Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Geoffrey Beevers, Susan Brown, Damien Lynch, Andy Secombe, Chris Porter.
Death has always walked side by side with The Doctor that at times its hard to see where the join might be. One such clue is where the rotting shell of The Master is, Death surely is playing a more dangerous game with him than with the Doctor.
Following on directly from John Dorney’s Requiem For The Space Men, Death Match is a suitable sequel in which Big Finish asks the pertinent questions of what it means to be entertained.
The days in which the barbarity of the fights to the death between gladiators, slaves and animal were considered sport has perhaps been replaced by the spectacle of the pugilist and the wrestler and to a certain extent the near depravity that is to be seen in the undercurrent in so called reality programmes where the nation decides who it hates enough to spend time with insects and rats in the modern age, so why not revert to the idea of death being the ultimate enjoyment for the easily bored and tiresome rich in the future.
It is a premise in which pleasure is ultimately driven and the scheming claw like hooks of The Master are to be seen everywhere as he looks for his own distraction.
It is this thought of distraction in which the bored can easily be found. Rather than spending their time and energy making the world a better place, they resort to gambling with people’s lives. It is an almost surreal pastiche of the way that modern Governments and television companies treat their citizens and viewers, the game is all, does it matter whose reputation and life is destroyed as long as it makes money and has viewers tuning in their droves.
Death Match should be seen as one of Louise Jameson’s crowning glories in the guise of the noble savage. A story which rips Leela’s soul apart and takes her to the very point of happiness and then pulls, yanks harshly the delight of what could come away with such fine precision then the story by Matt Fitton may as well have been written by a scalpel than fingers on a keyboard. Matt Fitton has such a way of writing for strong women, that even in the most heart-breaking of episodes in their life they retain great character and integrity. It is a testament to both Mr. Fitton and Ms. Jameson’s abilities as writer and actor that this comes across so well in this particular story.
A tale closely woven and with great obvious distaste for the modern viewpoint of cheap mass entertainment, an entertainment that humanity keeps reverting back to, Death Match is to be admired as a story and a chilling warning.
Doctor Who: Death Match is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall