Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, Amy Pemberton, Jean Boht, Mandi Symonds, Jonathan Forbes, Andrew Dickens.
It depends on your point of view, but what if there really is life after death? How could you be sure that whatever higher power, what god or demon has had you in their charge whilst your memory has begun to fade in the minds you left behind, that they won’t have cheated you in yet another cosmic joke.
In Afterlife, the Doctor is taken to task by Ace for the time travelling sins of supposed arrogance in the way he dealt with the heroic death of Hector ‘Hex’ Schofield in Mike Maddox’s and Alan Barnes’ Gods And Monsters. The story has been in a long time coming and whilst fans of the seventh Doctor have been kept amused with his further tales of adventures with Elizabeth Klein, the aftermath of the death has never been too far from the listener’s mind. Afterlife ties up that thread and makes the explosion, the inevitable fallout that has been brewing since the Doctor left Hex and Ace at the start of the last series they were together, that is going to come between The Doctor and perhaps one of the most loyal of his companions even more sorrowful.
By showing the two friends, The Doctor and Ace, perhaps the best friend that this incarnation of the Doctor had in his long years, at each other’s throats as they grieved for loss of Hex, it showed a rare thing in the world of the much travelled man from Gallifrey, it showed that for all the fun and adventure, the chase, the running and solver of ills throughout the Universe, that for all The Doctor’s brilliance, he is a man who isn’t a god, no matter how much his travelling companions make him out to be. Matt Fitton takes the bitterness that follows grief, the unanswerable question of what exactly The Doctor sees in humanity that makes them believe in him so much. It seems in the end even an ageless god can be made of clay.
The way the writer Matt Fitton brings certain strands of Hex’s life together is one that has been waiting to happen for a long time. The chance to meet audibly his beloved Grandmother, played by the indomitable and wonderful actor Jean Boht and the names of familiar but somehow corrupted place names to anyone fortunate enough to live on Merseyside is also a thread worth exploring. As the names of New Bootle and New Hoylake, two areas of contrasting social economic significance in 21st Century Britain, are placed discreetly into the script. It is these little nods to Hex’s Liverpool that bring Philip Olivier cheery disposition into full effect, even when he is playing a man bought back from the dead.
Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred have never been better as they are in this particular story written by the fantastic Matt Fitton. For all the times in which Ace believed in The Doctor, throughout every single adventure and all the worlds he took her to, never had he sank so low in the eyes of one person until the television episode A Good Man Goes To War. Stunning writing and supremely acted, just sheer elegance.
Afterlife is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall