Big Finish's THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-audio 11-A Living Hell

 

BIG FINISH’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE:

A LIVING HELL    3 episodes

 

The “previously on the TP” starts here. Caine appears and tells David’s mother to leave the room. John and TIM discuss the voices he hears. Then we hear the theme (was all the stuff before this, older material?).

 

Sharon is on a student demo meeting (?) but Paul calls it a shopping spree. The actress who played Sharon could not make it.

 

Sharon’s sister Jo is doing a college assignment with Richard, David’s brother. Paul borrowed money from John for the helicopter ride for Jo’s college assignment and they are in Snowdonia (where the gov’t has a base? So…coincidence?).

 

Jo wants an A on her film project or she will sack her tutor. John’s being a stupid worrying idiot, berating Paul to Elena and calling the times dangerous. The copter seems to into a crash (thanks to the telepathic calls from the dead (?) David?) and then we hear the fuller theme. Huh?

 

John and Elena are going to the Tnawi (little ones with orange heads) and Mowaro or Marawella (gorillas or rather hirsute) peace conference…without jaunting. Timus said it was better etiquette to not jaunt in. John’s acting like a total idiot when he lies to Elena when she’s trying to get him to open up about his nightmares. I have to say that this John is quite unlike the John of the TV series and feeling he has to be strong…if he dies…then what? I find this a most unwelcome plot thread.

 

Equally annoying is John and Elena ignoring TIM’s calls, especially Elena’s annoyed retorts to TIM, who is just trying to get help for Paul.

 

Caine has Allison and is doing psychic tests on her. BTW at times Allison sound a bit like Elena.

 

King Horofin the 27^th of the 3^rd Marowan dynasty (who calls females the mating gender) and Emperor Tingatchi are also going to the conference. There was 1000 years (100 generations) of peace before the Federation.  The peace was because of a weapon of destruction. Two doomsday devices poised to destroy the other. The Tnawi had experimentation camps which were liberated by the Marowans (there’s talk of sheep)? The sheep may have been slave classes as told by the Tnawi Emperor. For some reason, his voice reminds me of the Federation Chairman in WAR OF THE EMPIRES.

 

 

Ep 1 seems to have some slow versions of the TP theme that are new recordings and not from the old TV show, and these underlie and underscore some important scenes. This is very similar to the Original Show which did the same with the Original TP theme. It is quite nice.

 

Allison has some kind of seizure (yes, another one and another mind storm, it’s getting repetitious). There are also mind games (also, yes, again, and more repetition) being done by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in Farnborough against Jo and Paul. The mind games are unreal (sigh).

 

Jo goes off to find help for Paul and Richard while the copter is on fire (?) and finds a door in the mountains.

 

One of Caine’s soldiers is named Mannings. She seems to be talking to a Dr. Stanley. Jo references the X FILES. Later, TIM tells Paul and Jo that Sebastian Stanley runs the DERA. TIM’s info is that the order to bring them back originated from the Arthur C. Clarke building on the DERA site, part of the Ministry of Defense. Caine is his leading project managers.

 

When the alien peace conference almost goes south, John mentions the Sorsons. They are about to sign a peace treaty with the Federation but some Sorson factions have other ideas. I have to also say that John and Elena’s skills at peace making needs some honing.

 

The cliffhanger at ep 1’s ending has a guard in the Snowdonia base find Jo and there’s a gun shot when he says, “All right, hold it there!”

 

The opening of ep 2 seems to have someone, probably David, gasping telepathically, “Let me go. Let me die.”  Then, the theme song. It seems Caine is keeping him alive. Jo talks about TIM’s ball that Sharon mentioned. They awoke on a beach in Clacton. TIM believes it appears that Richard died in the crash. The gov’t brought Jo and Paul back.

 

Honestly, 34 minutes in and I’m bored already. Paul uses Elena’s method to remember what happened and we hear more of what we already heard again as it succeeds and they break through the conditioning.

 

Voices continue to plague Allison and inform her together they are very powerful. It’s all very horror oriented and not at all that good, I’m afraid. In fact, I’m tired of horror in the TP at this point. Allison’s scream affects John who is still trying to make the two sides at the peace conference agree.

 

The real Allison seems to have died with a discarded skin left behind, like a snake skin. Caine and Mannings find her burned. At his touch, she crumbles away.

 

The Allison creature invades the Lab, takes over TIM, and makes TIM make them a nice cup of tea so they can chat. “You’re just a bunch of pansies, the whole lot of you,” Allison says. “I’m a homo inferior and I can kill,” Jo tells her. She stops Jo. TIM calls Allison Adam for some reason. This is just one of her names. She claims to be a homo superior that can kick ass. David was her channel and now he is “freed.” She also has TIM make a stun gun with a kill setting and a jaunting belt. TIM zaps Paul.

 

Allison goes to the peace conference and in the cliffhanger at the end of ep2, and kills the gorilla alien leader!

 

Before that, we had Elena and John talking about the voices again with no new information.

 

Gosh, if ep1 was rambling, ep 2 is positively boring! It repeats the same stuff over and over and over, before giving us…yet another takeover of the Lab.

 

Returned to this LIVING HELL after almost a week. Yes, it’s that tedious. After Allison heeds John’s request to move out of the conference, she seems to shoot something but what? We’re not told really. Allison says she was Adam, Karen, Susan, William, James, Tom, Simon, and Marcus. How could John forget any of their names?

 

Caine thinks of David as nothing but a specimen, she does not care what he feels.

 

John was 16 and couldn’t control his powers. Alison says John held Marcus’s life in his hand literally. What does that mean?

 

Marcus jaunted into hyper-space, disembodied.

 

Karen was 11, waking, screaming in the middle of the night, thought John’s voice was her father, she opened a window and fell to her death. 

 

William: top of his class, a bit of a loner but he’d be all right; he made a friend. We don’t learn how he died. Broke out and died? It didn’t seem like that.

 

Timothy: John’s brother who died in a fire. He was not a TP. John was the first born? This contradicts the comics and the TV show. And it’s all very disturbing and while a viable story trail, it’s very grim and makes the premise a horror story. I don’t like it.

 

John does not know who Adam was. He was before John, Allison tells John. He built a computer with knowledge but didn’t survive the break out. What? Does that even make sense?

 

Allison goes on a Carrie-like rampage.

 

Guyon Cratcher, a Tnawi palace guard as his father was before him. He was killed by Alison, who becomes totally possessed by Adam. Allison tells John there are more than three TP on Earth, even though John doesn’t know them. The Tnawi want revenge on Sorsons? They point their weapon at the gorilla aliens? Why? Elena seems to rail against this and with talk stops it? Allison died at Farnborough. The other TP are in hyperspace, which reclaimed them. John creates a hole between Earth and hyperspace, which draws Adam in. He tried to commit suicide and is in a catatonic state. Timus tells TIM that Elena brokered the peace. Timus comes to the lab.

 

Caine gets a call from the Prime Minister who wants discretion who gives her new orders. When she hangs up, she calls him, “Idiot.”

 

David on life support cannot die even though he wants to.

 

After the end theme is a coming soon again about Sapphire and Steel.

 

Okay so as a review ep1 was tedious, ep2 was repetitious, and ep 3 was a mess. What was going on? Past TP haunt John through the body of Allison who already died in her first story (?). The aliens are attacked by Allison (or did the Sorsons attack?) and one wants revenge on someone? Elena talks them out of it. At the last minute John finds some way of getting rid of Allison. His powers include opening a gap between Earth and hyper space? TIM does save John. HOW did TIM suddenly help them when he was under Adam’s control? His explanation is lame. In fact, while Davidson thinks this story was “special” I found it the worst of the first 11 stories. It was patchwork writing at best and limited the optimistic world of the TP to…torture, murder, and guilt. I hate it. In fact, John talks and talks in the TV series about EVERYTHING. There is no way he would not have told the other TP about TP before them, about his brother Timothy (really? TIM?), or the fire. Everything seems to come out of left field and head toward some other field and then takes another turn to just wrap up. Allison menaces the conference but then agrees to leave it; then she menaces the city as she and John play cat and mouse, jaunting. If Allison’s body is dead, how does she have TP powers? How does the TP “survivors” also dead, return from hyperspace when they should be totally gone? None of this makes sense and none of it is entertaining. Almost all of it is grim and makes one feel empty inside, something the original show did the opposite of.

 

Caine makes a great villain but nothing much is done with her other than her raving about her plans and what she is about to those who already know, like Allison (the dead Allison, that no one knew was dead?) and David (who wants to die but can’t use his powers to do so yet Caine finds him unique?).

 

A LIVING HELL sure was a living hell to get through. A downer, it is depressing, and a large mess. It is NOT, in my opinion, the way to do the TP.

 

Shame on BF.