Hogan Reviews

Time to look at two full cast audio dramas starring Jon Pertwee, Elizabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney written by Barry Letts! Exciting right?! … Well, it should be, but sadly the stories also suffer from an awful comic book caricature companion known as Jeremy Fitzoliver. *shudder*. That being said out of the two stories Paradise of Death is the better one, so let’s take a look!

The obvious highlight is hearing The Doctor, Sarah Jane and The Brigadier all interacting played by their original actors/actresses. Sure Mr. Pertwee sounds a bit old and gravely but then most of the Doctors on Big Finish audio do now, so I didn’t even notice after a few seconds.

The original cassette cover, featuring the cast as they looked in studio that day, I guess.

The plot of the oddly numbered five-parter is a fun one and it takes part in enough locations that it doesn’t get boring. It can get obnoxious, but never boring! More on that later… So the first two or so episodes are set on Earth as UNIT investigates a new theme park called “Space World” that seemingly has real life alien creatures in pens and “Experienced Reality headsets” where you can put them on and mentally live out moments recorded from other people. Everyone is impressed but also suspicious, especially The Doctor and the Brigadier, so the owners of the park, Chairman Freeth (Harold Innocent) and Vice-Chairman Tragan (Peter Miles) attempt to kill The Doctor and eventually kidnap Sarah and take her back to their home planet of Parakon.

The Doctor, Brigadier and sadly Jeremy pop into the TARDIS and follow Sarah’s trail, eventually landing in Parakon in time to convince the nameless President of the planet (Maurice Denham) to spare her, much to his son’s dismay (his son being Chairman Freeth, for the record). We then get roughly three episodes of small rebellions, people being executed via live “ER” broadcasts as a type of entertainment and large native monsters that The Doctor tries to subdue. Plenty of familiar themes, but they’re fun to listen to.

This is the (awful) cover I had for my CD version back in the day. That’s certainly… some kind of CGI, that’s for sure.

What isn’t fun to listen to however is Jeremy Fitzoliver. That’s all I really remembered about these two audio dramas from when I listened to them originally. Richard Pearce was clearly told to play up the nerdy personality to the max, creating a voice and persona that would make Beano’s Walter the Softie blush. It’s a caricature taken so far that it takes you out of every scene he’s in, and he’s in a LOT of scenes! Terrible decision. On top of that is an overboard comic voice for President of Parakon, though at least he’s not in that many scenes and it’s the kind of over-the-top I could see in 80s Who at least. I can sort of forgive that, even if this is set in the mid-70s era of the show.

Beyond that there are moments in the script that are overly descriptive. I think it shows either Barry Letts inexperience in writing Audio Drama or just how I’ve gotten used to how most (though not all) of Big Finish writers have become better at writing the medium. Nothing too bad though, but it does stick out sometimes. It’s a fun story, lots of scene changing, but not without some rather annoying flaws.

The Continuity:

A more recent re-release cover… that somehow is just as bad but in a completely different, extremely dull way.

There are a lot of references and similarities to some of Barry Letts TV serials, which given Mr. Letts also wrote this story isn’t that surprising! There are mind-controlling helmets much like in “The Green Death”, a scene where The Doctor is presumed dead with his companion crying over him but it turns out he’s fine to the surprise of the medical examiner treating him much like in “The Daemons” and the idea of the Parakon Corporation trying to sell Earth a new resource that will actually end up consuming the planet if accepted is lifted straight from “The Claws of Axos”. The old ones are the best, eh?

Also The Doctor tries to calm down a massive beast by singing the Venusian Lullaby, much like he does in both “The Curse of Peladon” and “The Monster of Peladon”, both of which also feature The Doctor fighting a “chosen champion”, which also happens in this.

Oh and, *sigh*, sadly Jeremy Fitzoliver returns in the second of this double bill: “The Ghosts of N-Space” … May as well add that in there…

Overall Thoughts:

There was a book adaptation as well!

There are times I really enjoyed “The Paradise of Death”, but they were often short-lived and ruined by the sudden appearance of Jeremy Fitzoliver pratting about and acting all cowardly and nerdy. Imagine those times you tried to enjoy Star Wars Episode 1 and you started thinking “why did I dislike this again?” and then suddenly *BAM* a Jar Jar Binks scene. It’s that kind of annoying… Oh well, as it turns out, it could’ve be worse…

Not much to say, after previously mentioned and very Pertwee era fight between The Doctor and Parakon’s chosen gladiator on a perilous bridge the President sees how he’d been manipulated by his son, but still grieved at his death during the local rebellion at the closing moments before our lead quartet head home.

Thought I was done with the covers? Nope! Here’s the cover for the recent Vinyl release… blimey, for stories that aren’t even that good they’ve certainly been released in enough formats…