Beyond History's End | 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Review 8 of 12 | Dark Eyes written by Nicholas Briggs

There have been a lot of Big Finish specials over the years – so many, in fact, that they’ve retrospectively been carved up by the company, with ex-subscriber-exclusive ‘bonus releases’ now occupying their own corner of the site, and commercial specials another. But of them all, Dark Eyes feels like the most special. Like UNIT: Dominion before it, it takes the form of four linked, yet individually-packaged, episodes held together by a stylish cardboard slipcase, but Dark Eyes’ specialness extends far beyond its shelf appeal.

Since he first morphed to life part-way through the ill-fated Fox attempt at a Stateside Doctor Who pilot, Paul McGann’s Doctor has enjoyed more adventures across the media than any of his cohorts, and every single one of them that has bore his visage on its artwork has plucked his likeness from one the few images produced to promote that Fox movie, bar one: Dark Eyes. This box set’s artwork shows McGann’s once-Byronic embodiment of the Time Lord looking more like the incarnation that will eventually take his place at the TARDIS console. Brandishing a two-year old sonic screwdriver fashioned by the Weta Workshop and sporting a shorter hairstyle and a heavy leather jacket that scream ‘mariner’, if not ‘time warrior’, the images of the weathered eighth Doctor found adorning this special production make a bold statement about how the character has changed over the years, and indeed the changes soon to come.

More radically still, Dark Eyes subversively plays with listeners’ hopes and expectations through its subject matter, which sees the Time Lord Straxus (Human Resources, The Vengeance of Morbius) enlist the Doctor’s help to thwart an “insane plot to destroy the universe” – a plot that, it turns out, the Daleks are behind. Following soon in the wake of To the Death, in which the personal war between the Doctor and the Daleks plumbed agonising new depths, Dark Eyes enflames the feeling of inexorability already building, bringing Gallifrey right into the heart of the conflict and setting the stall for the inter-series showdown to come.  Of course, in Martin Montague’s accompanying documentary, this story’s writer and BBC licensee Nicholas Briggs is quick to make it plain that Big Finish are not scouting the foothills to the Last Great Time War here, even going so far as to throw a cruel joke into his third episode to hammer his point home, but that is not how things sound to the listener. Every aspect of this production, from the Doctor’s intensifying grief and despair to the mounting temporal power of the Daleks and their time controller, points obviously towards the inevitable. Big Finish’s licence might not presently allow them to encroach upon ‘new’ Doctor Who or any of its formative angles, but they seem to have finally realised that there’s nothing stopping them from taking us far as Hitler invading Poland. In such context, Dark Eyes is just more hyperinflation.

The most special thing about Dark Eyes, though, is a little more subtle than a new hairdo or an old war don’t – it’s a question of form. Whereas UNIT: Dominion was consciously cinematic, but still retained the spirit of a traditional Doctor Who adventure, Dark Eyes is another “concept album” from Briggs, closer in structure and tone to one of his grim Dalek Empire epics than anything that Big Finish have previously put out under a Doctor Who banner. It is defined by incident, but carried by character. It is about hope, but abounding with despair. It’s a story that focuses on just two – perhaps three, if you’re prepared to stretch a point – people, and uses the explosions erupting all around them to dissect their souls.

 

Of its four episodes, “The Great War” is the one most redolent of traditional Doctor Who, as it has to throw our wounded hero into a situation in which he can meet his new companion, whose life he’s evidently vowed to save. Even this is presented in a highly-stylised manner, though, as the narrative flits between the Doctor’s suicidal collision course with the end of time, which Straxus interrupts by dangling the carrot of hope and purpose, and the Doctor’s exploits in Great War France. From there, the adventure adopts the relatively rare (for Who) form of a hunt across space and time, as the Doctor and his new charge Molly are pursued by the Dalek Time Controller and his sinister agents. It’s like an inspiring inversion of The Chase, where the terror is all-pervading and real, and the only humour of the sort you’d generally find in the vicinity of gallows.

Dark Eyes’ narrative is carried as much by the new companion as it is the grieving, straw-clutching Doctor – she is, in fact, the eponymous ‘Dark Eyes’. Molly’s forceful Irish brogue that serves as an aural contrast to the eighth Doctor’s velvet RP speaks to the differences in the character’s attitudes on this adventure, which often casts the companion in the steadying role, as opposed to vice-versa, at times showing up the Doctor’s emotional intemperance – something that Paul McGann and Primeval star Ruth Bradley each play to beautifully. It’s a fresh and exhilarating dynamic, which is all the more remarkable as this is becoming increasingly hard to achieve the more travelling companions that the itinerant Gallifreyan accrues. One of the most moving moments in the story – and one of the key moments, I think, from the Doctor’s standpoint – sees Molly calmly mention some of the hardships and losses that she’s had to suffer through in her lifetime, the total sum of which hasn’t driven her to the level of indulgent despair that the Doctor is currently wallowing in. She’s the hope that the Doctor is so desperately seeking – it’s right there, embodied in her brave, truculent spirit. The Doctor might think that he’s been sent to save Molly O’Sullivan, but Dark Eyes is more the story of how she saves him.

Briggs’ treatment of the Daleks is similarly pioneering at times – another feat that’s noteworthy given the great strides made by both Big Finish and BBC Wales in recent years. The third instalment explores the interesting notion of post-Time War (and thus, presumably, considerably post-Asylum of the Daleks) redemption for the Dalek race, and what form this might take. The writer toys cruelly with the Doctor’s passions and prejudices here, entwining them with his search for hope and the credulity that goes along with it. The idea of “a life outside the shell”, and retro-engineered Kaled children laughing at play, are such far-fetched conceits that in any other story the listener would dismiss them out of hand as the products of evil Dalek manoeuvrings, but here the Doctor is grudgingly accepting of them, imbuing the whole episode with a thrilling sense of plausibility that even Helen Raynor’s Evolution of the Daleks television two-parter never seriously engendered.


Whilst Briggs was keen to make what he calls “The Molly Era” of the eighth Doctor’s life as intense as possible for the pair, resulting in four scripts that stick with them almost exclusively, the sole competing thread revolves around Straxus and his peculiar role in both defending against and advancing the Dalek Time Controller’s master plan. Presumably as the incomparable Nickolas Grace was unavailable to reprise the role, Protect and Survive’s Peter Reagan was cast to step into the next incarnation of the Time Lord’s shoes, moving the part away from the sort of bureaucratic mystification that had defined the character in stories past and into more exhorting territory. Reagan’s voice has an imperious, authoritarian tone that fits the character’s circuitous journey in Dark Eyes perfectly, leading us to an unforeseen and prescient development that, listening to the production again recently for the purpose of this article, put me very much in mind of The Name of the Doctor’s climactic reveal, albeit in a clear-cut black and white as opposed to a dark and muddy greyscale.


Indeed, Dark Eyes has far more in common with the Doctor Who of television today than it does either the classic series or even McGann’s American one-off. Its intelligence, tone and careful character development all reflect the high standards to which fans have become accustomed, on occasion even satisfying desires that the television series can’t hope to, thanks to both the vast visual scope of the audio medium and its narrower target audience. Briggs may have conceived Dark Eyes as his second “concept album”, but in its development it’s surpassed even that. It’s a digest of despair and a hatful of hope, charged with all the energy of an older and edgier eighth Doctor and his feisty Irish charge. These four expansive episodes have all the weight and consequence of several seasons’ worth of stories, precision-engineered into one fast-flying box set. That’s not bad going for forty quid.

Dark Eyes is currently available to download from Big Finish Productions for just £35.00, though due to its popularity the company often reduce the price as part of a short-lived promotion, most recently as one of Paul McGann’s personal picks. Keep an eye out for future promotions if you’re hard-up. The CD box set version (which also comes with a free download) is currently just five pounds more than the download-only version.

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