Big Finish's 44th regular release continues to find the makers in confident mood, with Nick Briggs' latest playing with narrative conventions by having the plot unfold out of sequence. We open with Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) in custody and being interrogated by a police psychologist. A girl has been killed and Nyssa was found over the corpse. As the tale unfolds we get more details sketched in, painting us a picture of two planets united by an environmental catastrophe. We follow the actions of various characters including the enigmatic lady Forlaine (Jemma Churchill), Quain (Nigel Hastings) and Police Chief Gilbrook (good to hear David Daker back in Who). As the Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa become further enmeshed they struggle to tell who is hero and who is villain...
While the narrative structure is clever and well done, Creatures of Beauty is ultimately a highly boring Doctor Who story with lots of talk and little action. As usual, writer Nick Briggs is far too heavy handed with his messages, constantly having the Doctor say that truth is 'a matter of perspective'. It also doesn't help that The Sandman, a release only a few back, covers similar thematic ground of the blurring between the right and the wrong. The revelation that it is in fact our time travellers who unwittingly set the disaster in motion is a good twist but by then I was half asleep, a bit dangerous when you're driving to work.
GK Rating: ** The Blog of Delights
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