Technophobia (2016) Review

Technophobia, although a solid return to the Tennant era, is a pretty threadbare story.

WRITTEN BY

Matt Fitton, the man behind the borefest that was The Neverwhen. This doesn't bode well...

PLOT

The Tenth Doctor takes Donna a few years into the future to admire the rapid technological developments, only to discover London under siege... from vacuum cleaners and taxis.

ANALYSIS

About halfway through the story, I found myself wishing this was a Cyberman story. Not because every story needs to include an iconic monster, but because this one could've seriously benefitted from some chills(not to mention that it'd be a clever, logical plan for them and they could use the dignity).

Anyway, Technophobia is a very straightforward adventure, almost insultingly so for Big Finish. You could say it's aiming for the cheap thrills of a Tennant episode and it does work in that context, but with a 60-minute runtime and an audio format, I was hoping for something more.

Instead, we were left dragging our feet through scene after scene of people shouting at things like lifts and a ripoff of Apple's Siri interface("Sylvi"). I hate to say this, but what a letdown.

CHARACTERS

David Tennant is anyone's first reason to buy this, and is also the highlight of the whole story, clearly having the time of his life returning to the role. In fact, to anyone who was disappointed by the Tenth Doctor's appereance in The Day Of The Doctor, I recommend this since it gets the character as written by RTD pitch-perfectly. You have the puppydog moments, you have the smartarse moments and you have the moments where it almost seems like he can't win.
I've missed having a rounded, realistic Doctor. Welcome back, Ten!

Sadly in contrast, Catherine Tate's Donna is so lowkey it took me a while to figure out who she even was from the dialogue! That's right: I couldn't recognise Tate's voice. She has her moments of charm from the writing, but Tate seemed to be phoning it.

Both Chook Sibtain's Brian and Jot Davies' Lukas sounded like the long-lost brothers of mr. Razor(the Master's disguise in World Enough And Time). The fact that they were both equally terrified of machinery made them largely indistinguishable.

Then there was Kevin, played by Rory Keenan, who was basically the Kevin from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie without the dumb jokes. Likable hunk with a minor job who helps out our heroines.

The best original character was Niky Wardley's "Bex with an X", who basically becomes Donna's apprentice as a spirited temp. I wonder if they'll ever give the New Who Doctors extra companions in the audios...

NOTES

*Apparently the Big Finish website crashed shortly after the announcement of this story. Just goes to show you what an impact David Tennant's tenure has left on the show, even six years later.

*Has anyone else noticed that Tennant's voice has become much raspier in recent years?

*Including a TV news clip was a nice, subtle callback to RTD's use of television to make the threat seem worldwide.

*I wish more sound effects had been used to establish the setting of the TARDIS, especially considering how often it sparked during this era.

*The Koggnossenti's "You know nothing" catchphrase HAS to be a Game Of Thrones reference.

*Speaking of which, why couldn't we spend more time with them? All we know is they travel through dimensions and employ intelligent tactics in world conquest. And they apparently look like insectoid Terminators.

*The promo pictures have iPhones on them. Were they really that big way back in 2011? In fact, why couldn't this story just have taken place in the year that it was made?

CONTINUITY ADVISOR

1) Fitting with Flatline, but contradicting School Reunion from his own era, the Doctor tells Kevin that all he has to do with the sonic is "point and think". I guess it makes more sense since we can't see any buttons on the thing, but... c'mon, I liked the settings. Can't we bring the settings back somehow? Maybe you have to think a certain way?

2) When Donna claims the TARDIS fizzles in, an insulted Doctor is driven to mimic the TARDIS sound-effect, just like the Eleventh Doctor with River in The Time Of Angels. Don't really see the point of doing the same joke here, but it's not important.

3) Donna shops at Henrik's, the store Rose worked in in... well, Rose. Okay...? Guess it ties the universe together a bit, but it just feels random to me.

BEST QUOTE

"Sylvi, off." - A hilariously curt ending to the story.

CONCLUSION

Technophobia had the potential to be a really cool invasion story, but sadly took the easy way whenever it could and thus becomes just an okay way to waste an hour.