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Tour operator Jolly Chronolidays offers to bring historical
subjects to life through specially staged reconstructions
at the scene of the events in question. One such venture,
in the "Sector of Forgotten Souls", where the Time Lord Omega's
ship vanished millennia ago, brings history to life rather
too literally for comfort...
Ian
Collier's Omega has, to my mind, one of the best villain voices
from the whole of '80s Who. In my humble opinion, he's
up there with Geoffrey Beevers' Master (from whom we'll be
hearing more later in the year). As a masked adversary (we
never saw his face until after he had copied the Doctor's
in Arc of Infinity) he is a perfect character for audio
drama.
The script is penned by Nev Fountain, one of writers of Dead
Ringers and the script editor of Death Comes to Time,
so as you would expect there is a degree of humour to this
drama. Much of this humour is provided by the characters of
Daland (Hugo Myatt), a shallow old ham of an actor, and the
eccentric Professor Ertikus (Patrick Duggan) and by the faux
Shakespearean dialects of the Jolly Chronolidays re-enactments.
Daland's rendition of Omega owes more to the bellowing Stephen
Thorne in The Three Doctors than Collier's guttural
performance. His theatricality and cowardice also remind me
of Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Caroline
Munro, who for several years in the early '90s was linked
with an abortive Doctor Who cinema film, finally makes
it into the series as the stewardess Sentia. She exhibits
a far greater acting range than her primarily decorative roles
in movies such as At the Earth's Core and The Spy
Who Loved Me ever allowed her to demonstrate.
The
first half of the story is a bit slow-moving, something that
is not helped by the fact that the appearance of a certain
character at the end of Part One is hardly a surprise (the
clue's in the title). However, the final two episodes unfold
very nicely indeed, with a stupendous twist at the end of
Part Three.
All
in all, it's well worth getting your hands on Omega.
Richard
McGinlay
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