Start to Finish - Seven Keys to Doomsday

Image (c) Big Finish Productions

As the Big Finish adaptations of the Doctor Who Stageplays were released in reverse chronological order, the next one up is 1974's spectacular and well-reviewed bomb, Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday.

Typical young seventies couple Jimmy and Jenny - she's idealistic, sensitive and compassionate; he's a complete and unapologetic doucheyacht - are about to enjoy an evening at the theatre(1) when a blue box appears on stage and a man staggers out and collapses(2). They help him back into the box, which is of course bigger on the inside, and he regenerates into Trevor Martin.

The Doctor introduces himself, and expains that the Time Lords are steering the TARDIS to the planet Karn, where he was lately shot after finding a shiny crystal. He has to see if he can find more of them, but Jimmy decides that he'd rather stand around in a sulk than either accompany him or wait in the TARDIS, and so would Jenny(3). They are captured by some sort of resistance, let go, run into monsters, escape, find more crystals and ultimately find their way into a series of tunnels under and ancient city. Jimmy gets hold of a gun and starts acting like Dirty Harry(4), but almost gets killed by not listening to the Doctor. Then they find a computer which sounds like Deep Thought and tries to kill them because they are looking for the segments of the Crystal of All Power. Then the Daleks turn up, there's a sort of ghost wizard thing, Jenny is disguised as a Dalek and seems to be blown up(5). At the end, everyone is captured, but the Doctor does a clever thing and it's home for tea and crumpets and Jimmy sneering at Jenny for wanting to go on another adventure with the Doctor(6).

Spectacular!

Overall, I think it's fair to say that Seven Keys to Doomsday (the Big Finish release cuts the title down a bit) is a better story than The Ultimate Adventure, with the only bizarre theatrical conceit foisted on writer Terrance Dicks being the companions planted in the audience, which is extra weird in an audio play, but so it goes. Where Seven Keys suffers thanks to the release order is in the 'Jenny disguised as a Dalek' scene, chunks of which were lifted whole cloth by Dicks into The Ultimate Adventure, only with Zog in the casing(7). The original show was a colossal spectacular which utterly failed to make back its money, thanks in part to overambitious design and in part to the loss of theatrical revenue during the '74 IRA campaign. For all of this, the conversion to audio is much better done here than in the previous release, with a minimum of 'look, the monster has him by the throat.'

Trevor Martin is an excellent alternate 4th Doctor in the role he first played in 1974, although it's interesting to hear people compare that original stage performance to Jon Pertwee. They always say that he seemed much older, but Martin is still performing and Pertwee would be approaching his century if he were still alive, so Martin must be the younger man(8). Jenny is a top-notch companion (played here by Charlie Hayes, daughter of Wendy Padbury who, as well as playing Zoe Heriot, was also the original stage Jenny,) but oh my is Jimmy a man of his time. All that chauvinism that Crystal complains of rather unfairly in The Ultimate Adventure is in full evidence with Jimmy, whose catchphrase appears to be: "Come on, Jenny; we're leaving."

Seven Keys to Doomsday is probably less fun than The Ultimate Adventure, but it makes for a more coherent audio play. Will this trend be continued with The Curse of the Daleks(9)? We'll find out next time.

(1) Exhibit A: Jimmy is delighted to have seats that allow maximum access to the intermission ice creams, because A Man does not like theatre.
(2) Exhibit B: Jimmy does not want to help out, and ridicules Jenny's impulse to do so when he can't talk her out of it.
(3) Exhibit C-J. He does this a lot.
(4) Exhibit K.
(5) Exhibit L: When he discovers that she escaped, Jimmy is more angry with her for scaring him than relieved that she's alive.
(6) Exhibit M.
(7) In addition, the whole crystal segment thing would later be recycled for The Key to Time (although some might say the quest format was reused here from The Keys of Marinus,) and the planet Karn would turn up as a completely different devastated hellhole in The Brain of Morbius.
(8) Wikipedia and the IMDb come up a blank.
(9) Spoilers: No.