 |
| Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd |
The Doctor wants doughnuts, and luck and the TARDIS being what they are, he naturally brings his companions to the 32nd century's greatest health spa and weight loss clinic, where the chronically unfit, overweight and unattractive come to become slim and beautiful.
I've commented on the dominant themes of nostalgia, melancholy and the alienation of the companion in the previous entries in the series. The Beautiful People takes a decisive approach to those themes, which is to say FUCK THIS SHIT! Let's have some fun, yo! Instead, Morris delivers a bubbly satire on weight loss culture, featuring a false-tanned beauty fascist for a villain, and told from the perspective of the Doctor's closest equal. Early in the play, Romana speculates that K9 might consider himself to be the adventurer and the Doctor his sidekick, and that is certainly true of Romana, with her tolerance of her companion's eccentricities.
Ward provides a range of voices. Her Fourth Doctor is pretty good for style, but lacks the bass, while her chirpy 'burn droid' voices are a delight.
The Beautiful People is an entertaining romp, a modestly successful satire of crash weight loss programmes, and frankly a relief after the grimness of The Blue Tooth. Doctor Who has always featured a mixture of serious stories and lighter fare, and the lighter episodes are among the most difficult to get right, with many being silly and slightly jarring. The Beautiful People manages to also be a proper adventure, despite a couple of gratuitous Hitchhiker's Guide references.
Overall, this play caps off the series nicely. We have darkly fantastic pseudohistorical, high-concept space opera, contemporary body horror and a satirical allegory in space, featuring appearances by two iconic monsters, a godlike being and a regular crazy person with robot flunkies.
Next week, we'll kick off series 2 with Mother Russia, starring Peter Purves as Steven Taylor and Tony Millan as The Interrogator.
No comments:
Post a Comment