3.1 The Lady in the Lake by Nev Fountain
On Terminus Prime, clients choose their own means of demise. Something exciting, meaningful, or heroic to end it all.
But when River discovers that there are repeat customers, she knows something more is going on.
She begins to uncover a cult with worrying abilities. Its members can apparently cheat death, and that’s not all they have in common with River…
3.2 A Requiem for the Doctor by Jac Rayner
River has joined the Doctor and his friend Brooke on their travels, and they stop off in 18th century Vienna.
Brooke thinks history is dull. Until people start dying.
Mozart’s legacy is not just his music. River has more than one mystery to solve before a killer is let loose on the people of Vienna – and on the Doctor.
3.3 My Dinner with Andrew by John Dorney
Welcome, Mesdames et Messieurs, to The Bumptious Gastropod.
The most exclusive, most discreet dining experience outside the universe. For the restaurant exists beyond spacetime itself, and the usual rules of causality do not apply. Anything could happen.
It is here that the Doctor has a date. With River Song. And with death.
3.4 The Furies by Matt Fitton
Stories of the Furies abound across the cosmos: vengeful spirits hounding guilty souls to death. Madame Kovarian taught them to a child raised in fear, trained to kill, and placed inside a spacesuit.
Kovarian knows the universe’s greatest threat, the Doctor must be eliminated. An assassin was created for that purpose.
But if Melody Pond has failed, Kovarian will simply have to try again…
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: THE LADY IN THE LAKE
A poorly executed plot twist can ruin an otherwise promising story. A brilliant plot twist, on the other hand, can produce something special. Nev Fountain is one of the best Big Finish has at this particular skill – think “Omega” and smile – and he’s at it again here in “The Lady in the Lake,” the first story in the newest Diary of River Song set. I won’t spoil anything, but the best twists are those that are surprising on first listen yet obvious in retrospect, and the clues are all here, including one right out in front of the story. Apart from that, we’re in fascinating territory: River tracking down her “family,” clones of her created to replicate her Time Lord characteristics. The basic question Fountain asks is “what if you could regenerate but didn’t know why,” and the answer is that you’d probably start or join a religious cult. Cynical, but utterly believable, and the “Great Lake” is a fantastic character, caught between confusion and utter determination. (Though the name is a bit distracting because I live next to one of the Great Lakes, but I digress.) And don’t forget the setting, Terminus Prime, a custom suicide studio for the wealthy. Want to end your life? Be sacrificed by an evil cult, or eaten alive by a dragon, or lose a chess game to Death on a beach! It’s a smart critique of monetary excess taken to a logical extreme. Overall, “The Lady in the Lake” is fantastic. It’s smart, layered, surprising, and gives us a look at River at her most independent and ruthless. It’s still a privilege after all these years to be getting Nev Fountain scripts.
9/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: A REQUIEM FOR THE DOCTOR
After a delightful opening story that allowed us to see River in a different light, the script ended with River needing emotional support. Naturally, she seeks out the Doctor for this, and that leads us to Jacqueline Rayner’s “A Requiem for the Doctor,” which is a boring, generic Doctor Who story in the middle of a River Song box set. I’ve made this point in prior reviews, but I think these sets approach the Doctor/River relationship in a backward manner. It’s hard for River to seem independent if she’s constantly pining after the Doctor or unable to center herself without the Doctor present, and of course since these sets don’t have Matt Smith available they must keep coming up with convoluted reasons why River can meet, say, Peter Davison’s Doctor despite repeated insistence on television that such an encounter would be impossible. It’s also boring – we did this with Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker and now Davison acting befuddled by this mysterious woman who likes to kiss them. And since the older Doctors cannot, by definition, have relationships with River, these audio stories are always one-sided and uninteresting. In this story, the Doctor is traveling with new companion Brooke (Joanna Horton), who is instantly jealous of the connection the Doctor and River appear to share. There’s a potentially interesting story here – imagine if we paired River with actual TV companions – but here it’s all in service of the arc plot, which comes to a head in a loud, overdrawn, obvious conclusion that would have had Steven Moffat crucified if he’d attempted it on television. You may think from this brief review that I did not care for “A Requiem for the Doctor.” You are correct. It’s time to stop using the Doctor in these sets and let River stand on her own as a character.
3/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: MY DINNER WITH ANDREW
From the title, you might think John Dorney’s “My Dinner with Andrew” is in some way related to or inspired by “My Dinner with Andre,” the brilliant 1981 Louis Malle film. They’re both set in restaurants, and that’s where the similarities end. Instead, “Andrew” is a time-hopping romp through various hours at a multi-dimensional restaurant that engineers time so that it always has tables available. It’s not quite as good as the first story, but it’s one of two high-quality tales in this set – Dorney has a strong grasp of this sort of time travel plotting and never lets the pace flag or get boring. Peter Davison plays a double role, both as the Doctor and as “unimportant” man Andrew, and the accent and nervousness he adopts as Andrew set the two characters apart quite effectively. It’s also nice to have an audio story featuring River and the Doctor in which River isn’t pining after him and is instead taking control of events. I’ll get to this a bit more in the next review, but Madame Kovarian shows up in this and she’s practically unrecognizable from her (brief, unmemorable) television portrayal. I also like how Dorney structures the story, modeling each scene after the various courses in a high-end meal; it’s pretentious as hell, but the various scenes actually match the course descriptions so it works. And Jonathan Coote is fantastic as the maître d’, his comedic turn underpinning every scene. Despite the events at the conclusion, this feels a bit disposable, but it’s very well written, well performed, and a lot of fun to boot. Great stuff.
8/10
THE DIARY OF RIVER SONG: THE FURIES
I like the ambition of this set, I really do. I like that it’s actually trying to tell a story about River wrapped around her origin story, fleshing out her background instead of just throwing a bunch of Doctor Who stories at us with a different lead character. But as things come to a conclusion in Matt Fitton’s “The Furies,” I feel as though this is a missed opportunity. Part of this is due to the source material: Kovarian, on TV, was a thinly-drawn cipher of a character with unsubtle motivations. Here, they try to flesh her out beyond that, but “is insane and wants to kill the Doctor” just isn’t an interesting foundation. Fitton tries to give her fears and motivations beyond the obvious but unfortunately it doesn’t come off. There’s also the issue of River’s clone “siblings” – here, Brooke (shouldn’t it be Brook?) and the others are portrayed as crazed, immature killers lacking even an ounce of subtlety. They’re more annoying than threatening, which isn’t good. Fitton also tries to throw in complications in the form of the Deterrent and the titular Furies, but these elements are confused, adding little to the story apart from complication. The resolution to the “dead Doctor” plot is the only possible one, and yet again it ducks the moral dilemma. River agonizes over the possibility of sacrificing Andrew to save the Doctor in the previous story, knowing the Doctor would never approve – so naturally the decision is taken out of her hands here and another character does it for her. Of course, River actually does seem to make the decision to not sacrifice Andrew, but since you can’t kill off the Doctor, that doesn’t work dramatically. I didn’t like “The Furies,” despite its potential. The set is worth hearing for the first and third stories alone, but I’m still not sure this range justifies its own existence.
5/10