A thrilling adventure in Time and Space!
The Doctor, Crystal and Jason have survived monsters, Madame Delilah and Mrs T, but then their former enemy Karl calls them back to the Bar Galactica. The mercenary has a cryptic message concerning Ultima Thule, where fabled treasure and a threat to the universe await…
The journey requires entering another dimension, where old enemies – and a brand new adversary – lie in wait…
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: BEYOND THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE
The Companion Chronicles is arguably Big Finish’s best Doctor Who range. Some of the best Doctor Who stories they’ve ever released are part of it, and so, with the landmark 50th release, one would expect something fantastic — something powerful, something complex, something intelligent, something thought-provoking. And so it was that Big Finish turned to… wait, they asked Terrance Dicks to write a sequel to “The Ultimate Adventure?!” Is this some kind of cruel joke? Sadly, it is not, and “Beyond the Ultimate Adventure” is easily the worst Companion Chronicle yet.
I genuinely have nothing good to say about this story. There isn’t even the slightest hint of an original thought or idea on display – I know you can say that about many later Terrance Dicks works, but this one is egregiously bad. We’ll start with the framing device, which features companions Crystal (Claire Huckle) and Jason (Noel Sullivan, doing an outrageously terrible French accent for no reason) submitting a report to the Time Lords about their recent adventure. Why are they submitting this report, you ask? Because the Doctor couldn’t find a way to defeat his nemesis, so he called up the Time Lords and had them solve the problem for him. That’s how it ends, and if you’re upset that I ruined it for you, just think: now you don’t have to listen to it! Dramatically unsatisfying doesn’t even begin to describe that sort of resolution, in which the Doctor honestly convinces the Eidolon to let him dick around in the TARDIS unsupervised for close to an hour, just so he can rig the ship to head straight to Gallifrey.
The whole story is like that: the entire first episode is a waste of time running around with mercenaries through awkward references to the original play, and the cliffhanger is appalling: the characters walk out of the TARDIS! My god, whatever will happen next? The TARDIS leaves all of time and space to journey into another dimension, where anything can happen. So what does the villain do in this bizarre dream-realm, with control of all reality at his fingertips? Conjures up old foes of the Doctor, of course. Look, it’s a vampire! And a Raston Warrior Robot! And a Rutan! And probably villains from dozens of other Terrance Dicks stories if only there had been time! Nothing remotely new or interesting is done with any of these characters, of course – it’s just rehashing old scripts without a hint of imagination.
But why make this in the first place? “The Ultimate Adventure” was many things, but it wasn’t boring: it was bombastic, it featured Daleks AND Cybermen, and it even had musical numbers throughout the script. None of this appears in “Beyond,” which is indistinguishable from any number of bad Doctor Who stories over the years. Why do a sequel to one of the most unique stories in franchise history if you’re not going to embrace the style? Why have a new (and terrible) theme song, new (and terrible) companions, and even have Colin Baker appear in the story if it’s going to be this bland? Is it just a coincidence that this was the 50th release in the range, or was this intentional?
The production isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with Jason Haigh-Ellery’s direction, and I actually liked the sound design from David Darlington. But on the whole, “Beyond the Ultimate Adventure” is terrible. It’s nothing but warmed-over, thinly-sketched material that would be left out of even an average script. It has a slapdash feel that it never overcomes. It even… wait, did they misspell “Terrance Dicks” on the product page?! They sure did! Sums it up, really.
Wretched.
1/10