70. Unregenerate!

Not only another Mel story, but another very strong story for Mel, and a very strong story overall.

The idea of a character revealing themselves to be a Time Lord by suddenly and unexpectedly regenerating is such a strong and simple twist that I can hardly believe "Doctor Who" hasn't used it more often. As a twist, it's ideally suited to a visual medium, but author David A. McIntee makes it work here anyway. Come to think of it, all of this story's cliffhangers are very visual, and yet McIntee makes them work. Sometimes good writing is obvious, but sometimes it's as subtle as getting something tricky to seem so simple that people don't even notice it.

In that sense, I feel like this story might be a victim of its own success. It's not very flashy or showy. It just tell a very good story very well. And McIntee's been doing exactly that since the old Virgin New Adventures days. He was never quite in the top tier with Cornell, Aaronovitch, and Orman, but he was the most consistent and most reliable of the second-tier. His books didn't knock you out, but they always worked.

In the case of "Unregenerate!", not only is the core idea very strong, but the story builds very effectively over the course of its four episodes. For much of the story, Mel takes the lead, and it's only towards the end that we get some flashbacks showing us how the Doctor ended up a patient at a very strange sort of institution. With Mel taking the lead role in the narrative, she's even her own companion, of a kind. He's a cabbie played by Toby Longworth, though presumably not the one from "Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre". Longworth's performance would have stolen the show if it wasn't for Jennie Linden, who gives an outstanding performance as Prof. Klyst.

I'll never understand why this story is so poorly regarded. It certainly doesn't deserve to be.

The story has some mystery and intrigue that really pays dividends with the real at the end of the second part with some really mind blowing twists. On the other hand, the story does have an uneven and occasionally unpleasant feel to it. The acting is somewhat uneven. The Doctor has some scenes in the first half that are quite frankly over acted. This is balanced out by Mel who takes the lead for the better part of the story, complete with her own companion, some random cabbie. Overall, it's an okay story.

'Unregnerate!' was written by David A. McIntree and directed by John Ainsworth. Chronologically, this is the earliest audio drama to feature the Seventh Doctor, and was recorded on 16 and 17 November 2004 at The Moat Studios before being released in June 2005. McIntree's original version of the play featured the Daleks.

Ian Potter takes a light touch approach to creating the nightmarish atmosphere that's a little too dreary for me. The character of the Doctor is incapacitated and effectively written out of half of this story, with Mel taking centre stage and being teamed up with an unnamed ex-con cabbie voiced by Toby Longworth in the traditional companion role. Sylvester's performance is in line with his earlier portrayal of the Doctor and for me doesn't fit the tone. Jennie Linden who played Barbara in the original Peter Cushing Doctor Who movie plays Professor Klyst, and gives on of the better performances. Rigan (Gail Clayton) is a silly character with the worst dialogue I have heard in the BF cannon. "Shoot to maim!" The motivations were bizarre and random at times with the Cabbie just deciding to stay behind at the end, that was a real head scratcher.

The dialogue and characterisation is flat and the atmosphere dull. The cabbie with Mel is far too easily convinced by Mel's explanation of what's going on. It's the boring attempt at trying to be interesting I have heard, and unevenly paced with large amounts on exposition late on interspersed with lots of running around. There are plenty of interesting ideas such as transplanting Tardis minds into living bodies and the Faustian angle is really intriguing but the flashbacks and narrative jumping around at the beginning seemed rather unnecessary. 'The Doctor's Wife' did it so much better.

Unregenerate! is a rather interesting little play by Doctor Who novelist David A McIntee who although I have never read any of his novels myself, fandom usually regards him as a good novelist, and I can see why. The ideas present in Unregenerate! are from the brain of someone who knows how to write a good prose story. Notice I use the word prose because the script here is very much like a really good novel within lies the biggest problem, it spells out what is happening in the story like it's an audiobook not an audio drama. This doesn't completely ruin the story however because of how good the acting is. Bonnie Langford has a chance to really flex her acting chops here as she has to play the role of the Doctor while Sylvester McCoy is off in an asylum babbling to himself for Parts One through Three. She plays this admirably well with the lackluster script and manages to make some of the novel-like portions of the script bearable. She doesn't do it alone though as like the Doctor would Mel has a companion in the Cabbie with No Name played by Toby Longworth, who is a character that could have become like Mel was on television, but while not the strongest of characters plays the straight man to the weirdness of the Doctor's world. Longworth's performance is memorable enough, but that isn't really where the story shines. No this story shines with it's ideas which is sort of a cross between The Unquiet Dead and The Doctor's Wife, and while I can't stand when stories rip off other stories, neither one of those stories existed when this was written and recorded. There are also hints of the Faust narrative sprinkled throughout.

The other thing that the story gets wrong is that McIntee makes Sylvester McCoy's Doctor be the babbling idiot from Time and the Rani, while it would have served the plot better if for most of these scenes he remained silent and mysterious especially in Parts One and Two.