Starring Colin Baker, India Fisher & Sara Crowe
Written by Marc Platt
Directed by Nicholas Briggs
The Empire is lost. The Deathless Emperors are dead. The future may never happen.
An urgent summons returns the noble Doctor to a planet he saved from disaster long ago. But Draconia, so elegant and so savage, is in worse turmoil than ever.
Who will be next Emperor? The highest Prince? The lowest peasant? The soldier with no name? Or the Doctor himself - his life at their command? Who controls the army of deadly origami warriors? And is the truth about Charley painted on paper walls in the Emperor's tomb?
History is taking revenge on the Doctor.
Considering the events and ramifications of Patient Zero, it's therefore a bit of a pity that Paper Cuts is so disconnected from the events of that story and Blue Forgotten Planet. It does mean that this story fails at being a part of a trilogy. It also sadly fails at being a gripping story, because, like Trial Of The Valeyard or Home Truths, it's told generally through the spoken word. However, unlike those stories it's not particularly involving or interesting. It keeps itself plodding along with some evocative imagery, but sadly it isn't exciting or intreasting, just sedate. Everything about this story is just average, but not great.
The one great flaw in this story is the lack of a plot. Now normally, I wouldn't have to say that about Marc Platt, but sadly I do feel that, in this point, Platt's not really got a plot, intstead his plot seems to be built upon evocative imagery, rather than an actual story. And this means that the action that does seem to end up being conceived as being made up on the spot. The rituals and traditions of Draconia are certainly intreasting, but sadly can't sustain a story all by themselves. It's almost like a documentary style story, rather than an involving, gripping story. The idea of setting the story in space is nice, again a base-under-siege style story, but because tradition is the buzz word that this story goes for, it's not particularly used well. Certainly, however, the chess game metaphors are a nice touch to the story and it does feel like, if some of the pomp and ritulistic language was taken out of the script, it would prehaps be more interesting. Sadly, everything just ends up being masked beneath all the examination of traditions and culture.
The characters of the piece are all a bit...well you know, safe. There isn't really any character that defy cliches, intstead there all a bit by the numbers. They just follow predictable paths, rather than trying to make things interesting and defying tradition. The Prince, the Queen Mother, the Soldier and Gomori sadly just don't follow any intreasting paths and feel like stock character types. There's little interesting or fascinating about them, and it doesn't help that there not particularly well acted too. Especially from Sara Crowe and Anthony Glennon, there's possible a little too over exaggeration from them both. Paul Thornley is the exact opposite: he's sadly too stilted and we can never really conect to. The only really strong guest actor is John Banks, as the rather quite interesting Captain. While he may not be the most developed person to have ever appeared in Doctor Who, he's still is a nice character in an otherwise dull audio. The spartan sound design and music is slightly dull and frankly allowed me to sink towards sleep rather than making me more interested in the story.
In all honesty, Paper Cuts isn't a bad audio. It's not like Minuet In Hell or The Genocide Machine, but it just suffers from being rather dull and uninteresting. It gets bogged down in tradition and doesn't really go anywhere. It's a shame to rank a Marc Platt story so low, but unlike Ghost Light or Spare Parts, this just didn't hook me at all.
TARDIS Rating - 4/10
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