8DA 06: Dark Eyes Volume 1 (Spoilers)

Note: I was not kidding when I said this was gonna be loooooooong.

After listening to Robophobia (Liv Chenka's first appearance, opposite Sylvester McCoy, back in the Monthly Range) I thought I'd dive back into the Dark Eyes series -- where Liv is reintroduced as a companion to the 8th Doctor. I first listened to these sets around 18 month ago, when I was really getting into Big Finish' output in earnest, and beginning my first early forays beyond Paul McGann's stuff.

I can't say I remember any of these sets fondly or especially well (though I do recall enjoying The Great War quite a bit). Overall I found the series to be unnecessarily convoluted and confusing. And upon this, my second listen, that impression only stands firmer. Dark Eyes is a bit of a weird, wonky mess.

But enough preamble. Let's dig into the individual stories, yeah?

Dark Eyes 1.1: The Great War
I think it's more or less understood by now that stories introducing new companions, similar to stories introducing new Doctors (albeit to a lesser extent) largely function as "soft" reboots. They're designed to reestablish Doctor Who's status quo, with the new companion's introduction into the bizarre, confusing and sometimes frightening world of the TARDIS mirroring that of new viewers. Or, in this case, listeners. It is therefore somewhat odd, I think, that The Great War is so firmly beholden to the continuity of the preceding 8DA series (specifically 8DA 4.10: To The Death). While the events of those stories are never directly referenced, the Doctor's (arguably unhinged) state of mind and dialog makes it clear that something very bad has just happened. 

In another case, I might consider this a mark against The Great War -- while I'm a big fan of continuity, I'm also a strong believer that each story needs to be able to stand on its own, without relying on other stories. But in this case, I think it works--what's important is less the specific details of the Doctor's prior adventure, and more his state of mind, and when he raves--almost incoherently--about Susan betraying him, it's easy to see that this is a Doctor very near to their breaking point. He says that he set his TARDIS on a course to to the end of the universe itself "for perspective," but the subtext is clear: he may not have consciously planned it as such, but this is the Doctor careening toward suicide. It's a familiar state of mind, and I think the script (and, much more importantly, the acting) was extremely effective at conveying that.

But after the meeting with Narvin, the story quickly starts to lose some of its tension. In what will become a running theme for the Dark Eyes series, the premise is overly convoluted and poorly explained. In this set, the Doctor is directed to "No Man's Land" -- the Western Front, near the end of the First World War, because there (Narvin assures them) is where they will find the "hope" they sought.

Which obviously raises the question, "what is hope?" Which the series will not properly answer until the very end of the series -- long, long after most listeners have forgotten about it. (Also a running theme.)

But before I get to the elements that don't work, let's focus for a bit on what works well--because where The Great War is good, it is very good.

Molly O'Sullivan is introduced around 10 minutes into the episode, which is effectively where the story begins (everything prior being little more than an extended prologue). She's an immediately compelling and engaging character, and her narration of her letter home is both an excellent way to efficiently convey her character as well as a very well-executed framing device for the set as a whole.

Further, Isabel makes for an extremely effective misdirect: where Molly can be somewhat abrasive and antagonistic, Isabel fits much more neatly into the expected, Default Companion Template. Her sudden death, therefore, hits hard--as she is precisely the one character in this story we'd expect to survive.

And while the precise chronology is a bit confusing, the scattered scenes we get of the Doctor's life in and around this field hospital are very engaging, as he attempts to decipher the puzzle the Time Lords sent them on while constantly knocking against the locals. It's all very fun stuff, leading up to that lovely moment where they (finally) convinces Molly to trust them.

All of which is fantastic.

But then you get into the plot proper, and things are a bit... less polished there. The Doctor's mission in this time period lacks specificity, which is seldom ideal, and this means they spends much of their time simply bumbling about, trying to figure out what's going on. This lack of a clear conflict makes the story feel a bit more meandering, which could work if there wasn't ultimately a Big Bad to defeat... but there is. And this structure ensures that the villains don't get fully developed, making their defeat feel much less compelling.

This story also introduces a lot of big ideas -- big questions -- that it leaves unanswered. Why did the Time Lords send the Doctor to the place really? How did they know what was going on? Why is a Time Lord working for the Daleks? How is Molly important to these experiments? And so on. But the thing is... we're never given much reason to care about the answers, because these questions aren't grounded in characters. We'll eventually learn the answers to some of these questions, but as the Dark Eyes saga progresses, each new story will layer on additional questions, while occasionally posing answers that serve to (unintentionally?) produce even more questions. All of which are tied more to the minutiae of the plot than the characters themselves, leaving the whole adventure feeling somewhat untethered--a complex Gordian's Knot of story threads, few of which are very interesting to think about, most of which are exceptionally easy to forget about (even when taking notes).

And then it all ends with a big cliffhanger, before anything is properly resolved. I remember enjoying The Great War quite a bit the first time through, but upon this relisten, it falls a bit flat. It's less self-contained than I remember, and while the story has a lot of moving parts that can be fun to see in motion, there's very little emotional resonance or thematic depth. It is, I think, a story carried mostly by a pair of fantastic performances from Paul McGann and Ruth Bradley, and some very effective and well-written characterization.

Overall I'd give it 4 out or 5 TARDISes.

Dark Eyes 1.2: Fugitives
The prior episode ended with the Doctor and Molly smack dab in the middle of the Western Front, fleeing Daleks. Quite the explosive cliffhanger, eh? So naturally Big Finish (repeating one of their most annoying tropes) abandons that premise and jumps us ahead to the next story, in media res -- some several decades later in the 1970s.

That said, the opening of Fugitives is pretty awesome. The Doctor sending an impossible message? I love it. An utterly fantastic hook.

And then we jump right back in time to the Great War, where we're treated to one of my favorite quotes in response to Daleks: "Have they got Germans inside them?" Well, kind of, yes. 

And, of course, effectively being the second-half of the two-parter that began with The Great War, Molly continues to impress, with a great deal of excellent banter between her and the Doctor that really shows off the chemistry between these two characters. Their dynamic is reminiscent of that between the 10th Doctor and Donna Noble: new, refreshing different to what we've seen before, and delightfully fast-paced and they bark lines back and forth at each other.

But the story is also a confusing mess.

Dr. Sturges, for example, is working for the Daleks, which indicates that the Daleks gave Molly her "dark eyes" and making the question of how the Time Lords were aware of any of this all the more pressing. But if he is working for the Daleks, and not the Time Lords, why doesn't he simply shoot the Doctor? What reason does he have for allowing the "greatest enemy of the Daleks" to survive? And then we see Molly hop into the TARDIS, only to declare she's been there before--which is eventually explained, in a very convoluted way, but that explanation doesn't really make much sense when you think on it (we'll get there) nor does it explain how Molly is able to pilot the TARDIS (something I don't think they ever even attempted to explain).

And then there are the scenes with Straxis, which basically feel like irrelevant nonsequiturs, but they are interesting and engaging and and set our imaginations alight, wondering how his situation could possibly tie into the "Dark Eyes" plot the Doctor and Molly are currently embroiled in. Which leads us into the quote of the set:

"I just need to be, well, you know: killed."

Easily one of the best narrative hooks in this venerable franchise, yeah? And easily one of the few scenes from the whole Dark Eyes series that stuck around in my memory even after all of the many myriad plot details and long-since crumbled away to dust.

And boy oh boy are there a lot of plot details being juggled around in this set. Molly herself is (naturally) at the center of yet-another "insane plot to destroy the universe" (a very common conflict in science fiction that, in my experience, has never once been interesting); Molly's first trip through time takes her right to the early days of the Second World War (Dunkirk) and provides us with a lovely, very Doctor-ish line, "There's always a war on." But before we can get comfortable in this new setting--DALEKS!--and we're wooshed back to the 1970s... where a future Doctor--or someone posing as a future incarnation--has arranged for a team of scientists to construct a temporal vortex machine in the Doctor's Baker Street apartments. A machine that, naturally, opens up to spew out Daleks.

Who then promptly invade 1970s London.

So we're left to assume that this entire series of events was planned out, somehow, but the devious "Dalek Time Controller," who is to be the main villain of the Dark Eyes series despite acting little different to any other Dalek. If you want to give specific Daleks unique roles in stories, it's vitally important that they also have distinct personalities. But that's something to whinge on about at length when we get to Dark Eyes 4.

And a new (pointless) mystery: why does the TARDIS fail to translate for Molly?

All this while we continue to see just how broken the Doctor is at this point in his life. It's lovely seeing the juxtaposition between a very depressed 8th Doctor, and Molly--who is ecstatic at the idea of exploring time and space, exhibiting a childlike glee at the thought of it (after "escaping two world wars") quite at odds with the more prickly aspects of her character that were front-and-center in the preceding story. Her innocence and wonder and optimism balance against the Doctor perfectly, creating a fantastic companion dynamic that is instantly more engaging, in my opinion, than any of the 8th Doctor's prior companions. Here we see, for the first time, really, just what the 8th Doctor's Adventures can be like, as the 8DAs move further away from the themes and tones of the old era.

Ultimately Fugitives wraps up the two-parter well, and does an excellent job making the argument for Molly's inclusion in the series, but fails to really hook me when it comes to the drama--all of the conflict is external! This kind of convoluted, plot-heavy story is fairly typical Doctor Who fare, but personally I feel stories need a bit more depth to them, either from grappling with interesting SF concepts (the so-called "big idea" science fiction) or emotional grounding. I care much less about what happens than why, and Dark Eyes as a whole tends to be much more preoccupied with the former, much less so with the latter.

So: 4 out of 5 TARDISes again, owing to fantastic acting and characterization, but a fairly uninteresting plot.

Dark Eyes 1.3: Tangled Web
This title may as well be a descriptor of Nicholas Brigg's whole approach to writing Doctor Who stories, huh? He's always juggling with a lot of balls in the air, jumping us from one plot beat to another as quickly as possible, leaving the characters little time to rest or reflect before being distracted by the next crisis or twist. It's very much a plot-driven approach. At time of writing, I think it's safe to characterize Briggs' as a writer who is very fond of intricate plotting, as this aspect of his stories tends to outweigh all the others.

Anyway, this is the story where's it's revealed that Molly O'Sullivan is, in fact, a Disney Princess.

"You, my girl, will free the universe from tyranny!" Abducting a baby is pretty classic villainy, right? This Caltris fellow immediately makes an impact as a bad guy, even without actually doing anything that bad. He's smarmy and creepy, though, and exudes an air of menace that really does a great job establishing him as the villain of this set (shame he won't stick around for the whole series).

But he's also deeply enmeshed in this increasingly convoluted plot. We learn that Caltris, like Sturgeon before him, is working for the Daleks--we never get a clear explanation why--and that he's looking for Straxis, who is somehow integral to the Daleks' plan for Molly. We learn that he has been modified by the Daleks, but don't really learn how, specifically, beyond the fact that said modifications somehow make him something other than a Time Lord. Oh, and he gave Molly her dark eyes in infancy, which raises of the question of why they did that so far back in the past, and then simply ignored Molly for 20 years. Are the "dark eyes" -- a symptom of the lovely bit of technobabble we'll get later, "retrogenitor particles" -- like wine? Do they need to mature over a long period of time? It's just... odd.

We're told, explicitly, that "Everything has been planned down to the finest detail. And the patterns have been locked." But we don't actually see anything that looks like the result of careful planning -- more just luck and coincidence. After all, why would Caltris' plan involve losing Molly and getting her onto the TARDIS?

But even with all of those questions, this story treats us to some truly lovely writing. My favorite--and the quote of this set, indeed, of the whole range--being this one:

"But that was simply an idea that got stuck in your head. Because, well, because of the war. Because daring to hope you might get through it all when so many around you are dying sometimes just feels too painful. But that pain--you know that pain--is hope. And it hurts. Because you don't dare to feel it unless it gets crushed. But if you can cling on to it, it can get you through the worst of times."

It's a lovely line delivered exquisitely by McGann, with additional weight lent to it from the context of this story, sandwiched as it is between the catastrophic personal loss the Doctor experienced just before meeting Molly, as well as the imminent loss we know he's about to face with inevitable advent of the Last Great Time War.

This is precisely the strong emotional grounding that the prior stories lacked, and its presence here--along with a much more compelling plot--make Tangled Web one of the best stories of the set. Where my opinion of The Great War diminished on my second listen, my opinion of Tangled Web improved greatly.

Helped along, I must hasten to add, by a genuinely engaging plot. Skaro, after a thousand years of peace--presumably after the Dalek war machine succeeded in conquering the universe, or at least the galaxy--providing the Daleks with an opportunity for self-reflection? Wherein they (finally) realize the error of their ways? And retro-engineer themselves back into Khaleds? That's the kind of "big idea" I live for! It also raises interesting ethical questions: this future is easily the best possible outcome for the Dalek race, but it is predicated on the deaths of countless other species. Can something genuinely good be built atop so much evil? Can a civilization built atop so many corpses ever truly redeem itself? Is any of the good they might do worth the price they paid to reach that point? Compelling questions in a vacuum, yes, but far more so considering their deep applicability to anglophone listeners--for what, I hope, are extraordinarily obvious reasons.

In other cases the reveal that this future was but an illusion might undermine those questions, but the fact that this illusion was generated from the Doctor's own, personal hopes and desires prevents that from happening, I think. Allowing this plot to function as a "big idea" story while simultaneously also very effectively delivering firm emotional grounding and character drama.

The over-arcing plot is still a bit too convoluted for my tastes ("Where did this all start? In No Man's Land?" Good question) but it demonstrates that even within that unnecessarily convolute framing, excellent stories can still be told. So: 5 out of 5 TARDISes. Best story of the Dark Eyes series so far. (And, SPOILER, the 2nd best out of all 16 stories.)

Dark Eyes 1.4: X and the Daleks
And now, finally, it is time to finally get around to answering some of the many questions that have been steadily accumulating over this set.

Quote of the story: "I cannot spend my life explaining things to people."

There are only so many ways the Doctor can say, "I'll explain later," but I think McGann hits upon the very best version of that here. This is as close to a Platonic Ideal of that cliche as we're ever likely to get, I think.

So, most of this story is basically built around a parade of plot reveals. We learn that Molly has been incubating some wonderful bits of technobabble called retrogenitor particles, and is "full to bursting," though we don't learn why she, specifically, was chosen. We can assume that the Daleks chose her because they had foreknowledge of her being the Doctor's companion, but the only reason she even met the Doctor is because the Time Lords sent the Doctor to Molly in the first place because they knew the Daleks were plotting something. And while a closed time loop of this sort isn't exactly new ground for Doctor Who, it's not a very satisfying explanation.

And because nothing in this series can ever be simple or straightforward, the Caltris in this story is actually an earlier version of the character we've seen before, who hasn't even started his experiences first--making yet another time loop as Molly's arrival is what convinces him that his ideas will ultimately be successful.

At least we get a bit of time with Naden, the old man, who serves as a great temporary companion to the Doctor, just as different and refreshing as Molly herself. "There's no cowardice in staying alive. And hoping against hope."

But then everyone just abandons this occupied planet to the Daleks and pops off in the TARDIS. Seems kind of callous to me, but oh well. There are a lot of big reveals to get through: not enough time in this story to really tease out a proper plot.

But, naturally, those reveals must also occur with a number of additional, pointlessly convoluted details. Like... why must the Time Lords place the Docter inside of a fake version of their own TARDIS, with the Doctor's actual TARDIS placed inside the fake? What is the point of this, other than adding yet another unnecessary detail for the listener to consider and question?

"This tardy box is all a lotta nonsense not worth bothering with. It is what it is and now we're here."

As Molly says, we ought to ignore all of the details and just focus on enjoying the ride... but the thing is, the whole Dark Eyes series is constructed entirely out of those nonsense details.

Like, then we get the reveal that the Dalek's evil plan was actually Gallifrey's evil plan, and that the retrogenitor particles they thought would wipe out all of the Time Lords would, instead, target the Daleks. Which almost makes sense, if you forget the detail that Molly had to be in close proximity to the Doctor in order to get the particles to "target" Time Lord DNA, and she had no such similar exposure to the Daleks.

We also get the reveal that Caltris and Straxis are, in fact, the same Time Lord--the former being a later incarnation of the latter who, at his request, was infused with Dalek DNA. So: he's a generic insane guy. Neat. He tries to justify this as being done out of hatred for the Time Lords, but really it just reeks of him fetishizing Daleks. It's not like the two are literal opposites.

But it kind of works, in spite of the nonsense, because Caltris is played by Toby Jones, and if there's one thing Toby Jones is really, fantastically, phenomenally good at... it's playing menacing bad guys. He delivers a fantastic performance here, such that--in spite of the nonsense--it's a shame  Caltris doesn't survive the set. Toby Jones would make for a perfect recurring antagonist, yeah?

But, alas, such was not to be. The Daleks kill Straxis, which winds up udoing the whole plot, erasing this whole timeline from existence--with only the Doctor, Molly and Dalek Time Controller retaining their memories. We don't properly get an explanation for why this is (saying "strange things happen in the TARDIS" doesn't quite qualify) but it beats the amnesia cliche. With the Dalek plan foiled, Molly's "dark eyes" return to normal. She's now perfectly saved, and the villains perfectly thwarted, so one might easily leave this story wondering why the Dark Eyes series keeps going, despite such a clear ending.

And, honestly, while future sets will have some good stories, the set really ought to have ended here. Dark Eyes 1 is, by far, the strongest boxset of the series, and it closes things out on a very unambiguous and final conclusion. The story is over! Molly finishes writing her letter, and leaves the TARDIS. For some reason she expects that in this new timeline Kitty will still be alive--despite her death having nothing at all to do with the Daleks' machinations--but Dark Eyes wouldn't be Dark Eyes if everything made sense.

By itself I don't think X and the Daleks is a particularly strong story, but it functions well as an ending to the set. I'll give it 4 out of 5 TARDISes, as it satisfactorily manages to wrap everything up fairly neatly, with some fantastic characterization and performances, even if the action contextualizing everything is a bit muddy.

Final Thoughts (TL;DR Section)
Overall, Dark Eyes 1 shines as the best entry in the Dark Eyes series, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I think the 8DAs would probably be better, overall, if this were the only entry in the series. The intricate plotting mostly resolves coherently, even if many of the twists and turns felt unnecessary (almost if if they were designed to distract) and the dialog and character interactions are all snappy and engaging.

Following up on To The Death we get a nice window into the 8th Doctor at his lowest moments, and some fascinating insights into the Doctor's character. The Doctor's relationship with Molly is, consistently, a delight. I don't know that I'd necessarily recommend the Dark Eyes series as a whole to anyone, but this first set? It's pretty good. Maybe not quite in the uppermost tier of Big Finish stories, but very nearly.

I'm a bit torn on how to rank it (and, hell, maybe I'll eventually get fed up and stop trying these numerical scores) but fore now I'm thinking I'll tentatively give this set a 5 out of 5. Not quite the highest rating I offer (that'd be 5 golden TARDISes out of 5) but almost. If nothing else, it's a fun ride, and the third story provides the set with enough depth to make the trip feel genuinely rewarding.