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| MAKE THE ROBOTS FIGHT MORE |
When the HH anthology 'Mark Of Calth' came out, we were told 2 additional stories were on the way, linked to this collection, in audio form. Here's the first in terms of the Calth timeline, Gav Thorpe's 'Honour To The Dead'. This drama takes place in the city of Ithraca, which is in upstate Nrew Yrork. Ahhh, geography based humour. Is this thing on? I kid. 'Honour To The Dead' is set on Calth, of course.
Our main "character" is the Titan, Invigilator. Unfortunately, its princeps, Mikal, is an incredibly dull character from the very first time we set ears on him. His dialogue is standard princeps techno-gabble; fair enough. It's also delivered in an unbelievably wooden way. The beginning of the drama is extremely impressive, with a quite dispassionate description of the Betrayal and the commencement of hostilities. Definitely influenced heavily by the writing style of 'Know No Fear'; while Gav isn't quite as good at capturing the sheer weight of horror that Dan did so well, it's still compelling. While we're talking about what's good here, David Timson's narration is excellent, as usual. While hammy, Timson has nowhere near the gammon levels of Toby Longworth. The smooth, declarative style of his narration is completely suited to the 'Know No Fear' aping, present tense 'factual' approach of this story.
The sound effects here - screaming crowds of civilians, explosions, bleeping Titan command consoles - struck me as excellent. I'm not crazy about the SFX that strangle a lot of Black Library dramas. But if you gotta do it, do it right, and Heavy Entertainment DO THIS SHIT. I gotta say, the Titan battle horns are very similar to the Reaper horns from Mass Effect 3... but hey, they probably stole that from somewhere else. (Inception?) The thing is, the sections with the Legio Praesagius loyalists are by far the best thing here. The 'good guy' Princeps is hella wooden, but that's kind of a nice gear shift from the rest of these over-emoting clowns. The real star is the narrator who keeps it pretty steady throughout, and Thorpe's actual description/exposition is very good.
Unfortunately, when the drama reaches Verinia, the second of our characters, it chokes. Oh boy, does it choke hard. Ugh. This is really gonna be painful...
So, the story takes a massive turn for the worse with the introduction of Verinia, a woman caught in the terrible ground war between Titan brigades. Concerned about the fate of her husband (in a military unit in the centre of the now-burning city) and her infant son, tears just burst out her wig. In fact, all she does is weep and moan and while that's an understandable reaction, it's... a little overplayed. I quite respect Gav Thorpe as a writer... usually... but my opinion of him took a real pounding during these sections. They're horrendously overacted, but I can't put the blame on the voice actors. How the fuck are they gonna have one of the only female characters seen on Calth - nay, in the whole HH series! - be just some screaming damsel in distress? In the grim darkness of the far future, womens be takin care of business themselves yo. Like Lotara... or Euphrati before her character was neutered and given a halo... not THIS fucking bullshit!
Ugh, the part where she has to hide from the (Russian-sounding) Colchis/Chaos Cultist looters and plugs up the baby's mouth to stop it from making a sound is soooo contrived. Has she killed him??? That'd be the sort of thing to happen in an Abnett book, but no risks of that type are going to be taken by Gav.
How to put this? It feels like Gav decided to focus on the "human aspect" of the Calth atrocity, and to do this by tracking the struggles of a civilian woman to regain her infant son Paxilius. Reasonable, though they totally could have had a dude for this character instead... since the Imperial Army is hella equal ops after all. "Everyone's welcome to become a flesh-cog in our hideous death machine!" The problem is that the actor portraying Verinia seems to have been given the direction "MORE HYSTERICAL, I WANT YOU TO SOUND LIKE EVERY HIDEOUS FEMALE STEREOTYPE POSSIBLE. What's that? You think that'll make your lines harder to hear? Don't worry, you've got like 3 lines in this whole script, it's just you repeat them again and again, so the listeners will pick up what you're saying eventually." So yeahhhhh, bad acting exacerbates shitty characterisation in the writing. A bummer all round.
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| Much like Tom Jane, Verinia just wants her kid back. |
Luckily, for a great deal of this drama (probably 40-45 minutes of it?) we're just with Mikal seeing Titan battles. He may be as interesting as a breadcrumb sandwich, but Mikal sees some interesting shit. I've never been a huge fan of Titan battles in the 40K/HH stuff I've read, but these were pretty dope. Maybe I would have liked them even more if there was even a single good character involved.
But then we get the Ultramarines characters. Shock: They don't want to disregard their search-and-destroy defense against the Word Bearers in order to safeguard one civilian to an evac point. Worse shock: after a bit of crying, they relent and agree to play nursemaid. Even the XIII can't resist when a dame turns on the waterworks, am I right boys! Crimony! I'm really not good with this plot point. Though the 'autism conditioning' wasn't as intense in 30K, even at this point, the Astartes would have reacted to a screaming, terrified human making irrational demands of them with disdain and repulsion at best. Even a noble, humanitarian chapter like the Ultramarines. I guess the cynical, world-weary Brother-Sergeant Aquila learned about the nature of hope and faith from this weak human!! What horseshit.
The last battle here is very well done in terms of action, but motivations and characterisation are suspect. Once again, an Ultramarine sacrificing himself to protect a human seems like bullshit. Practical: Hundreds of thousands of humans have died on Calth already. Theoretical: Denying an Ultramarine's death will hurt the XVII more than denying a 'mere' human's death. Despite the lengthy explanation the surviving Ultramarines give about how babies make it all worth it, I don't give a shit. But that's NOTHING compared to princeps Tai looking at a tiny baby's unafraid eyes (wow, those Titan viewscreens have good resolution obviously) and having a huge spiritual epiphany, or if you prefer, a fit of intense stupidity, and ALLOWING himself to be killed. What the fuck? Boy, the archenemy lost one of its stupidest soldiers that day.
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| Continuing the Arrested Development theme, TAI IS A MONSTERRRR! |
Only Mikal's valedictory speech gives the drama a little bit of dignity back. The last five minutes of unassuming heroism almost makes it worth it. It's a pale echo of the cathartic moments in 'Know No Fear' where the Ultramarines finally rallied and started to hurt the traitors. But at least it's trying.
'Honour To The Dead' would have worked much better as a print story. In fact, this would have got rid of the largest impediments it has (terrible voice actors for two of the three main characters, and one who's passable but boring). Yet that couldn't have changed the hideously manipulative attempts at pathos, Ultramarnes who jump in front of laser blasts for dying humans, Chaos princeps who are taught a lesson in appreciating the smaller things in life, and, well, HORRIBLY DULL CHARACTERS. Now, 'Deliverance Lost' was surprisingly good but I'm starting to think that Gav should be relegated to short stories buried in collections, nothing 'flagship' like this.
I give this 5/10. And dudes... fucking step up your attempts at making good female characters. Jeez.
New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.
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