BIG FINISH’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE Audio 8: ALONE

 

BIG FINISH’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE

Audio 8: ALONE

Episode 1: Evil All Around Us

Episode 2: Like Home

Episode 3:  Time To Go

 

I guess I have to give this one ANOTHER go. My impression was it put me to sleep. I found it routine. They basically took the plot of one of the weirder BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER episodes and attached the TP to it. And they didn’t really even follow that through to its better conclusion. Not that the story is that original: I once wrote a fan fic about Stephen waking up to find out the TP was just a dream; also adapted it to a LAND OF THE GIANTS fan fic.

 

So you see, again, these audios are not stories that are unique for the TP series. Each episode is not bad on its own, most of the time, but the tone feels wrong, the basic set up feels off key and off track. We’re without TIM again as John finds out he’s in a mind bending dream where he…is not a TP and seeing a doctor; Paul and an alien (?) Thragg face some kind of sacrifice to a monster that’s hunting them along with savages with spears; Elena sees her father; and there’s talk of another stone circle or something in a tunnel; another stranded alien; and a lost boy. It almost reads like a standard (and equally uninvolving TORCHWOOD TV episode).

 

We do meet Robert Mitchell, a character I would grow to like. I’d like him here if we were given enough of him to like or get a feel for. We’re not. If the story breaks any real rule of the TP it is this: if you’re introducing a new breakout TP (and Dr. Cooper calls breaking out a coming out and when John corrects him he sarcastically acknowledges, “Yes…”), you should paint a solid and good picture of him before you put him through a strange mindbender episode. Preferably in a straight forward adventure. This doesn’t do that and therefore Robert suffers …and yet another new breakout is gone. He does return but not in the next story as at the end of this, he goes to the Trig for rehab.

 

I must mention a terrific use of time though. The stories do not just repeat what’s happened before in the prologues but present the situation in new dialog and furthering the action seconds after the cliffhangers.

 

In this, the boy who vanished a year earlier is named Andrew. Did they have to name him Andrew? His last name is Cull. There’s a castle over the railway track and tunnel that goes nowhere. The place is Devil’s Hoof. Barken Hill is two miles. This is taking place “on a bright summer’s day” or at least John’s story to Dr. Cooper is. Robert’s also seeing

 

If Andrew was Robert’s friend, why did he feel so alone as to want to keep the alien here? I guess during his session with India Fisher’s psychologist Theresa who works at the Princess Royal. Robert is one of her patients. At one point she finds Robert has the “constitution of an ox.”

 

Thragg says, “Praise Be to Wellver.”  Paul tells him that “they caught him” and had one of those wolf things (a Johappen? Or am I just mishearing dialog?).

 

In the cliffhanger at the end of 1, Thragg seems to be killed from Paul’s POV (he’s not) in the hunt but Robert has a mental attack and feels it is the TP attacking him. Thragg and Paul will be given a Granche a public humiliation, a fight. Mention of the Tribe of the Light on the 5^th Moonshine of the Snowtime, Lord Gordon Kerrigan and something about evil dogs of the dance pits?

 

Theresa tells Elena that Robert’s parents died in a car accident (who’s telling us the horrible tale for a few seconds?). Rob has old grandparents. He’s been on drugs. Her boss recommends ECT.

 

Elena tells Theresa the truth: he’s breaking out into a homo superior. She believes Elena.

 

We learn from Dr. Cooper that John’s brother died years ago.

 

In the cliffhanger to ep2, Elena and Theresa find a door in the tunnel but hear the sound of water but Theresa screams, “It’s a train!” She then screams!

 

Theresa’s last name seems to be Mrs. Patterson. She asks about her son Nathaniel who had a disease for ten years and he died years ago. She realizes it is a dream and she gets Elena to realize it, too. They were hooked up to a life support in the ship.

 

Elena met her father. We also get the word BITCH again from Theresa herself about herself in a comical self-referential moment. “I’m a right ole bitch…”

 

Robert’s “friend’s” dream machine protects him. He’s been protecting the alien in the tunnel. Theresa mentions that ship is “like something out of DOCTOR WHO.”  The alien is friendly, does not have a corporeal form (Paul asks why he has a spaceship then which is a good question) and wants a homing beacon activated, the stones. Rob turned it off because he was lonely, thus, what we do know about Robert is that he’s fairly messed up. Nathaniel used to hug the stones during picnics. He had leukemia. The ship was trying to send radioactive pulses out for years. Robert stopping it caused it to build up in the stones. This is why Nathaniel had leukemia. THUS, another sad thing.

 

Paul saw sewer rats in his nightmare. Elena was terrified of the channel tunnel flooding. Paul mentions GLADIATOR and LOGAN’S RUN (calling it a tacky sci fi film…jerk) as what his nightmare was based on. Thragg must be a little green man who looks like Andrew Cull? Is Andrew still alive? Is his disappearance something unrelated?

 

As you can tell from some of the above, the whole thing isn’t bad but is quite disjointed. There are explanations but it’s just shy of confusing.