- The Land of the Dead (Doctor Who—Main Range #4)
- Written by: Stephen Cole
- Directed by: Gary Russell
- Starring: Peter Davison (The Doctor); Sarah Sutton (Nyssa); Lucy Campbell (Monica Lewis); Alistair Lock (Supplier); Christopher Scott (Shaun Brett); Neil Roberts (Tulung); Andrew Fettes (Gaborik)
Of all Big Finish’s early releases, The Land of the Dead is most obviously an early effort. The Sirens of Time has plot and pacing issues but excellent direction and aural pacing. Phantasmagoria works to fix its Doctor. The Sound of Terror has solid technicals and the audacity to tell a story raving against its own medium.
The Land of the Dead simply is.
The Land of the Dead was written in seven days when wiser heads decided The Fearmonger needed a bit longer in the oven. It paid off, in one sense: The Fearmonger is one of the very best episodes of Doctor Who ever produced. I doubt anything assured Big Finish’s future success so much as that story. If it needed that extra time, it deserved that extra time.
But all of that leaves The Land of the Dead in the lurch. It sounds like a one-week script, and most of the cast doesn’t sound particularly thrilled to be reading it.
What’s wrong with it? Bad story pacing. Bad audio pacing. Terrible dialogue (“The Doctor’s filling in the sea room door, he might as well fill you in as well,” which just gets worse the longer you think about it). A largely impenetrable plot. Sound effects that don’t fit events (a torrent of water sounds more like an open tap). Thin characters. A character who seems like a hastily rewritten Tegan, but in all the worst ways. I like Tegan, and wanted this character to disappear.
Nicholas Briggs has apparently called The Land of the Dead’s soundtrack his least favorite. It’s hard not to disagree with him. It’s not bad—it’s merely forgettable. It makes no impression.
The fifth Doctor is screen-accurate, yes. But he is not naturally screen-accurate. For a story so concerned with mounted trophies, the listener could be forgiven for thinking the Doctor has been stuffed and mounted too. Dialogue is re-purposed from the show, lending to that mounted feel. He is, as we discussed with Phantasmagoria, the placid Doctor. The story happens to him: the TARDIS breaks down, he is taken in by these people, things happen around him. He does not act; he barely reacts.
This is accurate. It is not good. It is the fifth Doctor as a museum piece, when he desperately needs to be reinvented into something vibrant and alive. Davison does as much with the material as he can.
The only area where the audio succeeds is Nyssa. Nyssa is given more character development—and her world more world-building—in a few scenes of this audio than her entire time on screen. Sarah Sutton does an outstanding job—even for an audio that gives her an illness and leaves her out of the action—that I wish she had had a better start with Big Finish, and a better story for this character development to happen in.
I don’t blame the creative team.
Stephen Cole would go on to write some of Big Finish’s greatest stories (playing an instrumental hand in the first three Gallifrey seasons, which is enough to cement any writer’s reputation). Gary Russell was responsible for Big Finish, and for some of its best episodes.
The Land of the Dead isn’t a reflection of what they, and Big Finish, can do—it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when everyone drops the ball at once under an impossible deadline.
You can purchase The Land of the Dead from BigFinish.com for $2.99.
James Bojaciuk
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