Kingdom of Lies review (Fifth Doctor audio)
By James Aggas
Big Finish
The Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric all find themselves in the middle of a divided kingdom, a loveless marriage, as well as several massive misunderstandings, in Kingdom of Lies!
This year’s Fifth Doctor trilogy from Big Finish opens with the wonderfully light Kingdom of Lies. Well, “light” in terms of its tone, at least. Because it’s a complicated story, featuring assassins, fake assassins, power hungry schemers and loveless marriages. As you can see, there is a lot going on in Kingdom of Lies. But it’s also rather funny, too.
The Duke and the Duchess are especially fantastic characters. Stuck in a loveless marriage, both have incredible egos. This is especially clear from how they see their people, and how they believe their people see them. Each believes that the public adores them more than the other. (As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that only one of them is actually correct in their belief.) How these two treat not just each other, but even their whole kingdom, is hilarious.
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Equally brilliant to listen to are the regulars. Mistaken for assassins, they each try to get out of trouble by lying. Unfortunately, as they become more involved in what’s going on, the lies get bigger and more complicated.
Hearing each of the characters trying to play ruthless assassins is hysterical to hear. All of them sound unconvincing, but it’s Nyssa who fails the most spectacularly. Try hard not to laugh at her preparing “deadly weapons of death”, or the Doctor’s reaction to that.
Pure farce
Farce can be a tricky genre to get right. For example, the most recent Eighth Doctor box set, Ravenous 1, featured an episode in this genre. However, as noted in the review, How to Make a Killing in Time Travel didn’t work quite as well as it should have. There were good ideas there, but only one hour to feature the many characters and plot strands that the episode contained. As a result, it felt rather rushed, and not quite fleshed out enough.
Kingdom of Lies avoids that mistake, thankfully. It also has a large number of characters and plot strands included. But it also has twice the length to tell that story, too. As such, there’s a large amount of room to let the whole story breathe, flesh out the details, and include more than a few laughs, too.
Next: The Morton Legacy review (Second Doctor audio)
Kingdom of Lives is a really fun story that’s well worth your time. It’s funny, clever, and a joy to listen to. A great way to begin this year’s Fifth Doctor trilogy.