CC 04.12: Solitaire (John Dorney)

i would love to see a live action fan film of this audio as it works incredibly well
One of John Dorney's Best Audios and should have been in the main range as doctor lite story

I definitely had fun with this one. Gotta say, Dorney really accomplished something here: I think this is the first time I've ever seen an SF story about being trapped inside a game actually turn out well.

Though I do think Solitaire suffers a bit from the same problems that plague all of these stories: chiefly being the abstract and inexplicable nature of the game. With no clearly defined rules, stakes or process, there's little sense of tension or progression, as everything that occurs feels entirely arbitrary. If the game were the main point of this story... I think it'd be just as full of an exercise as the thoroughly-lambasted Move Alone Home.

But thankfully there's a bit more to it than that.

Quote of the story: "You step into that cupboard... and you're dead!"

Yeah, sure. Why not.

Anyway, the Toymaker sure is fun here, right? And what a performance. All of that snarling menace really helps elevate the story, which would otherwise be perhaps a bit too silly. Though I must admit I loved Charlie playing ventriloquist for the puppetform 8th Doctor. I dunno about y'all, but those scenes gave me some pretty clear (and amusing) mental imagery.

That said, I really need to look up when this was written. I don't think it's much of a secret here that John Dorney is a fantastic writer for Doctor Who, but certain aspects of this story make it feel like it's one of his earlier works. So I'm gonna guess... circa 2007 or 2008 or so? EG the first episode ends with a pretty contrived cliffhanger--oh no, the Doctor is dead! Which is such a cheap cliche, and the kind of thing Dorney is usually above doing... but also kind of a staple of that era of the TV show. It's hard not to contrast this with a similar cliffhanger in The Invention of Death, which feels much more natural within the flow of the story despite being the same tired trope.

The ending is also a bit weak. How many times do we really need the, "Or maybe we're still in the simulation?" ending after a "trapped in a simulation" story? It just feels... I dunno. Slightly lazy. Maybe I'm being too critical here--perhaps I simply hold Dorney scripts to a higher standard. The curse of high expectations, eh? I dunno. 

Well, regardless, it was still a fun story and the two performances--about as different as they could be from one another--were a delight to listen to. The Toymaker is one of those Classic Who villains who is basically impossible to take seriously in live action... but limited to Audi can come across as more properly menacing.