This weekend at Cadogan Hall in Sloane Square, London, Paul McGann returned to play The Doctor and Alex Macqueen to play The Master, with India Fisher returning as prim and proper companion Charlotte in a special stage production live performance of Doctor Who: The Stuff Of Legend. Which has just been released as a Big Finish audio production (and was on sale at the theatre) and soon to be followed by a recording of the live stage versions from the weekend. And done so to celebrate twenty-five years of the Big Finish audio predictions of original Doctor Who stories. Which not only kept Doctor Who alive when the TV show stopped but also kept actors going as The Doctor and his many companions and associates long after the TV series had done with them, in all manner of unlikely but welcome combinations.
The episode written by Rob Valentine was cleverly picked for the stage version. It was set in 1963, and we discover the day after the assassination of JFK, which is the same night that the first Doctor Who episode was broadcast, which enables the Cornish pub landlord when confronted with the world of science fiction to exclaim, in a crowd-pleasing fashion, that it was just like that TV programme for kids. Equally playing to the rafters was Paul McGann’s explanation, when found in the fog, that they were not lost, they had just “gone on holiday by mistake”, echoing the like from Richard E Grant in their career-making movie Withnail And I. Throw in the Daleks tunnelling through the tin mines of Cornwall screaming “Excavate, Excavate” and this was a script written to get cheers from the crowd and it got them.
And the choice to tell a period piece, with the Daleks and the Master, with both science fiction and fantasy, treading a path somewhere in between, was perfect to sum up all that is great and good about the show, the Doctor and his companion, running blind into a situation, with locals recruited for good measure, as the true horror of the situation unfolds and the Doctor just has to bally well do something about it, while inspiring those around him to play their part as well – and leaving with a lasting impact on those around him. Paul McGann remained perfect for this, as well as being full of the natural class assumptions and benign colonis ation tropes that served the character so well. To paraphrase Russell T Davies, “Paul McGann counts”. And all framed with one character, Emily, played by two actors, Nisha Nayar as a twenty-something student in 1963 and Carolyn Seymour as an eighty-something UNIT professional in 2024. It only gets a little timey-wimey, I promise.
The show was performed in the fashion of a BBC live radio show with full foley – sound effects being created through props, live as they are needed, actors playing multiple roles – including the director Barney Edwards giving a remarkable turn as the Cornish pub landlord Jago Penrose with all manner of dangerous props in his pockets, and the Jeeves-style butler – also called Foley – both miles away from his real voice that introduced us to the show. And Alex Macqueen, deliciously as The Master, delighting in both the Doctor and then the Daleks using his name. And including a full mask reveal, created by nothing more than a rubber glove stripped from a hand. But also a reminded that the real thing doesn’t always sound like the real thing, as the lifting of an umbrella demonstrated. It just didn’t sound like what you expect an umbrella to sound like, and I was reminded of Spike Milligan and the bowl of custard.
We enjoyed Jason Forbes as Captain Montgomerie Césaire gave us the good looking handsome action hero, who gets Jago Penrose out of his shell, and Carolyn Seymour as the achingly melancholic Cornish spirits, the Bucca (giving Paul McGann another crowd-pleasing “Bucca, my old mucka” line) with Barney Edwards echoing behind her, creating an ephemeral being with just a couple of microphones. And of course, Nicolas Briggs, the classic voice of the Daleks, as well as Big Finish writer, director, producer and general good luck charm for the whole production, providing most of the comedy outtakes along the way, jollying everyone along.
And because Big Finish plans to release the live stage version audio later, as an encore, they got all six hundred of us in the audience to act as the hundreds of Robo-Men, enslaved by the Daleks, working the mines for nefarious purpose, first for the Daleks and then for the Master. Both hard at work and then meeting our final fate…
The show was a lot of fun, in an audience full of people there for just that fun, it was both celebratory and fully entertaining, the audience conspiring with the actors to create a reality that none of us could see, were constantly reminded was false, but nevertheless happy to engage in the deception that we were all in the fog and rain filled tin mines of Cornwall… with evils both modern and ancient. Frank Skinner, also in the audience, both Doctor Who fan and celebrity guest star for the Mummy On The Orient Express TV show was having a whale of a time too. He’s done a few Big Finish productions himself, I bet he’d be up for more.