Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Daisy Dunlop, Jacqueline King, Hugh Ross, Tim Treloar.
How far does humanity as a collective have the right to impose its culture and future upon any as yet untouched civilisations? The morality to ask those who have the honour to guide themselves to the point where if they want to share the same path that they should do it with a helping hand, not be forced to do so or supply their lives in the profit not of their making.
It is the question that sits forever unspoken in the listener’s ear as the fourth incarnation of the Doctor once more runs into the world and people of the Exxilons and leaves the fans of the Doctor posing the same question as his companion Leela, when is it right to interfere or muddy the waters of a flowering people?
In Nicholas Briggs’ audio drama The Exxilons, the questions come almost thick and fast and there is only the slightest of apprehension in that the answers don’t come readily to mind. That though should be seen as right in many ways as the Doctor, doesn’t always have to give them to make sense of the situation; it is one of the reasons why fans keep coming back for more, that urge to understand for themselves without being led to the solution. Like a good teacher who doesn’t cave in to the perpetual question of why? The scene is set, it is up to the pupil to see beyond the detail of the picture.
The Exxilons almost has the feel of being a listener’s paradox, the need to understand and question fully the motives of those determined to lead the indigenous people of the planet E9874, The Tari, to a path that will not be pleasant, but also at the back of their minds appreciating that this is what Humanity has being doing since it first worked out that as a collective species we are greater than our parts but we are also then riddled with trying to make others act like ourselves.
Whilst the premise of the story is very well suited to the world of Doctor Who, on audio it doesn’t quite capture the emotion that is necessary in which to love or feel any sympathy for any of the main protagonists that inhabit the tale. Whilst Leela is at her enjoyable best and once more shows her duty in urging the Doctor to hold back, in the rest of the cast it somehow feels dry and an unwelcome distraction to the overall arc of the fourth Doctor’s life.
It is savagery against the savage and with only the redeeming feature, as one would truly expect in the form Daisy Dunlop’s Trexa, and because of this, the episode seems unexpectedly bland and far from being completed.
Whilst not being fully enjoyable is in itself not an issue, somehow as a listener you just know you should be anticipating more and requiring something else to feel sated by.
Doctor Who: The Exxilons is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall