| THE FEARMONGER by Jonathan Blum |
| Story 6 Synopsis: The Doctor hijacks a radio phone-in to make contact with Walter Jacobs, who believes that demagogue Sherilyn Harper is some sort of monster. Ace manages to track his call, so they can find Walter. But Jacobs plans to blow up Harper during a rally, and the Doctor and Ace have to stop him before he can succeed. The rally is interrupted, and Walter's bomb is defused. Harper's assistant, Allingham, knows of the Doctor, and tells the police he is dangerous, and linked to the United Front, a terror group who oppose Harper. The Doctor, Ace and Walter are kidnapped by the United Front, and Walter agrees to join them. Ace tries to talk the UF leader, Karadjic out of killing them, but he shoots her. The Doctor gets Ace to a hospital, but time is running out. When Harper is a guest on the radio phone-in, he devises a machine to trap the fearmonger creature. But Harper arrives early, and the Doctor struggles to improvise. Harper appears not to contain the creature. Walter visits Ace in the hospital to apologise, and he hears the creature move to the DJ, Mick Thompson. Ace can now hear the creature too. The Doctor rings Thompson to arrange a meeting at a warehouse, with the lure of an exclusive. There's a riot going on, but Thompson makes the rendez-vous. The Doctor's machine doesn't seem to work - Thompson doesn't contain the creature, either. Ace hears it in the Doctor's voice. Walter leads the Doctor, Ace and Thompson to the United Front base, despite the riot going on. There, they manage to broadcast a meeting with the brains behind the UF campaign - Allingham. The Doctor tells Harper that the game is over, and New Britannia's hate campaign will now fail. Meanwhile, Ace has recovered Walter's bomb, and tries to use it on the fearmonger she thinks is using the Doctor. But he persuades her that the creature is in her, just as it was in Walter, not Harper or Thompson. He catches the creature, destroying it. Thompson learns to moderate his show. |
| Review:- The near future, with racial tensions stirred up by a right-wing demagogue female leader... a work of fiction, or maybe too close to the truth. When broadcast in 2000, this play didn't really provoke much debate about its political message, and was soon outshone by other releases. All this has to sell itself is a guest cast of Jacqueline Pearce, Hugh Walters and gameshow host Vince Henderson, who later married Sophie Aldred. This lack of interest is a little unfair, although possibly the rather grumpy and frequently obvious tone of storytelling lets it down. Blum starts his story partway in, presumably in a nod to the New Adventures, which considered this a cool idea. The New Britannia Party has made waves with its apparently single-issue agenda of purity and goodness and so on. But its leader is in league with an alien monster, or so one man thinks. Whilst Walter Jacobs is driven to attempt murder to stop it, Harper's associate is manipulating a terrorist group to stage attacks that suggest NB has critics trying to silence them, and also prove that NB are right all the time. Or something. It's up to the Doctor and Ace to prevent incalculable bloodshed, and find the alien menace. They do this by engaging in some of the lousiest dialogue I've ever had to hear or read. It's hard to tell if Blum intends their attitude to be a homage to Season 26, or a parody of it. This reaches its apex (or nadir) at the end of episode 2, when Ace cockily tries to talk down a terrorist, and gets shot. All this achieves is to make Ace susceptible to the alien, and decide to kill her only friend, the Doctor. By the story reaches this stage, any smoothness in revelation has been wasted, as the New Britannia plot is mildly more interesting (though still told in terms a teenager would find patronising). The best thing about this play, to my surprise, is its guest cast. Pearce and Walters are typecast in their roles, but ham them up well anyway. Henderson could be said to steal the show, albeit a theft of something no-one else is trying to steal. I had the misfortune of seeing him hosting Chain Letters, and a more charmless human being I have yet to see. But he manages to bring Mick Thompson to life, whilst never sounding too much like a real shock-jock. That's to his credit, perhaps, this story didn't need any more hamming. Overall, it's a slight story that uses little subtlety to gets its message across, a message that can hardly be radical to the audience anyway. Though still a message worth repeating. |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |