The Traveller relates a tale to his friend Bertie of the futures of our world…

The plural is deliberate in that brief description – Marc Platt’s well judged adaptation of the Wells classic doesn’t focus purely on the Eloi and the Morlocks, in the way that most screen versions have (mainly because they are the most dramatic sequences in the book, one suspects), but includes the Traveller’s trips forward to the ends of the Earth and the real fate of the human race.

There’s a certain irony in the way Big Finish are promoting this – as a very different sort of time travel adventure from Doctor Who. As the cast members note in the extras (which sadly don’t include comments from adapter Platt), the book’s influence on science fiction in general and Doctor Who in particular is great, and there are a couple of moments within the story (particularly when the Time Traveller is separated from his machine in the future) that really do feel like the good Doctor’s adventures.

Platt makes a few tweaks to Wells’ text in terms of its presentation, allowing some of the ideas within to be challenged (but nicely done in a way that suggests they were ‘off the record’ comments from the Time Traveller to his friend that were not intended for print), but on the whole retains the plot as Wells told it, rather than George Pal in the best-known of the movie versions. The Traveller’s Victorian mores are key to the way in which he both reacts to the new world(s) around him, and theorises about their roots. It’s been fascinating listening to these versions of Wells over the past few months and noting what themes clearly fascinated the writer, and the way in which he dealt with them, and I suspect relistening to them in the order in which they were first written will show some intriguing developments. (And I really hope these have been successful enough for some of Wells’ other tales – The Food of the Gods and Star Begotten – to be considered for adaptation.)

There are certain presentational problems with a story featuring the Eloi and the Morlocks, and director Ken Bentley faces them head on. Of necessity, Platt has had to create a lot of dialogue – which has meant giving the Time Traveller a name (I can’t believe it’s not Better) and (for some reason) changing Weena’s name to Uweena – and the innocence versus depravity split of the races is reflected in the voices. Anjella Mackintosh walks a fine line with her performance as Uweena, never quite becoming twee or sounding so child-like that doubts over the Time Traveller’s motives comes to mind. Among the rest of a strong cast, Ben Miles’ Traveller is one of the best versions of Wells’ character that I’ve come across, with Nicholas Rowe’s Bertie (aka H.G. Wells himself) a good foil. Peter Doggat’s sound design and Howard Carter’s music blend well, and I particularly enjoyed the far future sequences – it would be the hell of a job to do, but I’d love to hear a Big Finish version of Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men done in this style!

Verdict: An excellent presentation of a seminal work of British SF. 10/10

Paul Simpson