Solitary (2012) Review

Despite some interesting concepts and a varied performance from Michael Keating, Solitary is ultimately an exercise in boredom.

WRITTEN BY

Nigel Fairs, whose career apparently consists of doing random Big Finish Companion Chronicles. I can see why...

PLOT

Vila finds himself locked in a room on the Liberator, with no idea of who he is or how he got there. With him is a friendly man named Nyrron, who inspires him to remember... most importantly, why he is there.

ANALYSIS

I appreciate the necessity for the framing device due to the nature of the plot, but the way it's written is incredibly clunky. I mean, The Turing Test was basically just Avon recounting the story as well, but it didn't feel the need to have the actor impersonate his colleagues or have somebody else repeat "so what happened next?" ad infinitum.

But before we even get to that twist, we have the first half of Solitary, which is entirely centred around the completely uninteresting and ultimately irrelevant character of Nyrron. I know this isn't the character section, but this really bothers me. Nyrron does not have to be in this story, because the story is about Vila. But in order to get to that interesting half, we have to wade through half an hour of learning about Nyrron, how he came to be on the Liberator, what he's doing with Vila.

And once you do figure it out, you'll realise how completely inconsequential he is. In fact, I can't emphasize how much better Solitary would be if his role was filled by Cally. We care about Cally, so the tension would be stronger. We're emotionally invested in her and Vila, so the therapist scenes would have more weight. Nyrron is so random he might as well be the author's self-insert.

Fortunately, the latter half was more gripping, at least until Vila finally understood the truth. The moment of his realisation, which the entire story had been building towards, was far too vague, filled with contradictory statements and possible double-crossing on his part. In fact, I'm not entirely sure when he did understand.

CHARACTERS

I'll give Solitary this, I came away with an even stronger appreciation for Michael Keating's talents as an actor. The Way Back always held this promise of a more dangerous and psychotic Vila and I am glad that the audios are giving him a chance to really flex and show what he's made of.
As far as his impersonations of the other actors go, however... I'd say his Blake is probably the best. Not that he sounds anything like Gareth Thomas, but he can pull off Blake's righteous authority. Keating's Avon is far too snobbish and the women are unrecognisable.

For all the shit I heaped on Gustav Nyrron, I must say I do really like Anthony Howell. He's a good actor(who sounds kind of like Paul Darrow, to the point where I briefly confused the two) giving a solid performance, and Nyrron himself came across as a decent, reasonable person who could become a more fleshed out, likable hero in other stories. I just resent his inclusion here, because it does a disservice both to Solitary and his own potential as a character.

NOTES

*My suggestion that Nyrron could be fleshed out later isn't just wishful thinking on my part. Solitary seems to deliberately avoid giving too much away about him, such as how exactly he survived the massacre on Dulcimer or what terrible secret the gestalt entity knew about him.

*Avon is described as wiping a sweaty brow. Darrow would never do that.

*If Avon and Jenna wanted to test Nyrron's loyalty, then leaving only Vila to observe his actions on Terrulis Major seems like a pretty stupid idea! Then again, Avon and Jenna were probably half delirious when they came up with that scheme.

*I have no idea why Nyrron and Vila were shifting heavy boxes in a loading bay. Weren't they planning to steal conduits? And for that matter, what's Blake supposed to do with them anyway? This isn't exactly an attack on Star One, is it?

*I guessed that Vila wasn't himself. Just saying that to pay myself on the back.

*One wonders what the crew were getting up to down on Terrulis Major whilst Nyrron dealt with Vila. Or why they'd even risk letting Nyrron have free reign over the ship given that his "trial" went so awry. Or why they didn't worry about being attacked by other entities.

INFORMATION!

*Solitary takes place in Series A, due to the mention of Gan and lack of Orac. I'd set it between Bounty and Deliverance, since Zen refuses to respond to the gestalt entity, whereas it did to Tarvin and his Amagons. The implication being that Avon reprogrammed it afterwards(of course, Zen also turned against the crew in Redemption, but I guess I can accept it as just being a total override from the System).

*Vila briefly references his father, whom he describes as a large salt-of-the-earth man with a penchant for cardplaying(although it's left ambiguous whether he was telling the truth).

*Nyrron mentions that the President ordered the destruction of the weapons facility on Dulcimer IV, to avoid it falling into rebel hands.

*Nyrron is from Auron, Cally's homeworld. Like her, he has telepathic powers.

*Vila is shown to have some knowledge of ancient history, namely the legend of the Mary Celeste and Robin Hood. Once again, whether the information came from his own mind is left for the listener to decide.

*The gestalt entity fought by the crew appears to be a close relative to the one they'd later encounter on Xenon in Rescue.

*The guns heat up, making them unremovable from the Liberator flight deck wall, just like in Space Fall.

*When talking about Robin Hood, Vila mentions his memories being altered by the Federation. He claimed to have had his head adjusted by "the best in the business" in The Way Back.

BEST QUOTE

Really, the entire monologue where Vila describes events that happened to the fake escapees on the pod.

CONCLUSION

I could see what Fairs was trying to do here, but several terribly wrong decisions crippled it almost completely.