#65 Doctor Who: Live 34

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Doctor Who: Live 34

Starring: Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor,Sophie Aldred as Ace, and Philip Olivier as Hex
Format: Two full-cast CDs (or download) of four half-CD episodes
Silly? Satirical at times, but less silly about it than several television Doctor Who stories.
Standalone? Yes.
Recommended? Yes for style, no for substance. The framing device of live news broadcasts on four different days is very well used, but the story has problems.

My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it and for the earlier Seventh Doctor audio The Fearmonger.

Before listening

I forget whether I've heard Live 34 more than once, but I have vivid memories about its format and style. I associate it with the earlier The Fearmonger, as both stories begin with the Doctor/Ace team already engaged in a planned operation and both stories make heavy use of in-universe broadcast media. The operation in Live 34 involves deeper cover, and since it takes place on an alien planet instead of The Fearmonger's near-future Earth, the rules of Doctor Who permit the Doctor to work towards systemic change instead of preserving the essential aspects of a status quo.
I remember Live 34 being relatively dark for much of its runtime, though having an optimistic ending. Ace's part in particular involves a level of duplicity well beyond her television depiction. I hope Live 34 follows the usual practice of being broken into four episodes, because I don't think I want to listen to an entire CD's worth of it at once, but I expect to enjoy it if the doses are small.
 

After listening to episode 1 of 4

Part of what makes Doctor Who audio spinoffs feel natural is that Doctor Who contains two iconic audio elements: the TARDIS landing sound and the theme song. Both of these are usually heard at the beginning of a Doctor Who story. Live 34 is unusual in having neither: it begins with a radio (or possibly ambiguously a television) rapidly flipping channels before settling on the titular station, and there is no indication whatsoever of where the TARDIS is or exactly how long ago it landed. Until we hear from "resident Doctor", there is actually no clear indication we are hearing a Doctor Who audio, although the setting is clearly a space colony of the kind common in Doctor Who.
This episode takes place in real-time; we start hearing the news broadcast shortly after a bomb has gone off, and their scheduled interview with the Doctor is modified since he is at the scene of the blast. The Doctor is a representative of a political party that has only existed for a few months and is trying to force an election, after elections were outlawed five years ago. No direct mention of a companion has yet been made, but the Doctor is disappointed that someone has been resorting to explosives, and I remember from previous listens that for some of the explosives that person is Ace. Mention is made of the Doctor's driver (in an undescribed future vehicle referred to by the vague name of a "transporter"), but I don't recall whether the driver is even a proper character in the story.
A small non-real-time element is included without breaking from the real-time staging, by having the broadcast include some archive footage. This mentions the colony leader having had a chest infection just before outlawing elections; I imagine this must have plot relevance, although I forget how.
The episode ends in a very uncharacteristic manner for a Doctor Who episode; as the news broadcast closes up, the receiver does some more channel-flipping, and that's that. There is no cliffhanger moment; a couple climactic events happen before the end of the episode, but the news broadcast isn't abruptly cut off and the moment where the channel is flipped isn't a dramatic one.
Live 34 is an oddly experimental presentation, and having the Doctor embed himself in a political party while keeping his off-world origins secret is an unusual story direction. It is a noteworthy Big Finish production and I certainly look forward to continuing it. If I recall correctly, the next episode will take place after a brief timeskip and involve an interview with a mysterious character who turns out to be Ace.

After listening to episode 2 of 4

The framing structure continues to be noteworthy. As we tune into the news broadcast, the announcer helpfully states the date and time; I had to flip back to the first episode to compare dates, and this one is framed 5 days later. Most of the broadcast is playing back a recorded segment from the day after the first episode. The reporter was only recording audio and not video, implying that what we are hearing is radio and not television. This seems odd for a space colony, but it could make sense: television could be under tighter state control than radio and not be reporting on dissent. As I had remembered, the mysterious "Rebel Queen" is Ace, who arrived on the planet months ago with the Doctor, found a crashed aircraft full of dead and dying political prisoners, and got involved. The recording is censored, but in a token way that doesn't stop the listener from getting the point (remniscent of some of the Matrix censorship in Trial of a Time Lord).
The reporter was entirely unaware of enormous famine-stricken shantytowns outside the official city. These officially nonexistent dead and dying are harvested for something; based on the story's references to power outages, and vague memories that are coming back to me about past listening, I think it's for electricity. which makes no sense as a matter of physics but is definitely a Doctor Who thing to do. Dubious alternative power sources have long been a part of Doctor Who lore, and so has harvesting humans for unusual purposes. See also The Matrix (the movie, not the Gallifreyan technology).
The recorded segment ends in a sort of cliffhanger, as the reporter and Ace part ways under dangerous circumstances and it's not clear how Ace is going to get back to safety, but then we return to the news presentation, which itself has no cliffhanger and is followed by channel-flipping sound effects. It's not clear what the next episode will be about, but presumably the reporter who interviewed Ace is going to continue following up what he's learned about life outside the cities.
This story is significantly darker than I remembered, with one especially brutal moment recounted to the reporter by a shantytown refugee. I am not in an ideally receptive mood for it emotionally, but I am appreciating its craft and will continue listening.

After listening to episode 3 of 4

Four days later, the government is investigating the "suicide" of the reporter from the previous episode and has captured the Rebel Queen. Now it's time for the latest installment of a live field series where an on-the-scene reporter shadows ordinary people doing their everyday jobs.
I had not remembered that companion Hex was in Live 34. Hex was created for audio; he's a nurse from the near future who is traveling with the Doctor and Ace. I don't know whether, as of this story, the attentive listener would know why the Doctor took him on, but his metaplot isn't important to Live 34 other than his having genuine medical training that gives him a highly in-demand job to support a cover identity.
The Doctor has sneakily arranged for something significant to happen while a live reporter is on the scene. There is more of a cliffhanger this time: the government interrupts the broadcast, takes control of the radio station, and shuts it down for a day while they reorganize it. The channel-flipping encounters only a steady beeping tone, suggesting they've done this to other channels as well.
Live 34 continues to be darker than I remembered it being, though this episode doesn't get any heavier than the previous one. The framing device continues to be well-used. I remember there being a triumphant ending, and I'm looking forward to that.

After listening to episode 4 of 4

The happy ending feels unearned. It hinges on many points: Colony 34 is a subject to a distant colony commission that manages many colonies. The security forces of 34, even including the personal guard of 34's current leader, consider themselves ultimately in service to that commission, not to the local hierarchy. The commission cares about corruption in a colony enough to take action on it. All the Doctor ends up actually having to do is collect evidence and bring it to the higher proper authorities, allowing them to immediately implement regime change by giving new orders to the existing security forces. This is clearly both unrealistic in itself and dysfunctional as an allegory for real-world corruption.
The final installment of the news broadcast takes place during the victory speech of the re-elected leader, which is interrupted by the Doctor revealing that he has already contacted the colony commission between episodes and the guards are receiving new orders. This is all quite dramatic, and the scene structure is well-chosen, but it requires this brutal regime that's been burning immigrants for fuel to suddenly be impossibly fragile and unable to defend itself. The acting is very good, especially Sophie Aldred's, but it just doesn't feel to me like the ending the story up to this point warrants.
On the whole, I don't recommend Live 34 as a good Doctor Who adventure or a well-crafted dystopian tale, but it is a very good exercise in formal structure and you might appreciate it on that level.