PORTAL
012 |
A colony ship with thousands of souls
aboard. A top secret mission. A verdant planet
named Triton. A problem none of them could
have seen coming. Big Finish’s latest, Human
Frontier, deals with some big SF concepts.
“I thought about how human beings from
different eras are very different. I mean, what
would it actually be like if you had someone
from the 1600s turn up here, or for us to go
back there? I think it’d be almost impossible for
them to relate to each other because of their
assumptions about life,” says Nick Briggs, who
wrote and directed the new play.
‘Human Frontier’ is the name of both the
series and the colony ship it’s set on. Sent
on a slow course from Earth, and buried in
secrecy, the Human Frontier crew are shocked
to discover someone has beaten them to their
new home. Someone from Earth who does not
want to share.
“I came up
with the idea of
people travelling
to a distant planet
but not being
able to go there
quickly, so they
go into cryogenic
suspension,”
Briggs continues.
“And then they
get there and find
that people have
already beaten them to it and that they have
all sorts of different assumptions about life.
“The people who colonised this planet
have been there for 300 years. When this
spaceship turns up, they think, ‘what? If this
was happening, we would have known about
it!’ But it was all done in secret... The idea
underpinning it is ‘do we really have free will
and how much are we controlled?’ Because
we all think we know what the world’s about,
but that knowledge we take is on trust.”
Briggs not only wrote and directed Human
Frontier, he is also executive producer of Big
Finish. You will have heard Nick many times
given that he’s the voice of the Daleks and
the Cybermen. “It really is good to not be
constrained by a format,” he says when we
ask if he enjoys working in his own ‘sandbox’.
“But then, there’s the tyranny of choice.
Because you could, literally, do anything.
WWW .SCIFINOW.CO.UKWe visit the Big Finish studio to speak to writer and director Nicholas
Briggs and star Clive Wood about new audio sci-fi drama, Human Frontier
WORDS ALASDAIR STUARTWELCOME TO THE
HUM AN FRONTIER
And you could drown and not grab hold of
something. For me, I need that long gestation
period of just thinking about it; becoming
familiar with the worlds I’m creating.
“So after thinking about them for several
months they sort of start to become real
in your mind in the way that Doctor Who
concepts become ‘real’ in your mind. Because
you know them. You know about the Tardis.
I have to become familiar with the Human
Frontier ship and the planet Triton and the
back story. And the characters as well. They
had to become familiar so that I felt I had the
authority to write about them convincingly.”
Speaking of characters, Human Frontier
features the increasingly troubled President
Brett Triton, played with Shakespearean relish
by Clive Wood, who is desperate to stop the
colonists from either landing or escaping.
But his world is starting to collapse, Brett
has blood on his
hands and the
Human Frontier
may be his last
hope as well as
his arch nemesis.
“He’s a human
being. Everyone
is fallible, but
the more power
people have, the
more they abuse
it,” says Wood
of his role. “There are scenes where he is so
fearful and he’s dealing with that fear. But
when you’ve been in power all your life, it’s a
kind of an alien concept...
“I think Human Frontier’s got resonances of
what‘s happening in this world now... we’re all
still tied into a ritual suspicion of technology,
always looking for someone else to give us
answers from high above. It’s that kind of
whole tribalism that exists and I just thought,
‘I got to have a crack at that’.”
So, are there plans for more Human
Frontier? “Yeah, I can go forward from that
point,” nods Briggs. “Or I can go back to
when the spaceship first set off from Mars
or from the Earth. Or when they first arrived
on Triton to colonise it. I could tell all those
stories. I’ve got lots of ideas of potential.”Human Frontier is released in May 2020.WE’ RE ALL
STILL T IED
INTO A RITUAL
SUSPICION OF
TECHNOLOGY
CLIVE WOODFrom left to right: Mark Elstob, Genevieve
Gaunt, Pepter Lunkuse, Nicholas Briggs,
Lucy Briggs-Owen and Clive Wood.All images © Tony Whitmore