Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Caroline Langrishe, John Banks, Chase Masterson, Terry Malloy, Adrian Lukis, Camilla Power, Louise Jameson, Sinead Keenan, San Shella, Lucy Fleming, Ian McCulloch, Carolyn Seymour, Phil Mulryne, John Dorney, Lisa Bowerman.
For those that remember with fondness or indeed with a tightening grip of fear Terry Nation’s 1970s apocalyptic serial Survivors, the frightening aspect of a civilisation falling apart very quickly is one that is perhaps the most powerful and enduring images of its time and is probably matched only by the television film Threads a decade later. To see it happen on screen as part of a drama is one thing but to have it re-recorded by audio drama specialists Big Finish, already the guardians of the legacy of Doctor Who in audio form as well as establishing a great following with their episodes of the likes of The Avengers, Sapphire and Steel and Blake’s 7, is quite a different proposition.
The four C.D. box-set, which encompasses the writing of John Dorney, Matt Fitton, Andrew Smith and Jonathan Morris, is that rare type of rampaging subtle beasts of recording, something that captures the imagination so hard that it causes a certain amount of grief for something that, as yet, hasn’t happened.
The four episodes, Revelation, Exodus, Judges and Esther, delve into the psyche of a group of people that survive an un-named flu like virus that hits the world and how they react to the change in humanity’s outlook on how society should be run and administered. It is an apocalyptic piece of writing in which could come all too true and has been the basis of several theories and television serials since it first aired. From the 21st Century remake which seemed to lose some of its bite as it became a glossy, almost far too intelligent for its own good reproduction, to the smartly written Channel 4 series, the dystrophic Utopia. All have at its heart the knowledge that Humanity has bought this on its self, not with a self-serving effacement but with the damage we have wrecked upon our environment.
Listeners only have to take in the news that is on continuously at the moment to know that a contagion, a disease, can easily get out of control and like a wild untamed horse, throw everybody off with just a snort and heady breathe.
Although initially written in the 1970s, Terry Nation was a man so far ahead of his time he practically resided in a different century but his great writing was born out of being able to understand the past. His time developing the Daleks for Doctor Who a decade earlier bears witness to that, this is a man who remembered the horrors of fascism and Nazism so vividly that it led to arguably one of the greatest of television fanatics in the hate-filled beings from Skaro and who had obviously delved into history and read about the Spanish Flu epidemic that wiped out more people in a shorter time than the great war had managed in four long years.
The recording makes use of many of the actors who sit with certain pride on the Big Finish roster and who give considerable weight to this rerecording. From Terry Malloy, himself the voice of Davros in the Doctor Who series, to the ever captivating Louise Jameson, the fantastic John Lukis who excels, almost revels, in the part of the unhinged Professor James Gillison, Ian McCulloch and Caroline Langrishe give all four episodes the respect and polished performances that something as ground breaking as Survivors.
The chase of a utopian society might the goal that people crave for, the ideal in which all are equal is a fine and noble aspiration but in the eyes of viruses, bacteria and disease, it seem Humanity will always be equal in terms of destroying however as the song goes, “As long as there is two of us, we’ll carry on”.
Terry Nation’s Survivors Series One is available from Worlds Apart, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall