1 episode. Approx. 58 minutes. Written by: Eoin Colfer. Performed by: Nicholas Briggs.
THE PLOT
The Doctor needs a hand.
Quite literally needs one, as he just had one chopped off in a fight with Soul Pirates, ruthless space pirates who capture children and drain their energy to power their ships while using their organs to extend their lives.
Aldridge, an alien surgeon working in turn-of-the-century London, provides a temporary replacement, a very strong bio-mechanical hand. Aldridge promises to have a proper replacement hand ready in a few days.
But the bio-mechanical replacement will have to do as the Doctor faces the pirates again. The Soul Pirates are performing another raid, snatching several London children. And this time, the group includes the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: My biggest problem with this story is the characterization of the First Doctor. We are told that he never laughs, and has no patience with anything he regards as frivolous... Which leaves me wondering which version of William Hartnell's stories author Eion Colfer was exposed to, as his actual television stories show him being completely absorbed by random things while laughing his head off. And no, this didn't come after he was softened - The second-ever televised story sees him giggling irrepressibly while obsessing over a bit of sabotage he's completed with his pocketwatch! There's a character in this called the Doctor... But if you substitute every usage of "Doctor" with "Scrooge," then the whole thing makes a lot more sense.
Susan: One aspect of the First Doctor the story does get right is the strength of his bond with Susan. It's realizing that his granddaughter has been taken by the pirates that pushes him to immediate action - The fear that if he doesn't rescue her immediately, then even if she survives her spirit will be broken. Susan's tendency to want to do the morally right thing irritates him, as well - because while an action may be morally right, it isn't necessarily tactically right - and I'll credit Colfer's otherwise off-the-mark characterization with acknowledging that at this stage, the Doctor is far more concerned with the latter than the former.
THOUGHTS
This is the second time I've read/listened to a work by Eion Colfer. The first was And Another Thing..., the misguided attempt to continue Douglas Adams' universe by adding a sixth book to his Hitchhiker's Trilogy. I didn't quite make it through, finding the parade of forced jokes and awkward, would-be comedic asides to be painful to navigate. Knowing that Colfer was a highly successful author, I blamed the poor quality on his attempt to write in Adams' voice instead of his own.
A Big Hand for the Doctor, however, has no such ready-made excuse. Colfer is writing his own story, and is free to use his own narrative voice. So I'm forced to conclude that all the forced humor and awkward, pace-deadening asides are actually his own style. A style that I can only dub "cut-rate Douglas Adams substitute." Needless to say, I won't be seeking out any further books by Mr. Colfer.
A strong reading by Nicholas Briggs, who does a pretty fair impression of William Hartnell, helps compensate for the poor characterization of the First Doctor, making it a little easier to overlook the things that are off the mark and focus instead on the handful of things Colfer gets right - The bond with Susan, the quick thinking compensating for physical frailty. But even with Briggs giving his best, there are only a handful of places in which the main character is anything more than vaguely recognizable as the Doctor. The First Doctor proactively chasing down space pirates? It just doesn't fit, not any better than a parade of pop culture references (from Harry Potter to bottled tans) does in a story set in turn-of-the-century London.
There is an enjoyable rooftop action scene, as well as a very nice epilogue. And as a story, it must be acknowledged that this does hold together. But Colfer's writing style is not one I enjoy, and he commits what is a mercifully rare sin in Doctor Who fiction: He gets the Doctor wrong. Leaving this, in my opinion, a very weak start to Puffin's anniversary range.
Overall Rating: 3/10.
Next Televised Story: An Unearthly Child
Preceded by: The Beginning
Followed by: The Alchemists
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