The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land on the planet Hydra, where Admiral Jonas Kaan leads a vast flotilla of ships trying to elude the vicious race that has invaded and occupied their world. But his ships are being picked off one by one, vessels and crews dragged underwater by an unseen foe.
The time travellers find themselves pitched into battle against the Voord, the ruthless enemy they last encountered on the planet Marinus. As they take the fight to the very heart of the territory now controlled by the Voord the stakes get higher. First they lose the TARDIS… then they lose that which they hold most dear. And that’s only the start of their troubles.
In the capital, Predora City, they will learn the truth of what it means to be a Voord. And that truth is horrifying.
THE EARLY ADVENTURES: DOMAIN OF THE VOORD
When Big Finish’s Lost Stories range began, they tackled famous lost stories like Colin Baker’s original Season 23 or Sylvester McCoy’s never-filmed Season 27. But as the range continued, they began producing lost 1960s stories, presenting them as hybrids between the almost fully narrated Companion Chronicles and the full-cast plays of their other ranges. Now, with the Lost Stories ended, BF has started “The Early Adventures” range: original 1960s stories produced in the same vein as their lost predecessors. The first of these, Andrew Smith’s “Domain of the Voord,” takes a bizarre and roundly mocked alien race from the first season and turns them into a dangerous threat.
I’ll begin by saying, as I have in many other reviews, that I do not particularly care and have never particularly cared about a story’s ability to reproduce the feel of the era in which it is set. Yes, I have the same nostalgic fan gene as everyone else, but I’m not going to give high marks to a story purely because it sounds like a lost 1960s soundtrack. It’s true that, for the most part, “Domain of the Voord” sounds like it could have been shown on television – but it’s also full of large-scale action set pieces that would never have been attempted in 1963. More concerning is the format, which doesn’t quite work. The Lost Stories relied heavily on narration; “Domain of the Voord,” however, is consciously full-cast with occasional, seemingly random bursts of narration. William Russell also plays the Doctor and Carole Ann Ford also plays Barbara, except when the narration takes over, and except in the middle two episodes when Smith writes the two characters completely out of the story. I know the regular actors would occasionally take vacations and miss episodes, but it’s not the same thing here, where you’re insisting on doing a full-cast story when half of your regular cast is dead.
The story itself is fine, if unimpressive. We learned virtually nothing about the Voord in “The Keys of Marinus,” so Smith has free reign to do whatever he wants with them, and he does an admirable job of making them interesting. There’s some Doctor Who fan revisionism in here – they’re not just cheap rubber diving masks, they’re horrible mind control devices fused to a victim’s skin! – but I like the idea of the Voord as a hybrid race, so I’ll let that slide. I also enjoyed the Voord attempts to bring Susan to their side: the “you will let us in of your own free will” was interesting, at least until they threw it all away in lieu of a cackling supervillain plot. And that’s ultimately the problem: there’s not much more going on here than a traditional rebels-vs.-evil-empire story, and anything interesting Smith does with the villains is overlooked by the conclusion. It’s also drawn out far too long, but that’s another “just like the ‘60s!” feature, I suppose.
No complaints about the production, though. Russell and Ford are great as ever, and you’d never know it was Andrew Dickens playing both Admiral Kaan and Overlord Tarlak. Ken Bentley directs to his usual high standard, and the sound design from Toby Hrycek-Robinson is excellent, especially the orchestral flourishes in the score. Overall, “Domain of the Voord” is a solid debut for the Early Adventures range. It’s a well-written story that fleshes out one of the least-known villains from the classic series. There’s nothing particularly impressive about it, and the format feels awkward at times, but if the kinks can be worked out there’s strong potential here.
Not bad.
6/10