DOCTOR WHO: DUST BREEDING

The Seventh Doctor and Ace go hunting for art

By Arnold T. Blumberg     August 03, 2001

I haven't enjoyed any series lately as much as I've been enjoying the Big Finish Productions line of original DOCTOR WHO audio dramas. With over twenty stories under their belt, the BF group has turned out an impressive array of adventures starring all of the surviving Doctors except for Fourth Doctor Tom Baker. On the whole, they've been high-quality productions, incredibly entertaining, and possessed of that certain Who-ish style that makes them a sheer delight for fans. With the prospects of a return to television for DOCTOR WHO receding into the distance with every passing year, the Big Finish audios are a worthy successor to the original series and a welcome addition to this vast fictional universe.

That makes it all the more disappointing when one of their releases misfires, and although that happens infrequently (RED DAWN, anyone?), it has happened again with the latest BF offering, the Seventh Doctor adventure titled DUST BREEDING. The Doctor has a hobby we've never known about collecting art that would otherwise be destroyed and rescuing it from history in his private TARDIS gallery. This time, he's on the trail of Edward Munch's famous "Scream," but when he and Ace arrive on Duchamp 331 a pathetic ball of grime serving as a remote refueling station he soon discovers that his hobby just may prove dangerous.

Duchamp 331 is also home to a bizarre enclave of artists, led by Damien Pierson, and he currently possesses the famous Munch painting (or one of them anyway). But what secret power does the painting hold, and why is Damien so keen to release it? And what of the cruiser heading for Duchamp 331 carrying an elite list of guests gathered by the pretentious Madame Salvadori? Who is this mysterious egg collector, Mr. Seta, and what is he planning? And how does the Doctor and Ace's friend Bev Tarrant (from BF's THE GENOCIDE MACHINE) fit into all of this? Naturally, all of these questions are answered rather neatly, and before too long the Doctor and Ace are as you might expect fighting for their lives and struggling to contain an ancient evil before it engulfs Duchamp 331 and moves on to annihilate other worlds.

Caroline John, who played Third Doctor companion Liz Shaw way back in the 1970 season of the original TV series, returns here as Madama Salvadori, and unfortunately her performance is painful to hear. I was never sure what sort of accent she was trying to capture, but the resulting blend of Italian, Eastern European and French would be funny if it weren't so excruciating. Big Finish has hit a few bumps whenever they have an actor attempt to portray another ethnic or cultural type their American characters are predictably vulgar and transparently British but John just may have created the most embarrassing foreign character ever heard in a Big Finish production...so far.

Sadly, the melodramatic mess doesn't end there. Sylvester McCoy was prone to embarrassing overacting in the original television show (just try to sit through a scene in which he's supposed to bellow authoritatively without breaking down into fits of hysterical laughter), but in his audio performances, that distinctive trilling "r" and methodical pronunciation have served him well. His Doctor has a gravity in audio, heightening the darkness that became a hallmark of his era, but here it seems his worst tendencies have been allowed to run rampant. Similar to the way in which Tom Baker was 'indulged' by producer Graham Williams and Script Editor Douglas Adams during the abysmal seventeenth season of the TV series, reducing the Doctor to a buffoonish, grinning harlequin, McCoy has evidently been indulged here as well. He trills almost every single "r" in sight and in one scene with companion Ace, his explanation of the evil they face sounds more like someone desperately selling the concept in a movie trailer than a personal conversation between two old friends. Quite simply, he's in very poor form.

There are a few highlights in DUST BREEDING, chief among them the revelation of a villain at the end of Episode 2. Unfortunately, said villain resorts to the worst kind of trite dialogue and appears to have constructed a plan so familiar and doomed to failure that you can't help but feel sorry for the poor sap. The casting of Caroline John's husband, Geoffrey Beevers, as Mr. Seta is indeed a master stroke, but that's where the excitement ends.

With bad acting all around (except perhaps Louise Faulkner as Bev and Ian Rickets as Guthrie), and a horribly clichéd plot that plays on all of the worst elements of classic WHO, DUST BREEDING is a major disappointment. But no harm done they can't all be perfect, and Big Finish has at least one more year of material scheduled for release, and perhaps more if the license is renewed beyond the current period. Let's just dust off the memory of this installment and move on.

DOCTOR WHO: DUST BREEDING

Grade: C-

Format: Audio Drama, 2 CDs, approx. 110 minutes

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Caroline John (Madame Salvadori), Louise Faulkner (Bev Tarrant), Ian Rickets (Guthrie), Johnson Willis (Damien Pierson), Mark Donovan (Klemp), and Geoffrey Beevers (Seta)

Writer: Mike Tucker

Director: Gary Russell

Publisher: Big Finish Productions

Price: $24.95