Starring Alex Kingston, Colin Baker & Sylvester McCoy.Written by Matt Fitton & Directed by Ken Bentley.
The Great Storm of 1703 approaches. The fate of planet Earth hangs in the balance.
The only person who can save it is the Doctor. Or River Song. Or quite possibly another Doctor. Or maybe this whole situation is their fault in the first place.
Two Doctors. One River. An infinite number of ways to destroy the world. It’s going to be a bumpy ride…
My thoughts on this second set of River Song adventures is rather mixed. On the one hand, this set has been frustrating at every turn, with two of the biggest stories of the set being ultimately missed opportunities, with a hamstrung plot arc binding them together. And yet, there have been plenty of individual moments that stand out, and the second episode has been the strongest of this series so far. And The Eye Of The Storm feels like an appropriate microcosm of all my faults with the set: there's lots of really good stuff here, and there's also lots of really bad stuff. The story feels incomplete, lots of the threads that make up the season are only explained in a conciliatory manner and some of the guest characterisation is woefully poor. And yet, there is some wonderful interplay between River and the two Doctors, a genuine sense that this really is the end of the world, and the Hartnell-style eleventh hour appearance of a historical celebrity. The Eye Of The Storm is certainly better than either The Unknown or World Enough And Time, but there's still a lot here that left me feeling that, once again, this was a missed opportunity.
One thing that Fitton does right out of the gate is that he doesn't waste anytime. As soon as the story starts, he's immediately setting up the pieces for our finale, which is important considering that this story gets very convoluted very quickly. It's difficult to know where to go next, because the story quickly becomes rather confusing. I will say that the cliffhanger ending to World Enough And Time is quickly swept under the carpet, which is probably for the best considering how ludicrous it is. After unleashing a whole maelstrom of alternative futures onto Earth (I think, I mean I could be wrong), this story starts with... there just being one. I think. To be honest, the story remains rather vague on the details, instead adding layer upon layer of technobabble into the story to try and justify the whole thing. Now, I have to be the guy to point this out, but this whole arc about the Earth being destroyed, and there's an alternate Earth or something, feels very poorly thought out. Having now listened to all four parts, I don't think that the set even needed this element. It would have been much more interesting to have had River just hunting the Speravors' across time, as they altered Earth's history. Sure, it would have been similar to the Sanakuma from the first series, but I feel that what we are presented with in this story just doesn't compare to that more cohesive effort. This just feels incredibly disjointed, and jumps around too much for it to seem anything less than scattershot. Also, while I'm on the subject: how does Five Twenty-Nine fit into all of this. Both The Unknown and World Enough And Time are explained and fitted into the narrative, so where does Five Twenty-Nine take place? Is it on the parallel Earth? Or is it on Earth, but now all that's been erased? I'll probably need to listen back to it in order to find out where exactly Five Twenty-Nine fits in. It doesn't help that the story itself, as in the narrative of The Eye Of The Storm, is impossibly convoluted. As time starts to decay, the seventh Doctor teams up with River Song to try and save time itself. At the same time, the sixth Doctor is trying to do the same thing. Both of them don't quite trust River, and that makes the situation twice as hard. The Speravors turn up again, but, to be honest, they don't have an awful lot to do, just sort of hover around proclaiming that they are victorious. Considering that these are recurring Big Finish villains (having previously popped up in A Life Of Crime from the main range), it would have been nice to make some distinction between Big Finish's usual fare of bad guys. As is, I don't really feel like the Speravors had enough to distinguish them, and ultimately, they were just a driving motivation for River and the Doctors to solve the plot. Certainly, the solution to the whole thing was rather perfunctory, and to be honest, it wasn't all that interesting. Fitton tries to make the whole play about noble self-sacrifice, but instead of it having the punch it was intended to, it just ended up feeling like River manipulated the couple into committing suicide, rather than it being their choice. She even has the dreaded "sorry, I'm so sorry" line that was so commonplace with the tenth Doctor. The whole thing, plot wise, is a total mess, and I feel the whole box set actually needed another hour-long episode in order for it to make sense, and to clear up the plot threads left lying around. No wonder, on the CD extras, the actors talk about not being sure what was going on: I've listen to plenty of time-twisting stories before, and this is just so convoluted I'm really not sure what sense you can actually make of it.
The most important part of this story, however, is the interaction between the two Doctors and how they play off River. In this aspect, the episode succeeds admirably, with plenty of time devoted to how the Doctor's operate. With the fate of the Earth revolving around this couple (who I'll get onto later), Fitton cleverly uses this opportunity to examine the sixth and seventh Doctor's modus operandi, and contrast them excellently. The sixth Doctor is desperate to save the couple, and will do anything in his power to do it, even directly putting himself in harm's way in order to save them, while the seventh Doctor is manipulating from afar, trying to have the pair of them quietly erased from history. It certainly leads to some excellent scenes between Colin and Sylvester, as the pair of them battle it out to enact their plan. Both Colin and Sylvester are fantastic in this: Sylvester brings his A-game, and brings out both sides to his Doctor with skill: in his scenes with River, he brings out the more comedic Doctor of season 24, while when dealing with the crisis and investigating the couple, he's more like the omniscient plotter of seasons 25 and 26. And McCoy balances them perfectly: he turns on a sixpence between the two, and reminds the listener of why, alongside Capaldi and Eccleston, he's one of the most complex of Doctors: you're never quite sure what is going on inside his head. This story is a perfect example of that. Here McCoy gives such a complex, layered performance that's such a step up from The Unknown. He's commanding, he's powerful, he's menacing, he's everything you want from the seventh Doctor. While Colin Baker was excellent in World Enough And Time, I thought the characterisation was severely off. Here, however, Fitton sticks more rigidly to the Big Finish version of the sixth Doctor, and the results are greatly appreciated. The sixth Doctor, here, is less trusting of River, and the assumption that he makes about her being a member of the CIA is genuinely funny. Colin gets to pour a great deal of righteous fury into the script as well, with his confrontation with the Speravore Queen being a particular highlight. I've said for many years that Colin is probably the most underappreciated Doctor out of the set: people just don't realise how good Colin's Doctor really is, and how much that he pours into the role. And his face-off with the Queen, we see that: when Colin talks about how the Doctor (particularly his Doctor) sees the right in the universe, this is it in practice. And there was one moment when, as the sixth Doctor is being devoured by the Speravore, we hear his final words, from The Brink Of Death, echoed back at us. I tell you, I nearly cried at that. And, of course, Colin is amazing. I mean, you didn't need me to tell you that, but seriously, Colin is amazing. He just owns every single scene he's in. As for Alex Kingston, well it's her series, so she's still the central focus. Although, with two Doctors meeting, she does take a bit of a backseat in the middle. However, it's ultimately her who saves the day. And while I have to dispute the way that she does it, at least Kingston does her best to sell it. She is great throughout the episode, and relationship with Daniel Defoe is believable and rather sweet. Out of the guest cast, Robert Hands (who plays Defoe) is certainly the best: he creates an interesting character who isn't just 'ooh, look, a historical celebrity'. You don't need to know who Defoe is to be able to appreciate and understand who he is. As for the rest of the guest cast, I just felt they were far, far too indistinct for me to pick up on any traits. The main couple in the story, Sarah and Isaac, just fell utterly flat, and they just seemed like the fall guys for the story. It was clear Fitton was trying to make out that this couple were just ordinary people, but, to me, that concept just fell on it's face because there wasn't anytime really spent making them likeable or interesting. They were just made central to the McGuffin, and that was their only reason to be there. It didn't help that neither Jessie Buckley or Paul Keating were actually that strong: both felt a little too unrealistic for my mind. It was a shame, because if they had been a bit stronger, they would have sold it a lot more. Finally, there's Alan Cox, who plays a variety of parts perfectly well, but frankly seems wasted in the episode.
The production is, as with the rest of the box set, the high standard we've come to expect from Big Finish. The direction from Ken Bentley isn't quite as strong as it has been in the previous parts: sure, it's still competent, and he's still in control, but it's feels like he had little clue what was actually going on in the story, and little idea of how to make it work. Scenes just seem to drift aimlessly, and, more often than not, it's left up to Howard Carter to cover the deficiency. It's certainly done well enough, with the sound design and music really letting rip as the apocalypse begins in the second half of the story. Across the whole set, Carter has been an absolute standout, really enhancing the material and soaking us in the worlds that the stories have created. The music, in particular, has been exceptional across the board. Finally, Tom Webster's cover designs continue the strong trend that the first Diary Of River Song started with some excellent cover work, and The Eye Of The Storm is no exception. It's a fantastically ominous cover, that's full of detail and just looks bloody gorgeous. Big Finish's covers are generally excellent, but Carter brings a polish and a finish to his covers that is above and beyond the norm, and that is to be commended.
Overall, however, I can't deny that The Diary Of River Song Series Two has been a disappointment. Sure, John Dorney has produced the best episode of this spin-off so far with Five Twenty-Nine, but the main selling points of this box set (River meeting the sixth and seventh Doctors) was so badly handled in their individual episodes that I was congratulating this episode when it got their characters right. The Eye Of The Storm, however, isn't without it's flaws, and suffers from an overcomplicated plot that never really seems to get going. But that's been this whole set, really: the arc never felt like it's got started, and, to be honest, I was sort of glad that Dorney's episode was so disconnected from it. I can understand the appeal of doing a River Song spin-off, and I hope we get a third series. But, from the evidence presented here, I hope they loose the Doctor, and just have River on her own. If Five Twenty-Nine tells us anything, it's that this series is at it's best when the Doctor isn't involved. The Eye Of The Storm is a decent end, but it's nothing special, which is kind of the point for a multi-Doctor story.
Rating - 7/10
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