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| Winter For the Adept by Andrew Cartmell |
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To begin at the beginning- the device of
having the older Alison book-ending the story is a simple but effective
one and helps create the impression of something more sophisticated being
attempted. It bears comparison with similar techniques found in the books,
although given the way ‘Winter’ plays itself out, it’s slightly misleading
as Alison is absent for certain key scenes. Still, it’s not immediately
apparent that Sally Faulkner is doubling up as the older Alison, and her
Scottish accent for Miss Tremayne puts a sufficient distance between the
characters. Accents are pretty much in vogue here, in fact, as Hannah
Dickinson, who may look rather foxy in her photo in the insert, sports a
French accent which is pure Vicki Michelle, while Peter Jurasik as Sandoz
is indeterminate. It’s not really Jurasik’s fault; in 2000 he was just
coming to the end of playing Londo Mollari in Babylon 5 and the
middle-European accent which the role of a Swiss mountain ranger should
require would just have sounded like Londo all over again. Over the five
years of Babylon 5, Jurasik played a character who went from being
a pompous buffoon to a warmonger and finally the condemned emperor of a
dying race, so to an extent it’s appropriate that Sandoz should turn out
to be something far darker than he seems, although it’s a shame that in
two hours Jurasik doesn’t have the opportunity to create another complex
character. Equally, in the "naughtiest girl in the school" role of Peril
(as in Beryl?), India Fisher does come across as a plucky and mischievous
nineteen-year-old girl, so much so that you can almost hear her pouting at
certain points, but equally gives her character a warmth and individuality
which no doubt led to her finding herself in the Big Finish studio again
several months later for a not-entirely-dissimilar role. Again, the way in which the Doctor’s
attempt at detecting the Spillagers thrusts Nyssa into the middle of an
Alpine snowdrift and leads to Sarah Sutton dominating the early action
smacks more of the kind of storytelling found in the episodes which
Cartmel script-edited, eliminating the preliminary TARDIS-based scene
which another writer might have created in favour of having the action
already under way. I’m not convinced that the story was originally
conceived for this kind of pairing, as Nyssa is more than unduly bolshy
when the Doctor finally appears on the scene, and it doesn’t feel quite
right for the Fifth Doctor to be the one deciding to hold a séance, but
then again just because it’s an avenue that the production team of, say,
1983 didn’t explore, doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to return to it in 2000.
Where the production is perhaps let down is in a certain awkwardness in
the "poltergeist" scenes; it’s the old Big Finish trap of thinking that
just because you’re audio-only, you can have sound-only phenomena and lose
nothing by not having pictures. Whereas, of course, half the point of
poltergeist phenomena is that you have sounds with nobody visible to make
them, or objects moving by themselves. It’s perhaps most obvious at the
end of Part Two, where the ski sticks rising from the ground and flinging
themselves at the Doctor are described in the minutest detail, where an
intelligent listener would just need to have the ski poles mentioned and
hear the "whoosh" to know what was going on. The rationale, however, is sufficiently
involved and avoids a disappointingly simple explanation, involving a
disembodied spirit, a telepath and a psychokinetic being brought together
and all setting each other off. Tied in with the Spillager plot (and the
destruction of their fleet in a gesture which the Seventh Doctor would no
doubt have relished), there’s a distinct feel of Cartmel’s own era in the
way the story brings together ideas, atmosphere and the dramatic situation
to make for a slightly more demanding style of Doctor Who. It’s
just a shame that nobody has yet found a way of recording cold onto CD,
otherwise the atmosphere might have been perfect, and while some of its
concepts aren’t the most original, it’s sufficiently well-produced to
gloss over the small cast and other limitations.
CD Facts Part 1 - Tracks 1-7 Part 2 - Tracks 8-13 Part 3 - Tracks 1-5 Part 4 - Tracks 6-9
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According
to Andrew Cartmel’s sleeve notes, he pitched ‘Winter for the Adept’ to the
producers as "St Trinian’s with witches". Which is fair enough, and it
would no doubt be churlish of me to point out that not only aren’t there
really any witches as such, but being Big Finish, a sum total of two
pupils and two teachers. This of course means that the school can
justifiably claim to major in one-to-one attention, but when one of the
teachers is a French mistress and the other a Scottish religious maniac,
we’re probably not talking the broadest of curriculums. But yes, I think
I’m being harsh there, because what we have here is a superior example of
the "people trapped in an isolated location" story which lends itself very
easily to audio. It’s also an interesting take on the Fifth Doctor’s era
and an attempt to add something of the stylistic touches which had been
happening in Doctor Who novels for some time to the audio releases.