting characters weren’t particularly
strong was an issue.
I must say that Spaceport Fear is a rather disappointing
adventure. It’s not the worst release that I have ever heard and I suspect that
come awards time this one might do rather well but for me it just didn’t gel
very well and after being disappointed with ‘The Wrong Doctors’ I get the
feeling that my hopes for this Mel series aren’t going to be realised.
Rating – 6/10
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