Title

The Eleven Day Empire / The Shadow Play

When was it made?

2001

Who made it?

BBV

What format was it on?

Compact Disc

Familiar voices

Not really

Familiar names

Lawrence Miles isn’t easily forgotten by anyone who has heard of him.

The blurb

Era: Non-specific.
Technology: Post-linear (subtle), time-active.

Even before the outbreak of the "War in Heaven", Faction Paradox was regarded as the most unpredictable (and opportunistic) of the time-active powers. Aware of the precarious nature of history - but under no obligation to protect it - while the other Great Houses were still attempting to uphold a "universal order", the Faction was following its own, far more ambiguous, protocols. Ruthless, secretive and at times difficult to understand, it's hardly surprising that the Faction should have eventually found itself under siege from its rival powers…

AND

Era: Last thirteen-million years.
Technology: Military (blatant), limited time-awareness.

It's perhaps unwise to think of the Sontarans as a species, as such. A homunculus breed, hatched by the million and engineered for full-engagement warfare, the Sontaran military machine is regarded by many time-active cultures as an "occupational hazard": a force of nature rather than a race, compelled by duty and genetics to acquire new technologies for its endless war effort. It should be remembered, however, that with the backing of a higher power even the crudest of breeds can become something quite different.

In a nutshell…

A two-part opening story for the Faction Paradox Protocols – a series of audio plays from BBV in which Lawrence Miles’ Faction Paradox universe is torn from the Eight Doctor books, stripped of its overt Doctor Who connections and reconfigured in a user-friendly (ish) form. We are introduced to the Faction’s home base – the Eleven Day Empire – and witness an attack from the nasty old Sontarans. The poor beasts don’t realise what they’ve bitten off.

Is it any good?

I came to it with a vague idea of what Faction Paradox was – a time travelling voodoo cult about covers it – and was relying on these CDs to get me up to speed. They do a good job, choosing to focus on the most human of the characters, Cousin Justine. She’s not exactly new to the Faction but she’s new enough that her mentor, Godfather Morlock, can explain things to us through her. The Eleven Day Empire is based in the eleven days that were removed from the British calendar when we went with the Gregorian calendar and jumped from September 2^nd to September 14^th 1752 without stopping for any autumnal respite. The Faction have moved in to those eleven days and live in the London that time skipped over.

The best bit of the play is the wonderful Godfather Morlock, played by Ellis Pike. He is so smoothly convincing as the man who seemingly knows everything that’s going to happen. He steals the show from its supposed star, Suzanne Proctor as Cousin Justine, and when she leaves without him at the end of the play (oops – spoilers) it seems like the Faction Paradox Protocols have thrown away their best character. Fortunately, he will return eventually.

Cousin Justine is meant to be the every(wo)man – the northern lass who finds herself mixed up in voodoo and shadows and magic and shit. We don’t go into detail about how she got there (which is a good thing), nor does she show any form of resistance to the House. She wants to do the right thing, she just doesn’t always know what it is and Morlock is a devious old bugger so he can’t always be relied upon to tell her. Not directly anyway. I’m afraid Suzanne Proctor doesn’t sound very convincing in the role. There is a particular type of earnest northern lassie which is either impossible to play or is always miscast. They stress the syllables too hard – whether to keep up a false accent or to suppress a genuine one I’m not sure – and end up sounding like they’re reading from a script. Which they are but that's the trick.

The Sontarans are a good choice of monster. They’re so wonderfully straight forward. They attack in numbers and don’t have much wit about them. They are the exact opposite of the Faction with its rituals, magicks and secrets. They use brute force to attack the apparently impregnable Empire and chaos results. At first we think they've no chance, then we think they've won and then... et cetera. It's sort of like a better version of the Invasion of Time.

During the course of the first CD we are introduced to Lolita – a woman with her own House, a baby and a huge plan in her head. She’s using the Sontarans for her own ends. Ends which we don’t learn much about during this play. We do however know this is a Story Arc™ and therefore we should listen carefully to everything she says. I can’t remember if there is a payoff – I’ve not listened to the other four plays in this series for a long time. If ever.

The production is good as you would expect from BBV. The script is more accessible than you might expect form Lawrence Miles. It also helps that BBV can’t do what BBC Books did and just reduce the type to micro-dots to fit his lengthy tomes onto the traditional number of pages. I think that’s another reason why I didn’t read any of his books even though I had them – the prose was dense in more ways than one. The downsides of the plays are the jarring performance of Cousin Justine and – a rather more personal one perhaps – there are some shrieking old mad woman moments in this which remind me of Blackadder and that doesn’t help when trying to take this stuff seriously.

Overall, it is a good introduction to the FP universe – perhaps even too good an introduction as it makes you a little disappointed that the series ended after six CDs and a mere three stories.

(I know it continues elsewhere – by those Kaldor City chaps – but they didn’t go mad like BBV and sell all their CDs for a quid each so I’ve not heard any of them. Besides, there are only a handful of those too.)

Anything for the BBC to object to?

I don’t think so – they remove the obvious Doctor Who connections from the FP universe. The Time Lord chapters become Great Houses, Gallifrey no longer has a name and everything is kept vague and mysterious so you can fill in the blanks if you want to. Objecting to anything would mean the BBC dealing with Mad Larry and I think they’ve got better things to do to be honest.

Did it help fill the void?

Here we perhaps have an actual void to fill – the end of the Faction stuff in the BBC books might perhaps have left some people in need of their time travelling voodoo fix. Sadly, given that all subsequent Faction threads seem to have flopped, not very many of them. If this series had been made by Big Finish I think it could’ve caught on but BBV – like everyone else in the audio field – are too small to make much of an impact.

Would it work on TV?

Someone wanting to jump on the Doctor Who band wagon with something a little different could do worse than trying to make a Faction Paradox TV series. It would be dark, gothic and unlike anything else on TV. Channel Four perhaps – they occasionally dip their toe in the genre market and this would be right up their street. Except they would have to deal with Mad Larry and I think they’ve also go better things to do to be honest.

Verdict

Production 4/5

Entertainment 4/5

Whoishness 2/5

Overall 4/5