The colony planet Delafoss is occupied by the army of a rapacious alien force known only as the Eminence. These slave armies of terrified humans are commanded by the dreaded Infinite Warriors – impervious to most forms of firepower, voices like icy death.
The Doctor and Leela arrive expecting to find Earth’s most successful, unspoiled colony. Instead, they are confronted by a planet choked by industrialization. And at the heart of it all, the construction of something that the Eminence intends will wipe out all human resistance once and for all.
For the first time in his life, the Doctor confronts the Eminence… and things will never be quite the same again.
DESTROY THE INFINITE
When Nicholas Briggs wrote “Destroy the Infinite” a few years ago as a vehicle to introduce new Big Finish recurring villain “the Eminence,” he realized the delay until Tom Baker’s third season would allow Big Finish to release the stories out of order, thus creating a new way to discover a new Doctor Who villain. So finally, after “The Seeds of War” and “Dark Eyes 2,” we get to hear the long-awaited first meeting between the Doctor and the Eminence – and what do you know, it’s bad!
So let’s review what we learn about the Eminence in this story: they’re evil, they want to take over the universe, they appear to travel around in a gaseous form, and they use something called the Breath of Forever to kill people and possess their bodies into slaves called Infinite Warriors. We learned this in “The Seeds of War.” We learned this in “Dark Eyes 2.” So why are we learning it yet again here? Letting us hear the stories out of order is an interesting idea, something that couldn’t have been done on television – but instead of constructing the narratives to facilitate this, Big Finish literally just released the stories out of order. All that accomplishes is making “Destroy the Infinite” utterly predictable, because the Doctor already told us what happened to him when he first met the Eminence. I suppose this would work better if you hadn’t heard the other Eminence stories, but doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the exercise? I don’t even know anymore.
As for “Destroy the Infinite” itself? It’s a Nicholas Briggs Fourth Doctor Adventure. There’s a generic future setting, a long and terrible war, an implacable enemy, a group of hard-bitten rebels with hearts of gold, a curiously badly written Doctor, and a Leela with the intelligence of a lamppost. The title might be interesting, if it referred to the concept of the infinite, or even the Infinite Warriors – but no, there’s a ship called the “Infinite” and people want to destroy it. I’m really running out of ways to review these stories. You could take random five-minute samples from any of them and you’d barely be able to tell the difference. I’m looking at the cast list and I’m struggling to remember who any of the characters were – perhaps if they wrote “Generic Mistrustful Rebel Leader” instead of “Tarrant” or whatever the hell, I’d remember them?
Look, you know the drill by now. The production is solid – Briggs always directs his action material with a certain amount of verve, and Jamie Robertson’s sound design is as good as ever. Lots of things explode convincingly; the Eminence has a creepy voice filter; etc. If this were the first Doctor Who audio you ever heard, you’d probably like it. This is the nineteenth Fourth Doctor Adventure, however, and it feels like we’ve already had 100 of the things. Next month should be better, as I really enjoyed Nigel Fairs’ Companion Chronicles. It had better be, though, because I guarantee you I’ll be writing this same review AGAIN after “Zygon Hunt.”
Make it stop.
4/10