Released: June 2009
Range: The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Range Number: 3.04
Starring Paul McGann, Sheridan Smith, Colin Salmon, Daniel Anthony, Liz Sutherland, Ian Brooker, Beth Chalmers & Nicholas Briggs
Written and Directed by Nicholas Briggs
"This is a full scale war! Wirrn and Humankind locked in a deadly struggle for survival. When did that happen?"
The Doctor and Lucie land right in the middle of one of the human race's bloodiest periods of history. Trying to make a difference here would be like standing up and calling for a cease-fire on the Somme. Certain death...
Or worse.
Survival can be a messy business.
It's no wonder that The Ark In Space has gained a sequel story. It was such a great story, and it just a suprise it took Big Finish ten years to get around to telling it. And Wirrn Dawn certainly hits the ground running, with a pace torn straight out of the new series. Put David Tennant and Catherine Tate in this story, and it would make an excellent new series episode. However, Wirrn Dawn may be fast, but it's also rather soulless. It's an action movie through and through, but it also means that it doesn't prehaps have the emotional heart that a story needs.
Certainly, if you were to stack this story alongside stories like Horror Of Fang Rock and Voyage Of The Damned, they wouldn't look that different. These stories are all about survival against the odds, and Wirrn Dawn throws the Doctor and Lucie right into the middle of the action. However, the breakneck speed that these stories are told at can mean that a lot of the small, little moments that can often make or break a story are often left out. Therefore, Wirrn Dawn does feel a little hollow. It simply is a story that features a bunch of stuff that gives moments of action. The main plot is interesting enough, with an interesting development in the Wirrn's feeding cycle, and it's relation to the humans that escaped Earth. Nick Briggs manages to bridge the colony worlds we have seen before in earlier Doctor Who stories, and those who left the Earth before the solar flares, and this allows for developments with the Wirrn themselves. We get to see them as different, not just evil beings who want to possess humans, but rather creatures driven by necessity. They just want to survive, not conquer. Those ideas therefore intermesh really well, and they really make a great combination. The storyline in this is therefore kept as simple as possible, as befits this genre of story. It does, however, lead to some rather obvious plot ideas and aspects and that let's the story down. If Briggs could have tried to take the story in a different direction, it would have really worked as a seperate piece. However, it does feel less original than it wants or could have been, and ends up just following the Starship Troopers-style template it had taken for it's own.
And the problems with this rather blatant plagerism continue into the guest characters. They all seem to be built up of cliches, which reinforce the view that this is a direct parody of macho-survival films. Each of the characters seems moulded of the same steriotype - that there a bunch of hard-nosed, rip-em-up, type characters. That's a shame, because there was a chance to do something original, especially considering that survival films are a little 'old hat' as it were. Delong's proberbly the most interesting, but that doesn't mean that he gets a lot of interest from me. He's the traditional 'boy out of his depth who gets picked on' steriotype, but his links to the human colonist/Wirrn settlement which is revived at the end of this story are interesting enough. The rest though really fall into the steriotype of 'tough' soldiers. It's a similar trope that Stephen Cole used in his Who novel Ten Little Aliens, but he used it a little more effectively by differentiating the characters. Here, Briggs just has them following the same template, which is a shame, considering the calibre of the cast that are playing them. Daniel Anthony is a real standout, giving his character some much needed depth, and keeping the performance well away from Clyde Langer. Colin Salmon is just as good, which is a triumph considering that the character is much less interesting. He's fierce, but that's about it. Salmon helps to bring out the best sides of the character development, but it's so thinly written it doesn't help. Liz Sutherland, Ian Brooker and Beth Chalmers are all good, but non are particularly great. It does help that Briggs writes well for the eighth Doctor and Lucie, and this story gives them many fantastic moments to shine. Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith lap up the material, and it's prehaps one of the strongest outings for this team based upon their character relationships. Nicholas Briggs' direction is solid and strong, but in the early scenes he prehaps could have done with toning down the shouting a little, since it does become an issue. It is clear that he's worked closely with Jamie Robertson on the music and sound design, bringing the story to life well. It's not his most competent work - there's plenty of that still to come - but it is good and enjoyable and doesn't drag the listener. And I'd just like to mention, the cover art is fantastic. It's a lovely piece of artwork, really striking and ominous.
Wirrn Dawn was a story I remember not liking very much on first listen. However, I now believe that Wirrn Dawn is a competent enough audio, despite it's huge flaws. It's not a story that stands the test of re listen well, but it does entertain for a brisk hour without anything to worry about. It's is an action-packed extravaganza, but it's with moments of quiet contemplativeness.
Rating - 6/10
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