The Dark Planet [AUDIO/2013.9.12]

★★★☆☆

  You know what? I think this would've killed it as an actual TV serial, wonky-ass visual effects and all. It's no use asking me what a practical way of adapting something like The Dark Planet would've been like for 1964 Dr. Who because all I can do is guess, and guesses of this kind inevitably lead to near-impossible circumstances that I would certianly have loved to be real... I mean, Stanley Kubrick famously praised a Dr. Who special effect in the sixties, so he knew it existed, right?

  The point I'm trying to make is, I honestly think, as ambitious and visually tricky to pull off this serial would have been (and still would be), it would've been lovely to see the production team try their best in realising such an insane idea. It would probably have been more enjoyable than this audio production, to be honest. I think its greatest downside, discounting the usual culprit of a rather uneasy six-part format that sometimes dips into utter boredom, is that the narration (i.e. Matt Fitton's writing) doesn't feel as imaginative and bold with its descriptions as it could have? I feel terrible to talk about something that isn't, rather than something that is, but I'm saying that the narration of these Lost Stories usually tend to be quite good. Farewell, Great Macedon had an incredibly descriptive and vivid audio production, and I suspect that level of production value is what The Dark Planet ordered -- and what it couldn't get this time around. With a bit more of a polished production, a script more willing to evoke all sorts of vivid, beautiful mental imagery, and this could've been a masterpiece... because the script itself, the ideas are pretty darn ambitious. Of course it sizzles down into a rather predictable black-and-white war of two peoples with the normal betrayal twists and revelations and whatnot, but the concept of light and dark manifest is just so bonkers that I love it. It makes so much sense that this script came from the mind of one Brian Hayles, creator of The Celestial Toymaker. That, of course, has the edge of being executed pretty nicely onscreen (though we unfortunately cannot watch its transmitted form for three-fourths of its runtime); The Dark Planet relies on the production quality of this audio drama, and it's more or less good. Not a patch on how it could've been, though. I honestly think Ken Bentley struggles with more ambitious, out-there scripts, and I wish I was born in an alternate universe where Gary Russell directed this thing. 

  Anyway, The Dark Planet's enjoyable.