2 episodes. BBC Audio, Approx. 140 minutes. Written by: Stephen Cole. Produced by: Kate Thomas. Read by: Don Warrington
THE PLOT
An alien signal brings the Doctor and Rose to Africa, about 100 years into Rose's future. For the Earth, the 22nd century is a time of famine. Corporate sponsorship has set up agricultural units in Africa to help to feed the starving... principally, the starving in places very far away from the continent where the food is actually being grown.
Fynn is the director of an Agri-unit that is experimenting with fungus grown inside a dormant volcano. The fungus is poisonous, but Fynn believes it can be genetically modified into an ideal food source. What he has no way of knowing is that the volcano is actually the site of a spacecraft, the final vault for the art treasures of the extinct Valnaxi. The Valnaxi were destroyed in a war with the Wurms, war-like beings who exist only to destroy. When an alien art expert determines that the volcano genuinely is the site of the Valnaxi treasures, the Wurms come - and Africa becomes the final battleground of a centuries-old conflict!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Has the technical knowledge to take Fynn's research and use it to create a counter to the Valnaxi defenses - though it takes Rose being claimed by their technology to make this into his top priority. His aversion to outright violence is shown by his attempts to reason with the Wurms, even when doing so jeopardizes his efforts to save the humans and Rose.
Rose: Easily befriends Adiel and Basel, and shows genuine empathy at their desire to find a way to benefit their own people, rather than watch while Africa subsists on crumbs and handouts. She is forceful enough to convince Basel to take her into the caves to find the Doctor, and resourceful enough to help both of them survive once they are there.
THOUGHTS
The Art of Destruction is read by Don Warrington, an actor with a long string of television, theatre, and audio credits to prove his credentials. Warrington's reading is very good to excellent roughly 85% of the time. The deep timbre of his voice helps to evoke the African setting. He captures the various African guest characters well; he is even better at capturing the harsh but slimy voices of the wurms; he is downright outstanding at bringing to life the self-serving, vaguely cowardly art expert-for-hire, Faltato. A brief interview at the end of Disc Two makes clear how much thought he put into his voices for the Wurms and for Faltato, which shows in the final product.
Warrington's reading only fails in one area. Unfortunately, it's a rather important one.
He just can't do the Doctor.
This is particularly true in scenes featuring both the Doctor and Rose. He can Anglicize his voice and suggest some of Billie Piper's accent for Rose. But he cannot make the switch from that to the Doctor in the midst of conversational scenes. Disc One has many scenes featuring both characters together. In these scenes, I often had no idea which of them was speaking at any given time.
He improves in the story's second half, which has the Doctor separated from Rose for the most part. He still can't do much to suggest Tennant, but he does manage to suggest some of the Doctor's energy. This, combined with Warrington's skill with the alien voices, helps the second disc to be far more enjoyable than the first. Even so, there is little question in my mind that he was the wrong reader for a Doctor Who audiobook.
This is a pity, because The Art of a Destruction is rather a good story. It has a spark of imagination that was missing from The Feast of the Drowned. It starts out like a fairly typical Doctor Who story, with something nasty lurking in caves and corridors. Then Faltato and the Wurms arrive, and everything goes insane.
Insane in a good way, I mean. This isn't The Stone Rose, taking a left turn into being a completely different story in its final Act. Exposition about the Valnaxi/Wurm conflict is carefully layered into the early parts of the story, so that when the Wurms arrive, it still is organically one piece. But it's a piece in which giant alien worms (called Wurms, no less) with cybernetic implants are splattering deadly mud at gold-coated birds and insects, which continue to swoop in and attack them. There's a cowardly, multi-legged, multi-eyed, multi-tongued(!) art expert selling everyone out left and right, and everyone is dismissing the Doctor and the humans as feeble "bipeds." Even with Warrington's less than ideal reading, the story is so completely nuts that you really can't help but enjoy it.
It's just a shame it couldn't have been read by somebody who could capture the Doctor's voice. For all the alien insanity, a Doctor Who story should never have the Doctor himself as its weakest element. If I was reviewing the print version, I'd probably give this a "7." But with Warrington's poor Doctor, I really can't go higher than...
Rating: 6/10.
Rating: 6/10.
Set During: Series 2
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