The Rise of the New Humans

Hello Doctor! How simply delicious to see you again! You were expecting someone else? I don’t know whether to be pleased or offended.

The Monk

Synopsis

When a man dies after falling from the top floor of a multi-storey car park, the Doctor and Jo wonder why it should be of interest to UNIT. Then they see the protuberances on the man’s back… As he fell, he tried to grow wings.

Looking into the man’s past leads the Doctor and Jo to a remote private hospital where the staff aren’t as helpful as they could be, and the Chief Administrator is unavailable to meet with them.

Breaking into some restricted wards, the Doctor notes the presence of alien and futuristic technology. The whole thing bears the unmistakable hallmarks of one of his own people’s interference, one of his old foes. Except not perhaps the one he might have imagined.

The Monk is back. And this time his meddling may have gone too far.

Review

The fourth volume of Big Finish’s Third Doctor Adventures sees the Doctor face off against two foes that he did not have a full story against, starting with the Meddling Monk, and the following story with the Cybermen. This was the first box set in this range that I purchased, mainly because of The Tyrants of Logic, however, this story really gripped me too.

We all like to think we’re immortal, do we not?

Some of us with more cause than others.

Dr Kurdi and the Third Doctor

The Rise of the New Humans is a solid script, especially in the first two parts. Guy Adams has written a good story which feels as though it slots into the Third Doctor’s era. The Doctor and Jo are investigating the origins of a mysterious body which appears to have been attempting to grow wings, and a body has also been discovered in a river in the process of growing gills. This all leads them to the Allingham Clinic, run by a mysterious Chief Administrator. Whilst the listener knows this to be the Monk, the misdirection that this may well be the Master is quite good, and the Doctor’s shock comes across really well. The Allingham Clinic is a private clinic that augments humanity’s ability to survive new threats, aided by the Monk’s time-travelling abilities. It’s a solid idea for a story, which does feel a bit like Doctor Who meets the X-Men. It does lose something when it comes to the concluding part, when it becomes a bit more generic, but I still really enjoyed this story. The first two parts do enough to set up an interesting story, and the inevitable uprising by the new humans in the concluding two parts still works well enough to not undermine the good work done by the story’s beginning.

I feel like I’m on a National Trust tour, but I’m not entirely sure I like being watched over by knights in shining armour.

Jo Grant

Amongst the staff at the Allingham Clinic are Dr Kurdi and the Chief Orderly. Doctor Kurdi is brilliantly cold towards the Doctor and Jo, especially in the first part when they arrive, continuing throughout the story. It is a really good performance from Mina Anwar, who arguably is much more antagonistic than the Monk. She is the brains behind the operation, and ultimately gets turned to the cause of the new humans. The Chief Orderly, played by Joe Sims, is a much more functional role, but nonetheless effective. Sims also plays the UNIT captain Noah Wilde. I generally have a good ear for voices and so can identify an actor relatively easily, but I genuinely didn’t notice that he was played by the same actor as the Chief Orderly. That’s obviously to Sims’ enormous credit. I do have a small gripe with Big Finish’s Third Doctor’s UNIT characters, and that is that we do not have the same ones cropping up frequently. Whilst I appreciate that we cannot have Yates and Benton, especially with the sad passing of Richard Franklin, there is no reason why we could not have established original characters like Captain Wilde, so that we could have other characters to attach to. That’s not a direct issue with this story, however, it did occur to me whilst listening to this story that we have not really got an established UNIT team around Jon Culshaw’s Brigadier.

Among the patients, the obvious standout is Clare Corbett’s Harriet, who glows incandescently and possesses superior Venusian aikido skills to the Third Doctor, being able to incapacitate him using a nerve pinch. Despite being responsible for a lot of the events of this story, Harriet is fundamentally written by Adams and portrayed by Corbett as vulnerable, and it is a good resolution that she does not get arrested with Kurdi at the end of the story. There is also Francis, a gangster seemingly incapacitated by the cure administered by Dr Kurdi, but able to psychically influence proceedings through generating powerful wind, strong enough to be able to power his wheelchair through the facilitiy in the later stages of the story. Silas Hawkins also does a good job here – the guest cast are very strong.

It is clear, both from Guy Adams’ writing and Rufus Hound’s performance, that both understand the nature of the Monk and how he functions in the Doctor Who universe. Whilst Time Lords like the Master and the Rani may plot for universal domination, the Monk operates in grey areas. Whilst this is usually to benefit himself, in this story, he is trying to help humanity by bringing remedies to disesases that are curable in the future back to the present. That scheme is fundamentally not that evil, the Doctor points out that this in effect prevents humanity making developments and could have catastrophic effects for the wider universe. The Monk revels in needling the Doctor and irritating him by being generally irresponsible with the gift of time travel, and Hound sounds as though he is thoroughly enjoying himself throughout this story. Of course, the moral ambiguity of his character hides a coward, and when things get real, he wants to flee in his TARDIS.

My dear Jo, if I let locked doors get in my way, I’d never get anywhere in the universe.

The Third Doctor

It is truly joyful to listen to Tim Treloar establish himself as the Third Doctor. He kicks off this fourth set feeling really comfortable and established in the role, and it’s nice to see him have a story where he spends more time with Jo. The relationship between Treloar and Katy Manning seems to reflect that of the Third Doctor and Jo Grant, and indeed Jon Pertwee and Manning. They seem very fond of each other, even if the Doctor and Jo spend a lot of time bickering in this story. Jo gets some great asides grumbling about the Doctor’s stubborness, for instance, not wanting to install a proper roof onto Bessie, which does hint at underlying tensions in their relationship, although this is not at the same level as say, the Sixth Doctor and Peri. Speaking of Peri, Jo being subjected to a disease and then cured definitely does feel like something that would happen to Peri on television. Treloar is especially good when he is angry with the Monk, whilst Manning puts in a very good and solid performance here.

Verdict: The Rise of the New Humans is a really strong entry into the Third Doctor Adventures. 9/10

Cast: Tim Treloar (The Doctor), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Rufus Hound (The Monk), Mina Anwar (Dr Kurdi), Joe Sims (Chief Orderly/Wilde/Jumper), Clare Corbett (Harriet/Woman/Radio Technician) and Silas Hawkins (Francis/Morgue Attendant/Patient/Orderly).

Writer: Guy Adams

Director: Nicholas Briggs

Music: Jamie Anderson

Sound: Benji Clifford

Parts: 4

Release Date: 21 March 2018

Behind the Scenes

• The Doctor and Jo spend more time together in this story than in previous Third Doctor Adventures releases. This is because Katy Manning asked Nicholas Briggs if she and the Doctor could spend more time together during stories.

Cast Notes

• Mina Anwar played Gita Chandra in The Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as playing Goodthing in the Doctor Who episode Smile. She has also appeared in a number of Big Finish audio plays, including Ghosts, The Trial of a Time Machine and Tick-Tock World.
• Joe Sims has frequently played Mark 7 for Big Finish in the Dalek Universe range of Tenth Doctor stories. He also appeared in The Power of the Doctor, playing Deputy Marshal Arnhost, and appeared in other Big Finish plays, including Precious Annihilation, The Primeval Design and Stone Cold.
• Clare Corbett has also appeared in Cataclysm, Food Fight and The Unzal Incursion.

Best Quote

Calls himself the Monk.

He doesn’t, you know. Honestly, throw on a cassock a couple of times and you’re typecast.

The Third Doctor and the Monk

Previous Third Doctor review: Storm of the Horofax

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