Moonflesh is a 5th Doctor and Nyssa audio adventure from Big Finish.  I had not listened to it prior to encountering it in my marathon but I had not heard great things about it across forums and blogs.  The trilogy it was released with was fairly universally derided so I entered this story with a little trepidation.

Unfortunately, the general consensus is, as far as I’m concerned, more or less right.  Whilst it isn’t offensively bad, it isn’t particularly good and doesn’t seem to be trying particularly hard in any aspect: script, performances, direction or even the CD cover.

The story finds the Doctor and Nyssa pitch up at a country estate in Suffolk, 1911 to find a menagerie of wild animals (mostly from Africa) roaming the woods.  They are rescued and join up with the estate’s owner, Nathaniel Whitlock, his daughter Phoebe, manservant Silver Crow and smattering of guests who have come for a hunt.

A strange crystal rock, the Moonflesh, transpires to be a comatose alien who awakes to cause the humans a bit of trouble.  Through a bit of mucking around in a dreamworld, the Doctor is able to return the alien, Vatuus to it’s comatose state.

Firstly, the plot and script for this is pretty uninspiring.  It’s very linear and borrows heavily from a lot of other stories such as The Star Beast comic strip and Black Orchid.  It all felt rather familiar but not in a good way.  What is worse though is the dialogue written for the characters – in particular the Doctor and Nyssa.  It is incredibly cliched and run-of-the-mill.  As a consequence it doesn’t inspire great performances from Davison or Sutton.  It’s the first time I’ve felt Davison is just going through the motions.  The rest of the cast are given such caricatures to work with that their dialogue consequently overblown.  There’s also far too quick a shift from incredulous Edwardians to full acceptance of alien life.  One character stands out a little and that is Hannah Bartholomew.  Now, coming to this much later than its initial release, I’m aware, vaguely, of what happens to Hannah after this story, but within the confines of Moonflesh, she’s admittedly quite fun and there’s a bit of intriguing backstory with the society she is working for and her personal beliefs about time.  She is played by Francesca Hunt who has appeared in this marathon before as the much more subtly-played character of Georgina Marlowe in the wonderful Other Lives.  She has some fun with Hannah’s plummy accent and bravado and it will be interesting to see (in the far future) where her character goes.

The other character of note is John Banks’s Silver Crow.  A Native American in the employ of Whitlock, he spouts the usual mystical stuff expected of these characters when not a lot of work has been put into them.  Banks does his best but he isn’t given a lot to work with.  

The direction of Moonflesh is also something of a let down.  99% of Big Finish seems to be directed by Ken Bentley and whilst I’m sure he’s reliable he never, in the interview extras, seems particularly enthusiastic about his work.  In Moonflesh he hasn’t seemed to coax decent performances from his cast nor tried hard with the sound design.  There were a few instances of sound effects where I was struggling to work out what was going on (until some beautifully clunky ‘say what I see’ dialogue filled in the blanks).  His heart just didn’t seem to be in this story.

The artwork on the cover of Moonflesh echoes the lacklustre approach to the whole production.  A massive picture of Tim Bentick, the actor playing Nathaniel Whitlock dominates a collage of wild animals and the Moonflesh crystal.  Despite having his head photoshopped on to vaguely Edwardian clothing (although to be honest, they look a bit too frilly) he looks too ‘modern’.  His image also doesn’t match the voice performance he chooses to give.  Without the picture, I would have imagined someone a bit older, more portly, with sideburns and moustache.  Someone a bit more like Henry Gordon Jago or Redvers Fenn Cooper.  As it is, there is a mismatch between voice and image.

Historically, despite the 1911 setting, we again get more of a Victorian feel.  The ideas of a big game hunter, a foreign servant and the aristocracy don’t feel hugely different to similar elements in Ghost Light,  There is a bit of lip service paid to suffrage and the changing role of women in Hannah Bartholomew’s character (and to some extent Phoebe Whitlock) but this is still something which is more in the background.

Moonflesh isn’t the absolute worst Doctor Who story but it isn’t anything special.  I’ll admit I’m intrigued by Hannah and what will happen to her character but the other elements of this audio do not come together to create a particularly satisifying whole.