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| The Fires of Vulcan by Steve Lyons |
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Paired with Mel rather than Ace, Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is a more
reflective character than the manic clown of his first televised season;
faced with the likelihood of being stranded in Pompeii on the eve of the
infamous eruption of Vesuvius, he almost immediately sinks into a
fatalistic despondency and accepts that he has reached his final
adventure. In fact, fatalism is one of the strands running through the
story- the Pompeians in general simply accept that their crops don’t grow
or that they have earth tremors and attribute them to their gods, rather
than trying to find out why. Aglae doesn’t question the
circumstances which lead to her working as an all-purpose slave and
prostitute and doesn’t have an opinion on the matter- her life is as it
is. This of course paves the way for Bonnie Langford’s Mel to take centre
stage as the active and positive force in the story, so much so that her
faith in the Doctor is so much greater than the Doctor’s in himself. At
every turn, she resourcefully tries new ways to get the TARDIS back and
leave Pompeii before the eruption; at the same time, the Doctor gradually
realises that things don’t have to be as they initially seem, so that by
the very end their positions are reversed and while Mel finally begins to
accept that she’s about to die, the Doctor has worked out how he can
satisfy the course of history and save his own life and Mel’s into the
bargain. It’s also an intelligent and
unpatronising script which attempts to teach the listener about the Roman
world by giving them hints to discover for themselves, rather than
hamfistedly explaining the difference between murmillones and
retarii or the growth of the Isis cult in the first century AD. One of
the story’s strengths, which only adds to the power of the climax, is that
rather than being historical dignitaries, the supporting cast are ordinary
citizens of the Roman empire- slaves, prostitutes, gladiators and
priestesses- with everyday preoccupations such as their reputations, their
grip on power or simply not being beaten by their mistress. Many of them
die precisely because they see the volcanic eruption as either divine
judgement on the unfaithful, from which they themselves of course expect
to be spared, or as a test of character which requires them to stand and
face it; their world view simply doesn’t include the concept of natural
disasters which sweep away the just and the unjust. It’s fitting that at
the very end, the fate of Aglae and Celsinus is left uncertain, as even if
the optimist in us likes to believe that they survived, thousands didn’t
and were killed by a disaster they couldn’t possibly understand. In many ways, what we have here is a
standard Big Finish supporting cast of competent audio actors; Steven
Wickham is particularly recognisable from ‘Phantasmagoria’, but otherwise
the only "name" in the cast is Gemma Bissix, apparently fresh from
EastEnders, although soap celebrity being the fickle thing it is, she
seems to have missed this reviewer’s radar completely and not even made
the reality TV shows where soap flotsam usually turns up. As Aglae, she’s
unfortunately something of a weak link in the production, and it isn’t
particularly her fault- her performance sounds as if she’s reading the
script for the second time at best, and it’s bad casting when a slave
sounds classier than her mistress. Add several readings of "owt" and "nowt"
for "aught" and "naught" (unless Pompeii has somehow been twinned with
Huddersfield) and a complete mispronunciation of "necropolis" and the
general impression is that she’s badly prepared and hasn’t had enough
direction. It’s a crying shame, because at times the character feels as if
she really could have become something special and captured the emotional
heart of the story, but comes across as having been given a copy of the
script and told to get on with it. But that’s just pointing out the most
obvious flaw, and it would be unfair to do that without, for example,
emphasising just how good an adventure it is for the Seventh Doctor and
Mel- hardly, after all, the best served of pairings- and one which plays
to the strengths of both characters so Mel’s persistence and optimism
balances the Doctor’s nightmare come true. The art of writing good
characters who interact realistically isn’t one normally associated with
Doctor Who, and yet in doing so Steve Lyons has given both audience
and actors a treat.
CD Facts Part 1 - Tracks 1-6 Part 2 - Tracks 7-11 Part 3 - Tracks 1-5 Part 4 - Tracks 6-11
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Having
scored one coup by securing Lalla Ward’s return to the role of Romana for
‘The Apocalypse Element’, Big Finish then somewhat trumped that by
persuading Bonnie Langford to take on Mel’s persona again for ‘The Fires
of Vulcan’. Now Bonnie Langford is a respected performer, whose time costs
a certain amount of money and who isn’t going to be easily cajoled into
playing in any old rubbish for coppers- it needed something special, so
it’s something of a relief to be able to say that the story is exactly
that. It would be easy to describe it as a "historical", but that would be
to ignore only too wilfully the time paradox at the heart of the Doctor
and Mel’s predicament. Instead, it’s an engaging character-based drama
which gives the regulars plenty to chew on while also bringing the
supporting characters to life.