Doctor Who: Primord

Writer: John Dorney
Director: Nicholas Briggs
Script Editor: Guy Adams
Cover Illustration: Tom Webster
Music: Nicholas Briggs
Sound Design: Lee Adams & Joe Meiners
Producer: David Richardson

Starring Tim Treloar, Katy Manning, Jon Culshaw & Daisy Ashford
Released May 2019

The ninth in Big Finish Productions' string of full-cast original audio dramas set in the third Doctor's era, Primord is all about looking backwards.

The four-episode story is an unashamed sequel to the 1970 classic Inferno, but unfortunately sets its sights no higher than that. The basic plot stems from an army General, Sharp, thinking he knows what is best for Britain and weaponising the primordial slime collected from the Stahlman project. So how does the Doctor come to be involved? Taking up an invite from Liz Shaw, now a Professor at Cambridge, he and Jo decide to take a well-earned weekend off. Coincidentally, the Brigadier (sans UNIT) is off to investigate reports of escaped prisoners in the same area in lieu of there being any alien invasions to fend off.

With all the pieces in place, the story kicks into gear as we learn how Liz has been helping General Sharp increase the effectiveness of the Stahlman liquid as a biological agent and military weapon. The Doctor obviously makes it plain that he is dead against this - until he is infected too.

So can do I justify the idea that Primord is all about looking to the past? Only a quarter of the principal cast actually featured in the third Doctor's era on TV for starters. But it goes deeper than that. As already mentioned, the story is ostensibly an out-and-out sequel, reassembling the same characters - plus Jo - and centering around an element of the original - in this case, the Primords. But even the General and his ally in the Cabinet essentially want to restore the empire, and Liz can't let go of what happened to her fiance. Plus the plan of using 'alien' creatures to wander into enemy territory for military advantage, but having to keep them under special isolated conditions to control them is almost beat-for-beat Carrington's strategy from The Ambassadors of Death.

Recasting characters is nothing new, even for Big Finish, and it's not necessarily a problem in itself, but headlining a story with an actor that occasionally sounds like Jon Pertwee, an actor that doesn't really sound like Nicholas Courtney and an actor that doesn't really sound like Caroline John gives it a different feel. Tim Treloar, an excellent actor in his own right, is an old hand at his third Doctor impression now but seems to be going off the boil slightly compared to his near-faultless performances closer to the start of this series. Daisy Ashford, daughter of Caroline John and Geoffrey Beevers, and Jon Culshaw are perfectly passable and capture the spirit of their characters but at no point does this feel like a story from the early seventies. Katy Manning also overdoes trying to sound younger but settles into the role over Primord's two hours.

Unusually for Doctor Who, the strongest episodes are probably the middle pair, with the first leaving a bad taste in the mouth, the way it is directed feeling more like taking the mick out of a creaky old kids show than an affectionate homage, and the last negating characters' identities to play Liz off as the Brigadier's opposite number. Their chat while their respective armies tear chunks out of each other does little to impress. It may just be because it's only a month since I listened to it, but this story does almost feel like the archetype of Counter-Measures' first series, complete with an overbearing, overwrought score from Nicholas Briggs to distract from the dialogue. He seems to really enjoy going for it on sixties and seventies-style instruments but without any sense of restraint and there is almost inevitably too much going on, for too long.

Overall, Primord is fairly disappointing. It is not half the story of Big Finish's other Season 7 tribute, The Last Post by James Goss, and twice as long. Stories set within Pertwee's first year feel like an inevitability now but any interest I might've had in that has now been severely tempered and even though I have already bought and downloaded it, I am in no hurry whatsoever to listen to The Scream of Ghosts, the other half of the set Primord was released in. A lacklustre attempt to evoke one of Doctor Who's best series.