Tuesday 5 December 2017

Big Finish Reviews+ The Middle by Tony J Fyler


Tony’s stuck in the middle with you.

What do we do with old people?

Let them rot? Waste away with their dwindling memories when we judge they can’t be productive anymore? Ship them off to a chronologically-convenient Dignitas when they become a burden on the State?

Those are questions that seem to have been the starting point for The Middle, the latest Sixth Doctor audio adventure from Big Finish. Writer Chris Chapman though expands on his initial theme, creating a society that works as a social satire of all kinds of stereotypes within our culture.

On the planet Formicia, society is regimented – the young (those up to the age of 35) get to swan about having fun with no responsibility. The next 35 years are spent in ‘the Middle,’ a giant Kafka-esque version of Heaven, supposedly doing all the real work, but for the most part watching the young. And once you hit 70, the Biblical three-score-and-ten years allegedly ‘allotted’ to human beings, you move on from the Middle to the inevitable End.
Into that environment, Chapman brings the Sixth Doctor and his two latest friends, 19 year-old Flip Ramon (nee Jackson), and, on her 35th birthday no less, Leading WREN Constance Clarke, previously at World War II cipher-cracking station, Bletchley Park. The fact of it being Constance’s 35th birthday is highly convenient to the story, as it allows the three to be separated early on – Flip sentenced to a life of spa treatments and all-night parties, Constance to the Middle, and the indeterminately-aged, but significantly older than 70 year-old Time Lord straight to whatever the End might be. There are some twists and turns there, and we won’t spoil them for you, but suffice to say, there’s more to it than a sci-fi Dignitas, and consent is not really key to the experience. Each of our time travellers finds allies in their quest to re-unite and get off the topsy-turvy world of Formicia, but along the way, they feel it incumbent on them to take down The Middleman, Formicia’s very own Big Brother, who even goes to the trouble of providing an alien invader they can fight to distract themselves from problems at home (thank you, Mr Orwell).

It’s an interesting dystopia, Formicia, because for a lot of people – indeed, for the people the Sixth Doctor encounters in the End – the societal model that gives freedom to young people, work and worth to the middle-aged and ageing, and the genuine attractions of the End to the elderly could really work. That leaves Chapman pushing hard to show us what’s wrong with the model, which is the lack of fluidity and consent – there’s no going ahead or coming back within this strictly ageist society – in order to justify the Tardis team’s actions in destroying a whole way of life for a whole biodome, leaving only the messiness of choice and democracy behind them.

What The Middle delivers, ultimately, is Classic-style four-part Doctor Who that works some surprises into its storytelling, but which is for the most part powered along by some epic performances – Sheila Reid adds another to her collection of ‘feisty old bats you don’t want to cross’ here, and Mark Heap is excellently moustache-twirling, if vocally unrecognisable, as the Middleman. The three principals, Colin Baker, Lisa Greenwood as Flip and Miranda Raison as Constance are increasingly gelling into an all-time favourite ‘full Tardis’ team, and The Middle allows extra levels of separation to show their dynamics in different lights. It’s a story that delivers everything you think it’s going to, and then an additional spin on some social questions to boot. If the ending grows untidy when we uncover what Formicia really is, who the Middleman is working for and why, it’s only a small quibble because up till that point, The Middle delivers enough topsy-turvy, philosophically interesting but stolidly-paced ‘find a friend and work on getting back together in defiance of all the rules’ adventuring to satisfy most listeners. Above all, The Middle feels like it would fit in with TV Baker Doctor Who – it has rather more in common with stories like Vengeance On Varos than the inclusion of Sheila Reid’s voice, in that you can imagine Formicia being made of mostly plywood sets. Does it actually answer the questions it sets out to ask? Perhaps not in any real sense – the actual solution that awaits old people at the End would be monstrous were it to be real. But if nothing else, while sentencing the young to a kind of enforced vapidity, The Middle goes out of its way to show that older people should remain a vital part of our society, and that they’re capable of much, much more than our society currently allows them to be.

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