Doctor Who - Survival of the Fittest & Klein's Story - Review

Big Finish's Three-and-One style stories are an interesting idea, and I'm rather fond of them, but they do tend to use the one-parter as a coda to the main story, rather than a wholly standalone piece. Klein's Story, however, is entirely its own thing. Well, sort of.

Though it remains unconnected to Survival of the Fittest, save for its development of Klein, it is in a way a coda to the nine-year-old events of Colditz. Retelling events in Klein's timeline that we heard about during Colditz, it's understandable to ask if we needed this. And after Colditz, we didn't. But now that Klein is onboard the TARDIS, this look back into her past is a fascinating insight into her character, and well worth hearing. Originally unplanned, it came about when some commendably tight editting on Survival of the Fittest freed up a single part. It fits the arc so well, though, that it's hard to imagine it's not there entirely by design. With fantastic performances all round (including a superb final scene between the two regulars), a cameo from McGann, and a witty script with some well hidden nods for the fans, it's a great little treat.
Survival of the Fittest, on the other hand, is stranger fruit. It opens some time after Klein's story, and I confess at this point I threw up my hands and cried 'What have they done?' If you're going to bring back a decade-old character to capitalise on the fantastic material she provides, it's crazy to have a great chunk of her development happening off screen! I understand why it was done - Klein needs to be in the position she has reached for the purposes of these two stories - but when there is clearly so much more material to be had, it feels like the solution would have been to keep her around for longer. Or perhaps to take a leaf out of Key 2 Time or the Jamie trilogy's book, and include a tie-in Companion Chronicle to cover the missing events.

As it is, the story opens with a more open-minded Klein in a fairly traditional, friendly relationship with the Doctor. It's exactly the sort of mellowing of the character I was concerned would occur. That said, it's not terrible. Had we reached this point more gradually it would have been completely acceptable. It's just to jump from the anger and awkwardness of the atmosphere in Klein's Story to the far more traditional companion relationship in Survival is jarring and disappointing. Klein comes off in the early minutes as far too starry-eyed and innocent. Some of this fades away, but some of it persists. It's hard to understand why Klein sides with the Vrill when she recognises that the argument against them is the very ideology she supports. Some of her behaviour can be understood as her desire to convince the Doctor that he's changed her (the wide-eyed behaviour at the beginning, for instance), but some of it, like her sympathy for the Vrill, is clearly her genuine feeling. Of course, this is partially the point - to portray a contradiction in Klein's thinking - but once Klein has realised this is the case it's strange that she doesn't reconsider things in light of it.

Whilst this is a sizable niggle, it's the only one, and ultimately Survival of the Fittest is a very good story. It's trad sci-fi in a 50s/60s heyday mold, with some really strong ideas. In particular, the Vrill are a very intelligently designed, brilliantly realised race. With aliens grounded in real-world animals, there tends to be a lot of silliness, clichés and genericism, but taking the concept of aliens with a bee-like social system (there's that trad SF vibe), Johnathan Clements has produced a detailed and original race. In particular the smell-language is a strong suite of intermeshed ideas that produce something very coherent and rather intriguing.

Special mention should be made at this point to the sound design guys, who have done absolutely excellent work on realising the Vrill. Not just their speech, but all the other noises which make up their realisation. It's just a pity the music is so horrible this month (and in places sounds like Torchwood).

The story develops along fairly traditional lines, with human colonists and resource-wars, but whilst it's never radical or unpredictable, neither does it feel tired or old. Similar to Tiny Wings, the Social Darwinism theme (addressed under the rather blanket term of 'fasicism') provides various entertaining character moments, but the discussion never strays from fairly well trodden paths. A sense of missed opportunity is beginning to creep into this trilogy, but it's not a flaw of the story taken in-and-of-itself.

The guest cast are solid - BF hasn't dropped the ball on casting for a fair while now - but the standout performances are Childs and McCoy, who are proving to be one of the range's best pairings. As of the Magic Mousetrap, McCoy seems to have become much better at restraining his performance, and his seasons are becoming notably less variable as a result.

So, the onus is on the Architects of History to really make the arc succesful, but as to the stories themselves, we've got a great little character drama and some intelligent, old-fashioned (in a good way) science fiction. 8/10

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