Hogan Reviews

“The Great Beyond” is the latest Fifth Doctor release from Big Finish and has taken the approach of doing a six-parter, something that can sometimes lead to a great story full of slow-burn plots and great characterisation, but often ends up spinning its wheels and padding out the story poorly, and I’m sorry to say this is very much the latter. It’s a shame as there are some fun sci-fi ideas on display here and the TARDIS team is well realised, but the plot doesn’t survive the nearly three hours, and the new characters barely survive the one scene they’re introduced in! Let’s take a look, anyway…

The Great Beyond starts off with The Doctor (Peter Davison), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) and Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) in a space prison known as “The Beyond” which has wooden walls that constantly shift while the prison itself constantly moves across the surface of the planet its on, making escape impossible. They’re thrown in a cell with a woman called Alison Sinclair (Maggie Service) who happily wishes for them to get executed because that’s far better than the fate most of the inmates suffer: being mentally sent to a realm of darkness known as “Forever” with no sense of touch or sight or anything, until you lose your mind. The prison is ran by a warden called Ivan (Philip Hurd-Wood) and two robots called “The Princesses” (voiced by Anna Critchlow and Paksie Vernon) who do that “sound fun and cute while talk about killing” gag, and do it well to be fair. What’s Tegan (Janet Fielding) doing during all of this? She was left on another planet and had to make ends meet doing fake fortune telling until famous freedom fighter Nairobi Sinclair (Anna Critchlow) arrives and offers to take her into the prison so she can save her friends and she can save her allies.

As the two break into the prison Nyssa is taken off for execution, but Nairobi saves her in the nick of time while Tegan manages to break her friends out of their cell but neither The Doctor nor Adric recognise her. At this point I was really enjoying myself, the sci-fi concepts of a moving prison and mental-death in another dimension was interesting and the plot was moving forward, but sadly here is where the plot pretty much stops, and we’re only at episode 2. The next few episodes sees everyone running around the prison in various combinations, nearly getting caught but escaping, in classic Who fashion, all while the actual plot moves at a snail’s pace. At one point Ocean Sinclair (Paksie Vernon) is released and is a famous pro-fascist and therefore the polar opposite of her sister, while the third sister, the previously mentioned Alison, intentionally doesn’t get involved in politics so doesn’t care either way. It’s an extremely on-the-nose look at “right vs. left vs. centralists” that doesn’t go any deeper than name calling and an agonising use of modern phrases like Ocean calling people “zinc flake” instead of snowflake. The end result isn’t much more interesting either, but I’ll save that for the spoiler section…

Another classic case of “great cover for a not-so-great story”.

Ivan goes mad when he realises he’s an inmate the same as everyone else but he was allowed to be warden because the Princesses aren’t able to use the computers in the Beyond, and when I say crazy I mean constantly referring to himself in the third person and talking like a child having a tantrum… that got old quick. He’s spared getting his mind crushed initially by escaping to the surface where Nyssa and Nairobi also end up, but they’re soon attacked by a horde of zombie-like people who are the bodies left behind of those whose minds have been harvested. Weirdly they make the discovery that the pegs that litter the path that the Beyond takes across the planet’s surface are the bodies of the executed that have the power to repel the zombie-like creatures, for some reason. Well, until it doesn’t. Luckily Nyssa and her temporary pal make it back on the station to continue the story before anything can happen… still, killed some runtime! Eventually The Doctor makes his way to the mainframe in order to talk to the Beyond itself, the true entity in charge of the prison to seek answers but ends up trapped in its mental dimension, his mind regressing to a scared child…

Oh and I forgot to mention but the memory loss subplot was resolved by everyone realising they had memory blocking wristbands on that once they clicked them together they all regained their memories via a flashback. Honestly came across like they wanted to do a straightforward story but felt the start was too weak so had to come up with a really crap reason for an un-Doctor Who-y flashback sequence. Not going to lie, there is a lot to dislike about the story, but again the concepts and main cast do account for something at least.

The Continuity:

Not really any continuity links to speak of. There have been un-breakout-able prisons in the show before, but that’s a tenuous link really.

Overall Thoughts:

“The Great Beyond” is a mixed bag as it has some interesting and strong worldbuilding and sci-fi concepts plus great performances from the regulars but also has really thin and dull new characters and goes on for at least two parts too long. For a mix I normally give a three but honestly I feel the bad outweighed the good here, perhaps they should stick to more traditional length stories in the future. What’s that? The next Fifth Doctor release is a TWELVE part story?! … Bloody hell…

As Tegan gets a horrible stay Forever and then a few minutes later never really mentions it again The Doctor converses with the Beyond and essentially finds out its really lonely and that a virus has spread across the planet that’s causing the mental issues, not it. In order to combat it The Doctor sends Tegan, Nyssa and Adric to the TARDIS and then gets it to leave him behind, and then as the three Sinclair sisters learn to get along because… they all liked their mother or something, they age before The Doctor’s eyes over a period of decades (they, for various very thin reasons, don’t want to leave and go back to the war-torn galaxy) The Doctor makes modifications to the Princesses during this time “as a hobby” and “doesn’t know why he isn’t ageing like everyone else” to explain this early-in-his-run Fifth Doctor still looks so babyfaced in the televised stories! When the last Sinclair dies the virus reappears and attempts to take over the Doctor but his modifications kick in and the Princesses save him and eradicate the virus for good.

With the Beyond now a friendly sentience who likes to read and now gets to settle back down on the planet and be at peace The Doctor calls the TARDIS back just a minute or two later for the crew inside and brushes off the past half a century or so with no travelling or adventure to head straight to the next one, complete with cliffhanger…