Really excited to go through some of Big Finish ancient history here. I’d listened to and rated Excelis Dawns already and had it at a 3.5, but on listening again I liked it enough to bump it up a full star. 4.5 might seem strong, but to me there are only two real drawbacks to this story:
- A slightly dodgy ending that relies too much on physical action, something that has plagued Big Finish from the start and continues to, but can be forgiven because it’s 2002 and not 2012 when they’ve had time to learn from those mistakes.
- When you break the story down, it’s a MacGuffin plot. It’s relatively simple and straightforward (in basic narrative form at least. Search for thing > conflict over thing > attainment of thing at cost. Real fundamental stuff, so not even necessarily a drawback, as it’s executed well here. Magrs knows what he’s doing.)
Meanwhile for me there’s an awful lot to enjoy here. The first set of scenes are lovely little nods to The Sound of Music, and I’ll happily go against the grain and set my flag down in Camp Wildthyme. This was not always the case; I used to be a real television-only purist. The idea that there was a time-travelling old lady who looked exactly like Katy Manning was filed into the cringe cabinet along with any mention of The Doctor’s real name (not to mention the fact that they had a brother, what the flip was that about) or Bernice Summerfield (what do you MEAN they kept making books without The Doctor?!)
I’m neck deep in fandom now so my mind is far more open, and Iris stands out as one of the best aspects of the EU. She’s deployed so well here, and I think the story shines brightly on the back of the main trio of performances. Anthony Head understands the assignment perfectly as Grayvorn, chewing every kilometer of Mt Excelis as they ascend, and meanwhile, Peter Davison and Katy Manning banter off of each other in such an effortless familial way that for me it was impossible not to get swept up despite the relative simplicity of the quest.
The bang for me comes in the texture that Paul Magrs and the actors add to both the characters of Iris and the Fifth Doctor - first of all, without Tegan and Turlough and post-Earthshock, this Fifth Doctor is a much more transgressive character; still passive and non-violent, but from the moment he interjects on Grayvorn’s macho narration, making it diegetic (The Doctor has always been able to hear the narration, as well as the music, it seems) we see the trickster-god, blithely charming but still undermining the warlord’s bravado. He suspects the nuns from the start, and while he is forced to play straight man to Iris, it’s a very different straight man than he plays with the companions of his era.
Linking this into Iris, I don’t know if this is the story where it’s written into text that the bus is a TARDIS and Iris is a Time Lord, but they make rather big points of both of those moments in the script, so I’m choosing to take them as important, because this means we’re seeing The Doctor alone, but also in a conversation with one of his peers; perhaps the closest one in character he has. We rarely see The Doctor interact with a Renegade in anything other than adversarial context. The Master, The Rani, The Monk, even with the layers in those relationships, all have an oppositional foundation. The Master wants to destroy/make kissy time with The Doctor but in a weird way with knives, so that’s conflict.
The Rani is literally never not pissing around with genomes and trying to gain power that way, so that’s out (until she finally jumps out of the skin of Mrs. Flood in 2026 and we can figure out what the hell is going on there).
I think The Doctor would rather pretend The Monk didn’t exist at all.
The only other Time Lords we see The Doctor interact with are the ones back on Gallifrey, which, ew, gross, collars, and the Romanas. Romana is far from a renegade, much more of a freshman who fell in with the guy on campus who sells acid and changed her major to “buggering around the universe” but then got her life together at 400 and is a politician now.
What’s your point, Turn
oh yeah
So now we know that Iris is a Time Lord, we can really see her as a mirror of The Doctor. All she really wants is a good time. And she hasn’t suffered the pain that Five has at that point, she hasn’t lost anyone. The conversations they share where he’s trying to impart responsibility on her, always a Time Lord even when he’s so far away and grieving, are really beautiful. The relationship becomes real and I think retroactively made me look a lot kinder on Iris’s appearances.
It’s also got such a weird ending, with the Mother Superior and Grayvorn getting fused together? That’s straight out of Frank Herbert’s weird playbook, and a much stronger ending than the sort of weird fumble over the magic handbag that was the natural conclusion. The coda for this is really strong, is what I’m saying, and although the ride is simple, it’s a pretty rip-roaring one, with a bunch of little canon easter-eggs people will love. I did, anyway.
