‘THE STUNTMAN’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
The Tenth Doctor rescues Nyssa with K-9’s help
‘The Stuntman’ is the episode I was looking forward to the most in the ‘Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions’ box set. It has Sarah Sutton as Nyssa meeting David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor in it. 🙂
Sarah Sutton in ‘The Stuntman’.
It was excited about this episode as well as nervous. There was also a sense of trepidation before I went into this episode to hear it. 😐 ‘The Stuntman’ is by Lizzie Hopley, who is an actress and a writer.
Now, if you have followed my blog, you’re probably aware that I wasn’t keen on Lizzie Hopley’s previous writing efforts for stories like ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ and ‘Precious Annihilation’. 😐
I also didn’t find ‘The First Son’ in the ‘Dalek Universe’ season and ‘The Curse of Lady Macbeth’ in ‘Lost Warriors’ with the Ninth Doctor great. The reason for this was I didn’t find the stories exciting.
I was expecting the same thing to happen when it came to hearing ‘The Stuntman’ with the Tenth Doctor, Nyssa and K-9. I’d also read not very ‘glowing’ reviews on the episode from other listeners. 😦
I was willing to be open-minded and give this audio episode a chance. Surprisingly, and this may shock you as you read this, I ended up actually enjoying ‘The Stuntman’ when I listened to it on CD. 🙂
This is probably one of Lizzie Hopley’s better efforts as a ‘Doctor Who’ writer. I don’t think this is an excellent audio episode to listen to, but I found there was more good than bad when I listened to it.
The central reason for why ‘The Stuntman’ worked for me was because…well, you guessed it. Yes, it’s Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. She managed to keep my interest by delivering a brilliant performance as her character.
I know this is terribly biased of me, but I always find the ‘Doctor Who’ stories with Sarah Sutton very engaging and worth my time when she performs in them. It was terrific to hear Sarah in this episode.
I also felt engaged when the Tenth Doctor was concerned for Nyssa’s well-being when he and K-9 tried to save her from a virtual reality, in the form of a movie set, by a Time War criminal’s machine.
In a sense, Sarah Sutton gets to play two roles in this audio episode. As well as Nyssa, she also plays Kasey-Ann Frost, who in the film world, is a stuntwoman, which I found pretty amusing to listen to. 🙂
John Leeson, as well as K-9, also plays Kent Novem, who is meant to be the father of Kasey-Ann Frost. It was intriguing to hear K-9 being a father-like figure for Nyssa and being very caring for her. 🙂
I enjoyed the interactions Nyssa had with K-9, especially during the closing scenes. Sarah has expressed in the behind-the-scenes interviews how much she liked the Nyssa and K-9 relationship. 🙂
I also liked the nods to the Short Trip audio ‘A Heart on Both Sides’, where Nyssa’s hospital ship, the Traken, gets mentioned, and so do the robot sisters, including Sister Sytron, who appears in this story.
I liked it when the Tenth Doctor made a reference to the Eighth Doctor meeting Nyssa in that Short Trip audio. It’s also good Sarah Sutton interacted with David Tennant, one of my favourite Doctors. 🙂
Mind you, I would have liked it if Nyssa and the Tenth Doctor had more interaction time with each other, as most of the scenes featuring Sarah and David are when she’s being the Kacey-Ann avatar. 😦
I know Leela in ‘Splinters’ wasn’t actually the real Leela, but there was still some character drama interaction between Ten and Leela. There should be a similar level of interaction between Ten and Nyssa.
I currently preparing a future series of ‘Doctor Who’ series where Nyssa and Billy meet the Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors. It’s in its infancy stages, but there will be more character interaction in that.
The story also features Jon Glover as Dr. Gommen, who is the Time War criminal, and the Gommen Machine. Jon Glover has done Big Finish stories before like ‘The Well-Mannered War’ and ‘Forty-Five’.
There’s Claire Wyatt as Sylvia Wren and Sister Sytron. Clare Wyatt has also done Big Finish audio stories before, such as ‘Return to the Web Planet’, ‘The Boy That Time Forgot’ and ‘The Silver Turk’. 🙂
And there’s Kit Young who plays Sam Kraven, a reporter on the film set in the movie world. The story’s world-building is complex, but somehow, I was able to keep interested in what was going on.
John Leeson in ‘The Stuntman’.
So yeah, ‘The Stuntman’ is one of Lizzie Hopley’s better efforts as a ‘Doctor Who’ writer. It’s not perfect, but its strength is in the performances of David Tennant, Sarah Sutton and John Leeson as their characters.
I came away happy from this. 🙂 The CD extras are as follows. At the end of ‘The Stuntman’, there are behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast and crew including David Tennant, Sarah Sutton and John Leeson, director Helen Goldwyn, producer David Richardson, writer Lizzie Hopley, etc.
‘The Stuntman’ rating – 7.5/10
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