Doctor Who - He Jests at Scars

This time, the Valeyard wins.

Season 23 is not my favourite season of Doctor Who. Now I didn't hate Trial of a Time Lord the way that some fen do, but I can agree with one Virgin books author who commented that this season spent a good deal of its time contemplating its navel. For all the snoozing that the trial did, there were a few things it got right, namely Brian Blessed, Sil, Glitz, the Master and most of all, the Valeyard (Michael Jayston).

Now for those of you not in the know, season 23 was a season-long arc in which the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) was put on trial by the Time Lords for his crimes against Time. The Valeyard was this trial's prosecutor, though he was revealed to have such a conflict of interest in this case, as it turned out he was actually a future incarnation of the Doctor as well as an amalgamation of his dark side (which we've just merrily explored in the previous Unbound audio drama, Full Fathom Five). His ultimate goal was to gain for himself the Doctor's remaining regenerations so that he could extend his life and ensure his continued existence. At the end of Trial, the Doctor and the Valeyard entered into the great V.R. computer belonging to the Time Lords, known as The Matrix, where the two faced off with wire-fu, amazing feats of kung-fu, rubber-reality warping and--no, who am I kidding, this is Doctor Who. They talked at each other a lot and then set traps for one another until finally, as one might surmise, the Doctor defeated his opponent and emerged with all regenerations intact.

He Jests At Scars (quote derived from "Romeo and Juliette") is a part of the Doctor Who Unbound family, and like all its ilk this drama posits the question 'What If?'. In this case, it wonders what would have happened had the Doctor lost his battle against the Valeyard and lost his lives in their final clash.

Be warned, some spoilers follow.

Melanie (Bonnie 'screamer' Langford) and the Time Lords remaining after the Trial watch as the Doctor is subsumed. Bonnie pleads with the Lords of time to actually, you know, do something... but her words fall on deaf ears. The Valeyard, they admit, is a unique creature and they wish to study him to discover how he came about. After all, the Doctor is a bit of a prat as far as they're concerned, and he's furthering scientific inquiry, so to hell with him.

Sadly for the Time Lords, the Matrix can't contain this immortal amalgam of the Valeyard and the Doctor's memories. He escapes and, to the Gallifreyans' horror, begins to wipe the Time Lords out of existence. Deciding that only a former companion of the Doctor's could stop the Valeyard, Coordinator Vansell (Anthony Keetch) borrows the President (Tim Preece)'s Time Ring, gifting it to Melanie along with a stazer. She is to track down the Valeyard and try to convince him to undo his meddling; and if she can't accomplish that, she's to kill her former friend and put a stop to the damage once and for all. Time Lords are remarkably lazy people, as you can see, and the threat of non-existence does not seem to light much of a fire under their behinds.

But the Valeyard seems intent on severing all his ties to his Doctorly past and sends his new Companion Ellie (Juliet Warner, who I'm told plays the same character in Big Finish's Sarah Jane Smith series) to alter history just enough that he and Mel never meet. Satisfied with what he's undone here, the Valeyard sets about collecting all of the doomsday weapons, artifacts, godly powers and amazing devices that he 'let slip through his fingers' as the Doctor. It's his intention to rule all of time and space with the tools that he collects, bringing peace and order to the cosmos through force of arms. On his way to Logopolis, the Valeyard decides to prevent the events leading to its destruction from happening by time-ramming his fourth incarnation's TARDIS, preventing it from materializing. He miscalculates, and to the Valeyard's horror... kills his past self.

Frantic, the Valeyard rushes to put this right and destroys Logopolis in the distant past so that he won't have a reason to visit it in his fourth incarnation, but succeeds only in destroying himself again in his first incarnation. He begins to come undone, slowly vanishing from the timestream while desperately seeking some way to prevent his own inadvertent suicide...

Some time in the future, time-lost Melanie Bush finds her way to Chronopolis, fortress home to The Mighty One, ruler of all space and time. She makes her way inside to confront her former friend, with intent to either convert or kill the man once known as the Doctor. But she discovers that history did not play out the way she assumed it did...

It's strange how little the Valeyard gets used in Deuterocanonical Who works; one would almost think writers were trying to avoid negative associations with Pip and Jane Baker or something. It's also a shame because as He Jests at Scars points out, this dark Doctor can be a fascinating study. This is probably the clearest picture we've got of what the Valeyard is (because let's face it, Trial's explanation was a bit threadbare), or perhaps more importantly what he is trying not to be. This Valeyard is severing as many ties as possible to his former lives while turning on anyone who dares so much as to call him The Doctor. He is attempting to forge an identity as distinctly not who he was, and yet the Valeyard keeps proving that the Doctor is strong within him.

Consider. His first act (or just about, as we can't get a good accounting of what he did off-screen) seems to be picking up a new Companion to replace the old. Now while to him, Ellie might just be a convenient tool by which to eliminate Melanie without risking bumping into himself, the Valeyard does whisk her off into Time and Space, using her as a sounding board and as a companion... just as his former incarnations have always done. He threatens to kill Ellie throughout their journeys (holding it over her like the sword of Damocles... the Valeyard seems to have saved her just before she was about to be struck by a car. He reminds her that he only has to undo that one act and she'll cease to be...), he doesn't actually do this until Melanie tracks them down and he casts about for something to do that would prove he's no longer the Doctor she remembers. In short... he doesn't kill one Companion until another -- with stronger claim to his previous lives -- comes back to him.

Further, his purpose in life is to set the universe right again. While the method he employs would horrify his previous self, this is exactly what the Doctor has quested for all along. In trying to become better than his previous self, the Valeyard validates who he was. He seeks to do the Doctor's work while trying to deny the Doctor, and in the end that is his undoing. It seems that once things begin to go wrong for him, the Valeyard becomes less and less certain of what he's doing. He withdraws further and further, refusing to make a move lest he make a change. Throughout the drama, he has mocked his former self for being too soft, yet at the end it is the Valeyard who 'has never felt a wound' and learns nothing from the pains, experiences and most of all daring of the man he was once. In trying to become who the Doctor was not, he himself becomes negated as he gains none of the man's strengths.

Melanie deserves special mention here. I'm no big fan of Bonnie Langford's time on Doctor Who, though having heard this play I'm beginning to think that's more due to the irritating lines and annoying personality (and all the damned screaming) that were foisted onto Melanie during her run. Bonnie turns in an excellent performance here, playing someone who's caroming all over the emotional landscape without losing her grasp of the character. She plays her part down a notch from her BBC years, and I think it was the right decision as this story calls for the quiet emotions as often as it does the loud. Though did we have to bring back the phrase 'megabyte modem'?

Ellie is great as the new companion and now I'm going to listen to the Sarah Jane Smith stories on the strength of this character. She's a wonderfully amoral eco-terrorist who seems to have had her conscience worn down by her time with the Valeyard. She's bright, cheerful, selfish and plays down her intelligence until it's needed most, making her a great fit for the Valeyard. My only complaint here is that she doesn't get a larger role, making her final bows halfway through the story.

And of course the Valeyard. Jayston's return to this character is welcome, and he brings to the role a quiet but menacing strength that just fits the Valeyard like a glove. When he threatens Ellie with retroactive death, he doesn't let the listener doubt for a moment that he'd do it; and in the final scene of the story, he sells the Valeyard's pitiful desperation with a very steady hand. Big Finish put together a very strong trio of characters here, and they help to really make the story.

If I have one complaint with He Jests at Scars, it's that the narrative structure doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to. The story's told out of sequence, but while some plots make this work relatively seamlessly, Scars has an annoying tendency to lose itself and skip over important bridging moments that would help the listener make more sense of the story. In a story this strong and layered, this is a very significant weakness, though in the end it doesn't ruin the drama for me.

I have said that I've been waiting for a Big Finish adventure to blow me away, and while He Jests at Scars does not manage this feat from opening to close, its ending was a fantastic piece of work that left me stunned when it was all over. I'd love to have Jayston back again as the Valeyard (especially in the core line), and I have to admit, this story made me reconsider Melanie in a slightly more forgiving light. All in all, a very good story that just needed some restructuring to be great.

My Rating: Enjoyed it.


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