Doctor Who: Antidote to Oblivion

Big Finish have had a decent success rate at turning round some of the less popular monsters and villains of the classic TV series and making them into something that's at least respectable. With Sil, unfortunately, they've bitten off more than they can chew.

The story is written by Philip Martin, who created Sil for TV, and wrote both of the broadcast stories that he appeared in (plus a third, which wasn't broadcast, for reasons beyond his control). So he certainly knows the character, as does Nabil Shaban, the actor who played the character in the originals, and reprises the role here. But that may be part of the problem, because Sil doesn't really work much better now than he did then.

The Doctor and Flip arrive in 24th century London to discover that Britain has become a corporatist state, with Sil as financial advisor to the government. In many ways this parallels Vengeance on Varos, although the nature of Sil's scheme is different, as is the means the government uses to control the populace. If Sil was originally created as a sort of commentary on '80s corporate greed and Thatcherism, here there's a whiff of satirising the austerity measures of the Cameron government, although it's not really the main theme.

Instead we have an evil scientist who wants revenge on the Doctor, and a new monster that, at least for me, failed to suspend my disbelief. There are some good scenes in here, mainly involving the supporting characters, that prevent me from giving this an even lower rating, but they're largely drowned out by Sil being Sil.

He's such an over-the-top caricature of ‘evil capitalist' that, taken with the straight-faced way it's all presented, this is too blunt to work as satire (if, indeed, it's intended to) and too crude to be taken as serious drama. We don't, of course, have the visuals, but there's still the use of revulsion to replace horror that often characterised Six's time on TV. Shaban is clearly having a great time playing the part, but the character is what he is and, frankly, he doesn't even work as a pantomime villain.

It's a long time since Big Finish produced a story that was a real disaster, and this doesn't really break that trend (it's perhaps notable that one of the earlier stories which did was Creed of the Kromon, also written by Martin), but this struggles even to earn the three stars I have given it. It's one of the weakest stories in a while, and for reasons that were entirely avoidable.