I heard Creatures of Beauty and I was summoned!! Apologies in advance, this will be a VERY long post!
“It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?”
To cut a long story short: Creatures of Beauty is my favourite Big Finish story. I think it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done.
MANY spoilers from here on!
Creatures is a story about perspective, and it’s a story about consequences. It’s one of those where the unique narrative serves the story perfectly. You couldn’t tell this story in chronological order: the script works because it’s so fractured and splintered. We see effects before their causes and consequences before their actions.
This is a thematic choice as well as a narrative one, because it’s interrogating the nature of action and consequence: what can you do when you can’t see the whole picture? When you don’t know who the bad guys are? When you don’t who’s right, and who’s wrong?
Part 1 is an isolating, disorientating experience. I love that the first thing we hear the the explosion from the very end of the story—unknowingly to first-time listeners, the stage is already set for the tragedy to come. Then there’s that beautiful, discordant score, and an old man’s voice: beautiful. Already this story is something new, something strange: something that isn’t prepared to give you all the answers, not yet.
And the interrogation! We as listeners are thrown into the same state as Nyssa: stunned, scared and so alone in the face of interrogation.This is the story that made Nyssa my favourite companion. The image of her broken and bruised in her cell, facing down Brodlik with quiet steel, is so powerful and awful—and worse, because she’s so kind, and strong, even in the face of so much violence.
We’re drip-fed information about the state of Veln throughout episode 1 before the ending throws us off-balance with two horrible revelations: the effects of the dyestrial fallout (although as of yet, we don’t know what it is or how it got here!) and the awful reason for Nyssa’s arrest. Again, the image of Veline slicing herself open with a scalpel to try and cut the alien essence out of her is one that will haunt me for a LONG time. That scene is so painful—the way Nyssa tries so desperately to help, even though it was never going to work, and ends up making things so much worse… it’s like a microcosm of the whole story.
And then, that voice again: beautiful.
The themes of beauty and ugliness are deftly woven into the narrative. Again, it’s about perspective: what is beautiful, and what is ugly? The scene between Gilbrook and Lady Forlorn in episode 2 is where those themes come to a head: two opposing perspectives, both built out of a culture of prejudice and xenophobia, incompatible and yet complementary. And the actors play the scene with such venom.
Episodes 2 and 3 are a tour de force for the Fifth Doctor’s character. I’d go as far to say Creatures is the definitive Five story, because as Nev Fountain once said, Five is a pretty bad hero. He’s ineffectual, fallible, and often ends up doing far more harm than good. This story takes him to the extreme, and it leads to (IMO) one of Peter Davison’s best performances. His speech about the painting and the brushstrokes is heartbreaking, but I’m going to quote something seemingly more innocuous:
LADY FORLEON: This isn’t some intellectual puzzle. You’re treating issues concerning the survival of civilisation on this planet as a child’s guessing game. Is that what you do? Travel around the galaxy making light of other people’s problems?
DOCTOR: I’m not making light of them, I’m trying to understand them.
FORLEON: So that you can interfere? Give us the benefit of your superior knowledge? Isn’t it enough that Veln has been all but destroyed by one alien species without another making things worse?
I love this exploration of the Doctor’s morality. Five is so earnest in this scene, but the tragedy is that he’ll never understand Veln; he never even understands his own part in events. All he can do is muddle through and try to get out alive. That’s the cruelty of Veln: it’s a world so damaged, so corrupted by that one, deadly disaster, that all hope has been lost. It’s a horrific idea: what would would you do if you knew your people would all be dead in four generations’ time? How could you go in living? What could you do except devote yourself completely to finding and hurting the people responsible? The moral quandary we’re faced with in episode 4 is so interesting because we’ve seen the world which has forced these desperate measures. We’re left to decide whether the Koteem’s plan is worth it or not, and then… we leave, before we ever know if it works—or if Gilbrook and his men win, before inevitably, they all lose.
The guest cast are beat for beat exceptional. All the characters, even the usually faceless security guards and the alien-with-a-voice-effect, feel like real, multi-faceted people, full of conflicting ideas. David Mallison is painfully good as Brodlik: his tirade at the end of episode 1 is a thing to behold. Jemma Churchill plays Lady Forlean’s anger, frustration, bone-deep exhaustion and steadfast hope perfectly.
But the MVP of the guest cast is absolutely David Daker as Gilbrook. Gilbrook is a fascinating character—his prejudice, xenophobia, and violence make him deeply hateful, a horribly realistic picture of a man twisted by the hopeless, cruel world he’s grown up in. But he also gets the most tender, the most heartfelt moment of the story—speaking to Brodlik at the end of the play:
GILBROOK: My great-grandfather was just a kid, working in the fields when it happened.
BRODLIK: When what happened?
GILBROOK: Fields. Can you imagine that? Huge areas of land where crops would grow. Crops that could feed dozens of people. And my great-granddad. He looked up into the sky. And so he told his son, and so he told my dad. He saw that Koteem ship explode. He saw it… He said it was like paint spilling across a table. It seemed that fast… He said… He said it was almost beautiful.
And then there’s that ending. First of all, it’s fantastic sound design: the echoes and rhythmic noises send chills down my spine every time. It recontextualises everything: throws the whole story, and the Doctor’s actions, into a whole new light. Again, it’s all about perspective: but this time, it’s our perspective. We’re the only people in the story to know the whole truth. Relistening, even though I know the twist—and I don’t think it’s impossible to guess on a first listen—it still breaks me, every time. It’s such a powerful, gutting moment, all concocted from a jigsaw of fragmented dialogue, music and sound.
It’s crazy to me that this is my favourite Big Finish story when most of Nick Briggs’ other scripts I find profoundly mid—but I don’t think Nick is a bad writer, it’s just that most of his stories are über-traditional. This is about as far from traditional as you can get, and it’s just perfect, or dare I say… beautiful?
“And as for making a difference, I don’t think we really influenced anything at all…”
