Caged (2014) Review

As the confrontation between Blake and the President, Caged has the blueprint of a brilliant story. Unfortunately, its pedestrian execution lets it down.

WRITTEN BY

Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, continuing on from Cold Fury. So far, so meh.

PLOT

The captured Liberator is escorted to the President's personal space station, where he hosts Blake, Cally and Jenna to gloat over his ultimate victory. Meanwhile, Travis and Vila torture Avon to extract the location of Orac's key.

ANALYSIS

Caged crystallises the problem I've felt with the Big Finish stories for a while now. Whilst the writers are eager to indulge in character beats that the show only hinted at as well as come up with seemingly impossible situations for them to escape from, they seem incapable of actually making those characters come to life or create genuinely new, strange worlds for them to visit.

The dialogue is utilitarian, flat, cliched. Everybody talks exactly like you'd expect them to. Travis talks about how he'll make everyone's life miserable, because that's what Travis does. Avon snarls something in the background, because that's what he does. Vila frets and fusses, because-you get the picture. It's a pale imitation of their genuine, vibrant dynamics, reducing them to caricatures.
And the environments and characters we've encountered throughout Series One are not particularly original either. Apart from the President and maybe Michelov(who was killed off), you'll be hard-pressed to remember anyone at all.

Another continuing problem I have is making sense of the action scenes. There's frequently moments where we just hear scuffling sounds and then the situation has completely changed without it being at all clear how it changed(for example, Blake held the President at gunpoint until suddenly Travis held the President at gunpoint).

Of course, all of this may just be my own inability to adapt to the audio drama format, but I feel like at least my criticism about the character interactions is accurate. The dialogue is hollow and shallow, and not at all like the passionate, verbose lines from the show.

CHARACTERS

Sadly, all of that build-up between Travis and Vila amounts to not much at all. Of course, I didn't expect Vila to be evil, but the fact that he was just pretending to go along with Travis is disappointing. Travis himself is pretty much just a henchman in this story until the very end. That's not to take away from the performances of Keating and Croucher, which are solid(Croucher in particular is excellent in the scenes between him and Avon).

Hugh Fraser is so damn cool, and I feel like variations of that sentence will accompany every story the President features in. His petulant, anxious, yet thoroughly cultured villain is a good replacement for Servalan, and I only wish he'd been included in the series proper. By far the best invention of Big Finish's take on the series.

Gareth Thomas is always terrific when he's really passionate, and this is no exception. He sounds as if he could genuinely chew Vila's head off of his shoulders and holds his own against Jenna in a blazing row.

NOTES

*Cally advises Blake to not get himself killed trying to escape, as it would be a futile gesture. That's rich, coming from miss "destroy until I am destroyed"!

*How does Vila's faked betrayal match up with Cally's claim of his willingness to kill Avon? Or is this a reference to how Avon was apparently willing to kill Tarrant in Terminal even though he was supposedly just keeping them safe?

*Could Blake and Cally seriously not wrest the gun from Vila?

*Travis just casually forgetting the Liberator's different measure for speed and then poorly hiding it was really funny.

*Why would Vila give Travis access to Zen instead of... I dunno, activating Zen's defense mechanism? Venting the ship? Anything??

*The "Stay sharp." "You too." exchange between Avon and Blake was short, but sweet.

*Apparently, deadlocks from Doctor Who exist on the Cage.

*How did Travis get to commission a personal torture room on the President's space station? Mind you, this had to take place before his exile. I've always gotten the impression that his rank is equal to that of a colonel.

*I wonder what secrets the President got from the Liberator, or if that was merely a bluff? Well, maybe next time.

INFORMATION!

*The story is a direct sequel to Cold Fury, continuing the tale of the Liberator's imprisonment and Vila's betrayal.

*The President appears to have temporarily restored Travis's rank in secret shortly after the events of Voice From The Past, thus shattering the alliance they established in Hostage. Travis lost his rank during the events of Trial.

*Vila reminds Blake that he left Gan to die, which occurred in Pressure Point.

*Jenna compares the President's dining room on the Cage to the one in "the stately home back on Old Earth", which the Liberator crew will later visit in Rumours Of Death.

*The President references Servalan and Travis's hunt for Blake following his rise to popularity, which began in Seek-Locate-Destroy.

*The President hopes to end Blake's rebellion by destroying the symbol of freedom that he represents. Ironically, this was the same tactic used by the Administration in The Way Back, which sparked Blake's escape to the Liberator in the first place.

*Avon has Orac download information regarding Star One, which produces the location of Docholli and leads directly into the events of Gambit.

*Vila jokingly reminds the crew of the time Jenna outwitted the Amazons in Bounty.

*The President mentions his palace on the moon, which was previously depicted in President. 

BEST QUOTE AVON QUOTE

"Make sure it's secure, you wouldn't want me to break free and throttle you to death, would
you?"

CONCLUSION

All of this needs Chris Boucher's editorial skill, badly.