The usual spoiler warning applies as to all the Big Finish stories that I review, although this was released in 2007 and to be honest most of what happens involves Autumnal end-of-season cricket and first-love. It is complex, lyrical and simple – all at the same time and a hugely impressive piece of writing that is well worth 25 minutes of your life.
‘Something is added to cricket by the angle of the sun as it stands at four o’clock in early September. The shadows are longer, there’s a suggestion of colder days approaching, of circular time, of aspects of our lives dying away and returning.
The other sort of time is called linear time, modern time, life is hard and then one dies, if that’s something one is liable to do. Cricket, seems to me, to stand for the former and against the latter. It’s something that dies but returns and writes mortals into history, in stories and statistics. Perhaps that’s why it appeals to me – I also die and return, like a hardy perennial.
However, linear time is currently impinging on the Hampshire town of Stockbridge in the form of an end-of-season struggle to avoid relegation from the top-most league of village cricket. They are raging against the dying of the light, they need wins not draws. They need umpires to take the brightest possible view of those stormy skies overhead. They need to play in horizontal rain if they have to. I’ve seen them do just that in the last couple of weeks, but I’ve joined them so late this year that I may not be much help.”
Thus we open with the thoughts of the Fifth Doctor. It is autumn in the Hampshire village of Stockbridge (the Fifth Doctor’s second home from the DWM strips), the nights are drawing in and the shadows lengthening and the cricket season is drawing to a close. The Doctor has turned up just in time to try to save Stockbridge from relegation. His appearance in the village appears to be a regular occurrence and fits with the opening of the ‘The Tides of Time’. The locals have accepted his breezing in and out of village life for generations.’
While the Doctor attempts to save the day in a more orthodox fashion than usual, Nyssa sits in their guest house writing a novel – the story of a princess from a land where everyone is nice to each other (sound familiar?). One of laudable things about Big Finish is the lives that they have given companions that were often left overlooked on TV and it is fair to say that Nyssa had a bit of a raw deal in the programme. Sarah Sutton is clearly a talented actor, but was often given very little to do, spending a lot of the time as part of a trio of companions. Nyssa has areas of her life almost completely un-tapped, apart from the occasional references to the loss of her home and family and her obvious friendship with Tegan – which viewed again I found rather touching. We also have the loss of her Father – his body parasitized by the Master – the snake at the heart of her novel. On TV, she was slightly trapped in amber as a teenage girl – a fairy princess, bright and intelligent, controlled, slightly aloof and almost pre-pubescent. This story starts to address that, but in a sensitive way, in contrast to the sometimes rather crass ways that some of the novels have dealt with developing companions for a more adult audience.
So this is as a coming of age story for Nyssa, a time when she starts to allow emotion, new experiences and love into her life. Whilst writing at the guest house, she meets Andrew, a student working there for the summer. He is perfect for her – bright, intelligent, but uncomplicated. He doesn’t overcomplicate or overthink his actions and is persistent, straightforward and light hearted even in the face of her initial frostiness and rejection. He persuades her to go out with him for the day to a nearby village called Traken, which he assumes she is from and their relationship starts to bloom. We hear her first kiss and her starting to open up to new experiences. Later, there is a rather lovely, if slightly embarrassing scene (when isn’t being a teenager embarrassing?), where the Doctor stumbles across Nyssa and Andrew in the woods at night – ermm stargazing… The Doctors fussy, slightly indignant response is just priceless and rather reminiscent to the First Doctor finding Susan and David together in Dalek Invasion of Earth. It is a brilliantly awkward scene – two people from different planets, behaving in such an English way.
The other plot strand is the Doctor’s attempts to save the season for the cricket team. Amongst the English rural idyll, he has some uncomfortable encounters with the ways that village life can sometimes be. Paul Cornell, like me, lives in rural Gloucestershire and I think grew up in Wiltshire. As with anywhere, a trip to the pub and a chat with locals can lead to some uncomfortable conversations. Here we have the cricket team’s former Lancashire professional – Don, giving his views on the Estonian barman and ‘pikeys’ and telling racist jokes. The maturity of the storytelling also makes Don a sympathetic figure though, in life you hear people express views that you find contemptible, even loved-ones, but they aren’t simply bad – life is far more complicated than that. Here we see the Doctor’s non-conformity (lemonade instead of beer) and inability to turn a blind eye to the prejudice of others at odds with fitting into the team ethic. He is more of a maverick, dilettante gentleman cricketer – a David Gower type figure. One thing that I love here are the references to the Ashes series of 2005 (the play was released in early 2007) – so we get Don’s views on Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen. 2005, what a year – definitely a vintage not a table wine – Doctor Who was back on TV, my team Liverpool won the Champions League in an amazing come-back in Istanbul and England won a very hard fought Ashes series against a truly great Australia team – happy days and great memories of times shared with loved ones who are no longer with us.
The tension (such as it is!) is whether Stockbridge can avoid relegation and whether the Doctor and Nyssa will stay long enough to go to the end of season ball – dancing until late to ‘Good Times’, a band with two of the first eleven on bass and keyboards! Then the central dilemma, will the newly jean-clad Nyssa stay with Andrew and will the fairy princess give it all up to work in the pub, losing her mystique in the process? Aside from the jeans, the tryst in the forest, drinks and lunch at a gastropub, we also get to hear Nyssa in the shower! I love the mixture of the alien and the real-life here – it doesn’t have to be the Powell estate or particularly urban to achieve this – not everyone lives a metropolitan life and that doesn’t reflect the reality of everyone in Britain, but often does the writers and producers of our television. While real-life reaches Nyssa, Andrew in turn starts to believe in her alien origins and life before Stockbridge. In an affecting scene she shows him the light of the destruction of Traken in the night sky near Orion – everyone she knows is dead, except one person and he is also lost to her.
In the end Nyssa completes her novel and story, leaving the book for Andrew to read. She has learned a lot, new feelings and experiences, but the thought of staying with him and him losing interest in her as everyday life takes over, means that she moves on with the Doctor. She leaves the story changed. The Doctor and Don win the final match and Stockbridge are saved from relegation. In the process though Don collapses at the crease, knowing he has done just enough to win the match. The season ends, the ball is cancelled out of respect for Don and Autumn turns to Winter. The Doctor’s final epitaph for Don is:
‘He doesn’t have to be there for the ending, he wrote it’
Circular Time:Autumn is one of my favourite pieces of Doctor Who in any format – concise, lyrical and affecting and suffused with an Autumnal melancholy. It is beautifully written and Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton and the supporting cast are superb. Part of me sometimes wishes that the TV series could more often find a few moments away from the rushing around and pause for thought in a similar way. Hopefully later in the thread I will review a couple of stories that do that more than most. Until then though a change of gear and the Doctor faces his final over:
A Journal of Impossible Things 