BIG FINISH’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE audio 4: SIGN OF THE DIOLYX

 

BIG FINISH’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE audio four

SIGN OF THE DIOLYX

Episode One: Warning Shadows

Episode Two: Into the Dark

Episode Three: Electric Dreams

 

So we’re in yet another DOCTOR WHO plot. Mike Tucker and Robert Perry wrote this in 1979 or at least most of it? In any case, it was for a DOCTOR WHO Super 8 film they were going to create with RTD playing the Doctor. The cover to the CD is one Mike did during that time. The story would have been set in the countryside around Swansea. We then get an isolated town (Llangwyliadwriaeth in Wales!?), a secret crypt, alien tech, dead vicars, a strange seemingly nice lady who’s not, and an alien spaceship. Most of this is not unlike DOCTOR WHO’s THE DAEMONS and THE STONES OF BLOOD.

 

The early episodes seem to be quite okay, though John’s plans to find the break out Allison Hardy is quite dumb…lie and lie again, lies which don’t gel with each other. He should know better. On the plus side, John’s rapport with Elena and Paul is quite good as is Elena and Paul’s. Allison is reluctant to trust John and Paul. Her father seems to think TV and movie sci fi shows as well as horror shows have affected her. Elena does yet another “I’ll go it alone” without John and Paul and stumbles into yet another problem…she’s stuck on a spaceship with a creepy sounding, smelly, decaying monster who wants to be a god. There’s some cliché dialog about that, too.

 

The cliffhanger to ep 1 has Allison have some kind of attack and in turn, she attacks John with a knife.

 

Jane Green, the vicar locks Allison up but John and Paul find her. It is then they tell Allison and her father the truth.

 

There seems to be a damping field (shouldn’t that be dampner?) that dulls the TP powers but…they can still jaunt. If so, then why does John choose for her and Paul to walk to the church area?

 

Allison claims she must die so Diolyx can live and be free.  TIM digs up information from the Trig: ancient records about Diolyx of Zarin from the day so the Parlarian League, a civilization of peaceful, techno telepaths, a power of trade, unprepared for the war like Diolyx. They defeated him on Earth and put him in a stasis capsule in hyperspace with a gateway to escape with a guardian.  

 

In the ship, Elena is trapped in some kind of fake reality.

 

As ep 2 winds up, Rev. Jane Green admits to John, “I am Diolyx.”

 

1 and 2 are fine adventures, but there’s the feel that this was a DW story and it was. What BF never understood about the TP is that, while there are similarities, the TP series is NOT Doctor Who. Nor are the characters the same. You can’t just replace the TP with Doctor Who characters or vice versa. Here, there’s the feel that’s exactly what they tried to do and they as much admitted it in the BF COMPANION volume 2. The feeling is fine for 1 and 2 but a bit…off mostly. We’ve seen all these elements before. We also get nothing about the TP themselves, something that would make this more grounded. Not only does John not have a last name, I’m not sure Elena or Paul do either. We learn Paul is a lot like Mike and not much else. When they do go into Elena’s personal life…it gets to be far too much and depressing as her mother is dying and it drags on for quite some time and is NOT easy listening. THIS adventure is listenable but honestly, there are better adventures elsewhere and it is difficult to hold one’s attention on this while not thinking of other adventures in other TP stories as well as DW and other places.

 

Diolyx has been there for 26 thousand years, a created persona from Diolyx’s more moral self (her race interfacing with machines and computer, techno telepathy) ---her body grown from vegetable matter and she’s been there well before the stones. Paul, “You’re a plant?”

 

Eric Hardy is Alison’s father played by BLAKE’s 7 himself, GARETH THOMAS! Diolyx claims she was not trying to kill Alison but trying to help her, performing an exorcism.

 

Elena being in an electro telepathic dream, not a real environment. It, too, is a cliché and quite dull. Diolyx put part of his mind, ego in Alison in others. From what I gather, his ID, is on the ship with Elena. The old families (the villagers) guard a secret but don’t know what it is. The psi damper is failing. Sir Oswald De Burr gave his life to contain Diolyx in the 12^th century. Diolyx is coming back now due to the TP.

 

Part 3 almost falls apart when Elena encounters the …munchkins from the WIZARD OF OZ. Why doesn’t she recognize them or the castle from that book/movie? Did she never read/see them? Fortunately, this part doesn’t last long.

 

But then Alison seems just fine with Diolyx and seems possessed again and goes to the stone circle to give herself up as a sacrifice. Jane saves her by struggling with her other selves but is caught in the dimensional bridge. When she reappears, it is not really her but the Ego Diolyx, an evil version. The conscience that Jane was-- ends up with Elena on the ship in the Land of Oz They go to the Emerald City and find Diolyx’s original body. Elena almost feels sorry for it. John boosts the psi damper field.

 

Elena, “I’m getting used to saving the world.” This when she is stuck on the ship and Oz…maybe for good.

 

On Earth, John’s new plan will mean Alison will no longer be a TP. Diolyx stole part of her personality and her powers will be contained in the computer. He’s using it to cross the bridge. His power is coming from the Emerald City. The villagers want to stop John, who claims they are on the same side. The stun guns don’t stop them? Jane was with Elena and is with John, one good, one evil. Then, John claims there never was a Jane Green.

 

If all this seems confused, it is. There’s lots of explanations, about one every two minutes, and a lot of the characters do not understand what’s going on. The script is muddled, the story is muddled, and the adventure seems as if it should be better. Jane helps Elena escape.

 

A spooky girl voice calls John and laughs. It’s not Elena. I suspected it was Georgie from GHOST OF MENDEZ but…do we ever find out?

 

Alison calls the name TP a bit nerdy and Paul agrees. Paul wants to get the Trig to change the name. Alison and Paul come up with even more nerdy names. John reiterates that they cannot kill. He made up the name TP, which sums up what they are without giving the Saps too many clues. The “adventure” ends with Paul and Alison trying to come up with those names: the Death Squadron, League of Vengeance, Psychic Defenders, Bone Crushers, Super League of Vengeance Squadron…so a bit of a laugh like the old series used to end on…sometimes.

 

REVIEW? The cd has 29 min of interviews with the cast. I don’t know why they had a longer running time to add that but…

 

So, the story is a bit muddled, with some good parts, and some parts that seem just bewildering. Again, it’s not bad, just not very good either. It feels as if it should be better than it is and the constant explanations become annoying. Alison ends up NOT being a TP. And again, this is more a DW story than a TP story.

 

Nick Pegg was supposed to write this story or the story for this slot but he had an acting job and couldn’t do it. So, this was “completed” in about three and a half weeks. Mike Tucker and Robert Perry had to watch original series episodes and listen to the BG plays in order to write this. It makes me wonder if they knew anything about the TP at all.

 

And again, as far as the new TP: I, for one, didn’t know either of them very well at all. What are their aspirations for real life? Do they have jobs? Elena does but seems not very involved in it or even working once these adventures start. I wanted to get to know them but one thing fans have done well is create new Tp and lives for them as well as creating lives for the original TP and the 1992 characters that we never got on screen! If fans can do it, why couldn’t the writers of the audios, the tv shows, and others have created real lives for these characters, which, I think is part of the fun and fantasy of indulging in the TP series, something, again, DW writers do not get at all. To relate to TP, they needed to be grounded in real life, unlike the Doctor (and MANY of his companions in both OLD and MOFFAT WHO). The escapism comes when you see them get away from or balance their real world lives and their TP lives. This, to me, almost never happened correctly in the Audio Series, the Nick Series of the 1990s, or the CW series. They either tipped it too far one way or the other, never fully understanding what fan writers in fan fiction have for years.

 

The great Phillip Gilbert says, of the budget, “I have so many sad tales to tell and I don’t know that I should. There were an awful lot of problems. An awful lot of problems.”  The Tp took up so much of studio time that others may have resented it. They used to have two days in the studio. The last series was cancelled (MYSTERY MOON) because of one day in the studio was given and there was a strike on. 

 

I’m not sure who it is during these interviews, the writer or director or who but one of them admits their memory of the TP comes from a preview from MAGPIE!? Not a good thing to have in a production of the TP!