The final Early Adventure of 2017 is “The Wreck of the World,” by award-winning playwright Timothy X. Atack. The script is an interesting mix of elements: it features some of the best character work in the range and yet doesn’t do anything else particularly compelling.
I understand that the classic series framing means that Big Finish can’t push the boat out too far when it comes to established characters, but too often they go in the opposite direction, relentlessly refusing to say anything interesting, especially outside of the Companion Chronicles. This is not the case here, specifically when it comes to Zoe: Atack is one of the only authors (Simon Guerrier also among them) to directly engage with her history on the Wheel, specifically the “programming” she experienced after being separated from her family. The story introduces us to Twenty (Adam Newington), a human subject to the same training – and we watch as he builds a rapid bond with Zoe, their similarity drawing them together. Perhaps most significant is the moment Zoe describes learning to cry, something that nicely reinforces just how different she is to a “normal” human. Yet we also see how much her TARDIS travels have humanized her, as she stands in contrast to Twenty’s more mechanical view of the world. (There’s also an actual robot wandering around, showing the most distant end of the spectrum.) Wendy Padbury gives a very strong performance – like in her Companion Chronicles, she’s clearly energized by the opportunity to do more than the usual precocious genius routine.
There’s also an interesting relationship for Jamie with Porthintus (Don McCorkindale), a holy warrior who communicates almost entirely through violence yet reveals hidden depths with each conversation. By the time he reveals that he knows the TARDIS crew are time travelers, and that he even knows what happened at Culloden, you want to learn more about him – so of course that’s when he sacrifices himself and is never mentioned again. Jamie then spends the rest of the story right back in his predictable behaviors. It’s disappointing, because there was room to flesh Jamie out just like Zoe.
The story itself is fairly generic. The TARDIS lands on a deserted ship, which turns out to be a lost colony ship that has been adrift for close to a million years. The first episodes are spent exploring, and encountering a salvage crew that has also discovered the ship – and then of course the colonists are resurrected as zombies, there’s an evil force powering it, a cult worshipping the force, and so on. It’s very traditional sci-fi horror material. Fortunately, Atack and the production team present this material in effective fashion: despite the immense size of the ship, events feel increasingly claustrophobic. There are also great performances from the supporting cast, especially Richenda Carey’s two-faced turn as Professor Blavatsky.
Overall, “The Wreck of the World” is a strong story, one of the strongest in the Early Adventures range. It’s worth hearing just for its treatment of Zoe, fleshing out a character with a ton of potential who has often been underserved. And it’s an effective, suspenseful horror story to boot. In spite of all that, it’s still pretty shallow, keeping it from the highest grades – but I’d recommend this to any Doctor Who fan.
I suppose I’m just going to have to get used to Marek being a focal point of this series despite having done horrible, exploitative things to the main characters without a hint of apology. “The End” crystallizes a lot of what this series has been about, specifically judgment and consequences: how much do you judge people on their actions compared to their intent? Simon Guerrier writes Abby and Zara as generally good people: they have a strong idea of right and wrong, they have appealing personalities, they try not to offend, and so on. And yet, they have committed horrible atrocities, whether through mistake or corruption. Are they good people? Can they make up for the pain they have caused? Should they even try? All good questions, and all questions I’m hoping will be dealt with in future series.
And yet I keep coming back to Marek, despite the fact that the series is clearly asking the same questions about him. I think the big mistake here was making his crimes recognizable: I don’t know anyone that was killed when a space station blew up and took a hundred thousand lives, but I certainly do know people who have been the victims of sexual assault. And that’s not to say that anyone who commits a terrible act is automatically irredeemable: there are many examples of people who committed crimes, then turned their lives around and became productive members of society. The common factor in their redemption, however, is a clear recognition that their crimes were bad actions that hurt people and a desire for forgiveness. This is what we see from Abby and Zara, which is why I sympathize with them. But we don’t see that from Marek, so I don’t sympathize with him. And that wouldn’t be bad if the series portrayed him as an irredeemable jerk that the sisters are simply using for their own purposes, but it clearly wants us to root for him as part of this dysfunctional team. I don’t like it, at all, and unless it changes I’m going to keep taking points off.
Apart from that, “The End” gives us another difficult character in Kreekpolt (Michael Keating), a space pirate desperate to save his daughter’s life, even though she has suffered irreparably fatal burns. He will travel the length of time and space to find treatment for her, and will do whatever it takes to get it. Some of his actions are deeply immoral, but everything he does is driven by his love for his daughter and his inability to let go. When he is finally able to save her, he gives up his life for her without a moment’s hesitation. And so we come back to the same question: is he a villain? There’s no easy answer, but the story doesn’t take a side: it simply presents a vibrant, detailed character and lets the audience make up its own mind, and that’s great writing.
I’m looking forward to the second series of Graceless. I think Guerrier has created a fascinating group of characters and I’m eager to see where he takes them. I just wish something could be done with the one misguided character in the bunch.
The contrast between “The Sphere” and “The Fog” couldn’t be greater. Gone is the wild frontier of the Sphere, with its fast pace and frank sexuality, and in comes the very Doctor Who-like country village of Compton in 1912. Instead of the morally questionable Marek, Abby and Zara are supported (after first being accused) by Daniel (David Warner), the local justice of the peace. He’s a quiet, thoughtful man, one who deeply understands the thought process of the mob and knows how to protect the falsely accused. He’s also deeply rational: the first thought that comes to his head when he sees the sisters’ clearly supernatural powers is “witchcraft” but he dismisses it in lieu of a better explanation. Unlike Marek’s sleazy opportunist, Daniel is more of a paternal, protective figure – and David Warner is great in everything so he sells the role completely.
The plot also seems more traditional at first. A mysterious, cold fog that prevents people from coming or going surrounds the village, and the people are slowly disappearing. Is a killer on the loose? Does a monster lurk in the fog? Are the two sisters responsible? The non-traditional revelation is “none of the above” – it’s not a creature or a force or anything like that, it’s merely the after-effect of a disastrous meteor strike that wiped out the village. And it seems as though Abby and Zara had nothing to do with it – they’re simply caught in the wake of the destruction, trying to solve a mystery that isn’t there and save people who can’t be saved. There’s a fatalism to this story, but it’s a kindly fatalism: the people vanish when they realize they’re already dead. In other words, accepting their fate allows them to cross over, and the story doesn’t engage with what, if anything, may be waiting on the other side. “The Fog” is more about seeing how characters react to a difficult situation than it is about the resolution, and it makes the sisters seem more and more like real people and not artificial creations. Much better than the opening act.
I admit I wasn’t expecting the “fifth series” of Torchwood, Aliens Among Us, to be quite this effective. Yes, the characters were created under the aegis of Russell T. Davies, and yes, the writers and production staff involved are quite talented, and yes, the Big Finish monthly series is excellent – but despite all of that, this new series has easily surpassed all but one of its predecessors and has me quite excited to learn the final outcome early next year.
The first story in the set, “Love Rat” from Christopher Cooper, deals largely with a disease that makes its sufferers uncontrollably desire sex. We saw something similar to this in the TV series, but it’s handled more adeptly here – after a surprisingly graphic opening sex scene, we find Jack waking up in a morgue. From there, the Torchwood team has to work backwards to find out what happened, while Jack somehow manages to be even hornier than usual. This eventually leads to an unwise dalliance with Gwen – but then of course it’s not Gwen at all, it’s “Ng” possessing her body. We get a glimpse of Gwen’s internal monologue at that moment, and it’s predictably amusing – but I’m curious to see any potential fallout. We also look into Gwen’s home life with Rhys, and how he can’t seem to relate to her any longer – we know that it’s because she’s been possessed, but Rhys just thinks Torchwood has caused a permanent change that is slowly wrecking their marriage. The actual plot of this story is resolved rather quickly, but the character work more than makes up for it.
The second story, “A Kill to a View” by Mac Rogers, is probably the best. Colchester and his husband Colin have moved into a luxury apartment building with a horrifying secret: the residents can move into nicer units if they murder the current occupants. It’s a twist reminiscent of “Paradise Towers,” except here the caretaker isn’t Richard Briers, it’s Bilis Manger! Yes, he’s at it again, using the tower block as a conduit to open the Rift and allow something through that will remove Earth’s new alien inhabitants. Rogers executes these plot elements with a deft hand, but the real strength of the story is in its characters, Colchester in particular. Here we see three distinct layers to his character: the gruff exterior, the kind-hearted husband on the inside, and, deep down, the cold-blooded killer that emerges when his family is threatened. Paul Clayton is fantastic in this story, making Colchester possibly the most interesting member of the Torchwood team. I don’t know if Rogers has written anything else for Big Finish, but based on this they should be signing him on for the long term. Utterly magnificent.
The third story, “Zero Hour” by Janine H. Jones, offers a very Torchwood take on the modern gig economy. I was a bit confused by the opening, in which Tyler is smitten by Hasan (Sacha Dhawan), a deliverer – it makes a deliberate point that events are repeating themselves in identical fashion, then never mentions it again. Is this supposed to be a comment on mundanity or did they just edit out a plot thread? In any case, once the story gets going, we follow Tyler as he infiltrates Deliverables, an Uber-like service for package delivery. Employees pick up packages from a central distribution hub and follow precise directions to deliver them as quickly and efficiently as possible. Inefficiencies are punished either through docked pay or (because it’s Torchwood) through murder. Jones’ commentary is very smart: the employment opportunity provided by the service is challenged by the brutal working conditions and the utterly unforgiving supervision. I like the revelation about the true nature of the company, and I like how easily Tyler gets wrapped up in his work. It’s very much “what if Torchwood met Black Mirror” in all the best ways.
Lastly, there’s “The Empty Hand,” by Tim Foley. This is a very traditional whodunit – Andy Davidson is confronted with seemingly incontrovertible proof that he murdered a refugee in cold blood, but has absolutely no memory of even meeting the victim, never mind murdering him. What follows is an in-depth look into Andy’s mind – Gwen tries desperately to exonerate him, Rhys keeps an eye on him, and Jack works toward his own goals in the background. Unfortunately, this story isn’t as deep or interesting as some of the others – yes, we learn that there’s a dark side to Andy, but it’s not all that dark, and the resolution to the whodunit is very straightforward. It’s not that Andy is a two-dimensional character, it’s just that this story doesn’t give him much shade, which is a shame given all the attention focused on him. More interesting is the conflict between Jack and the rest of Torchwood – he’s pursuing his own agenda, they don’t really trust him, and he’s audibly sick of being the one in charge. The cliffhanger that follows is stunning, and hopefully the resolution will remain free of gimmickry.
Scott Handcock directs all four episodes, with the sound design coming from Steve Foxon and the music from Blair Mowat and Steve Wright. Volume 2 is a significant step up from Volume 1, which was very good in its own right. I’ve raved about Big Finish’s Torchwood stories since they started, and if “Aliens Among Us” can stick the landing, it might establish itself as the best of the lot. This is excellent audio drama and well worth hearing.
I admit my first reaction to Amy and Zara in the Key 2 Time series from Big Finish was not “gosh, I wish they had their own spinoff” – but on reflection, it makes sense. Two women with supernatural abilities, constrained only by their own understanding, with malleable personalities that imprint their surroundings on their moral compasses? Yes, that can definitely work. And Simon Guerrier writing it? Sign me up.
There’s a lot to like about “The Sphere,” the first story in the series. I enjoy the idea of the Sphere itself: a “private satellite complex” that is constantly building outward in an infinite expansion of hotels, casinos, and red light districts. At its center, it is the most corrupt; at the outside, only a thin floor separates you from the vacuum of space beyond. It’s a metaphor for how it shapes Abby (not Amy anymore for many reasons) and Zara: a corrupt moral core constantly building new outward appendages, with the sisters trying to escape into a neater, cleaner place. And while the story plays off the roles the sisters took in the Doctor Who range, it immediately undercuts them: “The Sphere” is all about Abby being corrupted, falling victim to her surroundings the same way her sister did. This is smart, effective writing.
Unfortunately, it’s also problematic. Here we have a science fiction series with two compelling female leads, so what do we do in the very first episode? Make one of them pregnant, of course! I rolled my eyes so far back they almost got stuck. And the sexual messaging here is deeply misguided. Zara arrives on the Sphere first, and with no money or belongings to her name, she takes up with Marek (Fraser James), who offers her lodging in exchange for sex. She agrees. Later, when Abby arrives, Marek offers her the same proposition, and only some quick thinking avoids the same outcome. If it stopped there, it would be fine – but instead, Zara ends up falling in love with Marek and having his child, while Abby comes to regret avoiding his advances and goes back to have sex with him. Then Zara makes a comment about his “talents” and… ugh. I understand what’s happening here: Guerrier is trying to show how the influence of the Sphere is changing how the sisters think. Abby, for example, initially repulsed by Marek’s advances, starts to find him attractive even as she thinks less and less of the people of the Sphere in general. But that still leaves you with the image of two women developing feelings for an unapologetic rapist, and that means something, even if those women are really pan-dimensional alien creations. The way the story tries to soften Marek really doesn’t sit well in light of this, either.
All that being said, I want to hear more. “The Sphere” is a fine opening episode that clearly establishes our two main characters while Ciara Janson and Laura Doddington turn in excellent performances. I also like that this series will be unafraid to deal with mature topics and themes – it’s very refreshing to hear something Doctor Who-related that isn’t called Torchwood acknowledge that sex is a real thing that people do with each other. I just wish they hadn’t gone to the sex and pregnancy wells in the first episode.
It’s refreshing to have a monthly range trilogy be good from start to finish, and that’s what we get as this trilogy wraps up with “Static” by Jonathan Morris, a strong, atmospheric tale that tries to spook the listener and occasionally succeeds. A couple of significant flaws keep it from the highest level of Big Finish, but it’s well worth hearing.
The Doctor, Constance, and Flip land near a caravan park in the middle of nowhere in 1980s England, near a place called Abbey Marston. (Is Morris a Red Dead Redemption fan?) A young couple, Joanna (Pippa Nixon) and Andy (Scott Chambers), along with caretaker Percy (David Graham), are the only people staying there, trying to save their relationship from the traumatic death of Joanna’s sister Susannah (Jo Woodcock). It turns out that the area around Abbey Marston is unique in one particular way: strong, powerful memories of the dead can temporarily bring them back to life, emerging from a dense fog. There’s not much to say about the plot, although the trip back to WWII is both an effective use of time travel and Constance’s background, but there are some significant character beats that merit discussion.
The process through which the dead return is exploited by a race called the Static, and while it’s far too complex to explain here, it ends with the Static inhabiting duplicate bodies of the dead. Naturally, they’re evil and must be stopped, etc., but prior to that, when the Doctor thinks they are inhabiting the actual bodies of the dead, he is absolutely appalled. Let the dead rest in peace, and so on – which is exactly the opposite position from his ninth incarnation in “The Unquiet Dead.” There, he’s furious that Rose would even suggest it’s a bad idea – at least until he discovers those aliens are also evil and want to take over the world. I know it’s too abstract a connection to flesh out directly, but wouldn’t it be great if we got some Time War stories about the Doctor’s shifting moral priorities? I live in hope.
More significant is the Doctor’s decision to command the younger Percy to abandon his life to that point and serve as caretaker of the resurrection zone. Since the Doctor experiences events in reverse order, it fits what he knows to be true, but it’s an uncommonly callous decision. His companions even point this out, but when Percy (naturally) perishes heroically, the Doctor reveals that some of Percy’s last thoughts offered thanks. This is an incredible cop-out by Morris: Percy spends much of the story visibly unhappy about his situation, and having him come to a totally unearned catharsis seems to be nothing more than a way to prove that the Doctor was right all along. Why not a story in which the Doctor makes a difficult decision that saves the day but earns lifelong anger from and is never forgiven by the object of that decision? Why not then show the Doctor struggling with this? I know Morris is more than talented enough to write that story, after all. Or is it down to Colin Baker himself, who seems content to play his Doctor as a cuddly old grandfather who no longer has any challenging or difficult facets to his personality?
And while there was no time to explore it in this story, here we see a massive, irreversible change to Constance, as she exits the story in a “sham” body, having died in a fire before being resurrected. Going forward, she should be dealing with severe trauma and even an identity crisis. Will future stories with this crew fully embrace and explore the fallout of this story? Or will it be largely ignored? Sadly, I fear the latter.
Let me be clear, though: “Static” is a very good Doctor Who story. Director Jamie Anderson, along with sound designers Joe Kraemer and Josh Arakelian, has produced an incredibly atmospheric, spooky tale. The acting is strong across the board, particularly from Lisa Greenwood, who gives one of her best-ever performances as Flip. This is helped by Morris respecting the character, of course; it’s always refreshing when the writers don’t treat Flip like a complete fool. The ad copy is just comically over the top, so don’t trust it when it says ludicrous things like “Static” being on the same level as “The Chimes of Midnight” – but don’t let that deter you, as this is definitely worth hearing.
Since this current range of UNIT stories began, it has been marked by a lack of ambition. Generic action movie plots coupled with a regular cast of characters seemingly allergic to anything resembling development have caused the range to remain entertaining yet largely uninteresting, the third box set excepted. But at least the scope has been wide: each set has told a single story, spread out over multiple episodes. The most recent set, “Encounters,” throws that format out in favor of four individual hour-long stories, and the change does nothing to improve the quality of the stories.
There is a brief common thread running through the stories, that of a secret group called the Auctioneers dealing in black market exchanges of alien specimens and technology. But that’s just a backdrop – we learn that they exist and we learn what they do, but if they’re ever dealt with it’ll be in a future set. Instead, we start with “The Dalek Transaction” by Matt Fitton, in which a Central American guerrilla group captures a severely weakened Dalek and attempts to sell it to these Auctioneers to fund their rebellions. The UNIT crew goes undercover as rival buyers in an attempt to secure the Dalek, but naturally things go wrong, the Dalek escapes, and a desperate struggle begins to recapture or kill it before it kills everyone. There’s really nothing new on display here – Nicholas Briggs gives a particularly strong performance as the Dalek, and it’s interesting to see how dangerous a Dalek can be even when separated from its shell, but for the most part this is a runaround in a slightly different setting. Fortunately, they found someone of Hispanic descent in Karina Fernandez to play guerrilla leader Captain Gonsalves; unfortunately, her accent is, shall we say, distracting.
The second story, “Invocation” by Roy Gill, is the best of the four. It’s a haunted house story that actually fleshes out Kate’s character and manages to be convincingly spooky in the process. Of course, there’s a rational explanation for the supernatural events, but it’s nice to see this range depart from the military framework and tell a new kind of story. Jemma Redgrave gets to act, too – both here and the final story demonstrate that her flat performance is a deliberate choice, here because her fearful acting is both convincing and a surprising departure from how we know Kate. I would love an entire set full of stories like this instead of the return of Axos or whatever.
I enjoyed “The Sontaran Project” from Andrew Smith, largely because the Sontarans consistently remain interesting. While the Ice Warriors are largely honor-bound sci-fi clichés, the Sontarans’ single-minded, absolute focus on war can make them fascinating characters. In this story, after a lone Sontaran scout is captured by the Auctioneers, his battle group comes looking for him. But rather than deciding to destroy the Earth or kill all humans, Marshal Skar (Dan Starkey) just wants to discover what happened to his missing soldier. It takes a bit of argument, but Shindi quickly talks the Sontarans down, and they work together to discover the missing Commander Merx (Starkey). It’s a well-executed war story that uses the Sontarans well – I just wish there was more meat to it, as “find the Sontaran” describes basically the entirety of the story. We get a bit of insight into the Auctioneers, as well as exposure to their Overseer (Matthew Cottle), at least. Still, this is very entertaining, and a good showcase for Ramon Tikaram.
The final story, “False Negative” by John Dorney, starts off in shocking fashion: Josh and Osgood are sleeping together and they have Sam Bishop tied up in a closet! So of course, we find out we’re in a parallel universe, because the status quo can never, ever change. Dorney presents a farcical runaround: Josh and Osgood have accidentally traveled into a parallel universe, possibly but not necessarily the one from “Inferno,” and they must avoid running into themselves as they try to find a way home. Everyone is different in this universe: Kate is incompetent, Shindi is belligerent and sadistic, Josh is awkward and indecisive, and Osgood is cold and cruel. Oh, and Sam is dead. See, they couldn’t get Warren Brown in for this set, so Sam Bishop is off on assignment or something. It’s probably telling that at no point over any of the four episodes did I find myself missing his character or indeed even noticing that he wasn’t around. Anyway, the best parallel universe stories are used to teach us about our own world and to learn more about the characters we know through their funhouse mirror reflections. But “False Negative” doesn’t do that; it’s more lighthearted and silly than anything else. It’s entertaining for what it is, but it feels like a missed opportunity.
That’s how I feel about UNIT: Encounters as a whole: it’s another missed opportunity. Every story starts and ends with the status quo, just like every story in the range before this. The lone significant character change in the entire UNIT range – Josh’s plastic skeleton – is mentioned I think once in the first story and never again. Modern drama doesn’t work this way anymore, but the only Doctor Who-related place Big Finish is even trying to do anything different is in the Torchwood range. The next set is supposed to feature Cybermen and the War Master – well that’s cool, but is anything interesting going to happen along the way? As of right now, my guess is “no.”
I’m not sure there’s a Doctor Who recurring alien race less interesting than the Ice Warriors. Ever since the New Adventures fleshed out their culture into a Klingon analogue, stories featuring the Ice Warriors have almost exclusively involved lots of stomping, wheezing conversations, and last-minute appeals to a deeply-held sense of honor. Such is the case with “Cold Vengeance” by Matt Fitton, a boring story that lets the entire box set down and closes it on an uninspiring note.
Fitton is trying so hard to emulate Russell T. Davies in this story that the cracks start to show. The alien menace isn’t entirely unsympathetic, one of the main guest characters is a young working-class woman, there’s family dynamics at play, social commentary, and comic relief mixed in. It feels weird to be saying this about the “new” era of Doctor Who, but we’ve seen all of this before and none of it feels new. And it doesn’t even attempt to do something different with the Ice Warriors: they’ve been woken up after generations spent in hibernation, and now they’re ready to take revenge on humanity! What, again? As the story progresses, we learn that Lord Hasskor (Nicholas Briggs) has a legitimate reason to be angry with humanity, but as usual with these stories it’s hard to feel any sympathy with someone whose first solution is genocide. And the ending is quite stupid: “Rrrgh! I will destroy all humans!” cries the Ice Lord, but then the working class human woman says “Wait, did you know there are Ice Warriors living on our planet?” and the Ice Lord says “I did not, the attack is off!” The other characters do ask why she waited until the end of a 45-minute episode to reveal this utterly crucial information, and the response is that nobody let her get a word in edgewise, which would be a good answer if it was even remotely true! To allow a character to have story-ending information for the entire running time requires a very capable script, and “Cold Vengeance” is not that.
The set starts strongly, proceeds to an entertaining runaround, and then crashes and burns with this. It’s disappointing, but five out of six good stories for David Tennant is still a good hit rate. Tennant is delightful, diving back into the role and happily devouring the scenery. Billie Piper, on the other hand, starts off sounding distinctly uncomfortable, and she never really manages to recapture Rose’s voice. But her lines are distinctly Rose, and as the stories continue and her confidence increases she ultimately vanishes back into the role. Just be ready for the occasional moment where it sounds like Piper is recording in a completely different location from everyone else and has no idea what she’s doing.
Overall, “Cold Vengeance” isn’t good. Fortunately, the box set is still worth getting, especially if, like me, you’re a fan of the Tennant era.
I’m impressed with Big Finish’s work to keep these Tenth Doctor Adventures as true to the era as possible, and “The Sword of the Chevalier” from Guy Adams comes through in spades in that department. This is a classic Russell T. Davies-era celebrity historical, in which the Doctor and Rose become involved with a historical figure just in time to fight off an alien menace. The historical figure in this case is the Chevalier d’Éon (Nickolas Grace), a French diplomat and spy living in exile in London. D’Éon presented as male and female at different points in a very long life (during this story she presents as female) and her story is fascinating – a person whose gender identity was important in an era when “gender identity” wasn’t even a concept. Grace’s performance in the role is utterly fantastic, mixing bravado and sensitivity in a realistic manner.
In keeping with the show’s generally mature outlook on issues of gender and sexuality, “The Sword of the Chevalier” doesn’t engage with the central “mystery” that surrounded d’Éon at the time. Rose questions it briefly, and the Doctor rightly points out that d’Éon is presenting as female and living her own truth, unbound by the opinions of outsiders. With that out of the way, we embark on a swashbuckling tale of the Doctor and friends battling alien slavers. While there’s a dark, interesting concept at the heart of the slavers – a collective self with one member dead – it’s not explored to any great extent. In fact, the plot is quite thin, and the resolution is the sort of thing that would have seemed audacious at the time but now feels overused, especially after the Moffat era. Adams represents d’Éon as a fascinating character, but she’s the heart of the piece – the remaining supporting cast is thinly sketched. The Doctor and Rose are straight out of the middle of season 2, and Tennant and Piper are clearly doing their best to get back there, but as with “Infamy of the Zaross” they’re very static and we learn nothing about either one. “The Sword of the Chevalier” is an entertaining, fast-paced story with a great guest role, but it’s paper-thin and doesn’t have much of anything else to offer. But it’s good enough that it’s well worth hearing.
The first set of Tenth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish was a roaring success, reuniting David Tennant and Catherine Tate in three stories that culminated in a masterpiece. Volume 2 is finally here, and it reunites another of the series’ most beloved pairings: Tennant and Billie Piper. Yes, it’s the tenth Doctor and Rose, back together again to travel the universe battling the forces of evil – and, naturally, the first story returns them to contemporary Earth.
“Infamy of the Zaross,” by John Dorney, is a smart story that comes the closest to recapturing the feel of the Russell T. Davies/David Tennant era. Jackie Tyler witnesses the start of what appears to be an alien invasion, so she places an emergency call to her daughter and the TARDIS arrives shortly thereafter. (Or rather, in a clever bit of plotting from Dorney, it’s been there the whole time, and the Doctor has been waiting until after Jackie makes the call to reveal himself.) The story follows two parallel threads: the invasion itself and the relationship between Jackie’s friend Marge (Rosie Cavaliero) and her daughter Jess (Beth Lilly), and both threads are surprisingly layered.
The invasion seems unusual from the start: the initial landing is halted and started over so the alien leader can give a better reading of his speech. The pre-credits sequence basically ruins the surprise – it’s a staged invasion for a reality TV show – but watching the Doctor investigate and react to his findings is the essence of Doctor Who, and Tennant’s indignation at the casual disregard for human life is straight off the TV screen. I also enjoyed how Dorney gave the Zaross a chance at redemption without offering them absolution or presenting them as misunderstood – honest writing is almost always more valuable in that way. The other thread is RTD in every way: Marge has no respect for her daughter, and that lack of respect is self-reinforcing, as Jess has no desire to better herself because she’s internalized her mother’s criticism. When Rose appears, and takes the lead as a hero, Marge tries to use this as another example of Jess’s failures – but Rose intercedes and tells Jess she’s important, thus breaking the cycle. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be: honest, raw human emotion like this was a hallmark of Doctor Who in this era, and it’s great to have it back.
Speaking of emotion, here we encounter the biggest problem with this story and indeed the set as a whole: there is absolutely no depth to the Doctor or Rose and absolutely nothing interesting happens to either one of them. On television, this era was always sure to include notable character moments in almost every episode, even if they weren’t tied to the plot. Here, the Doctor and Rose are cheerfully adventuring together with neither tension nor chemistry between them. It’s no coincidence that a horde of shippers embraced the Doctor and Rose as an item, but you’d never understand why if you listened to this story. For that matter, you’d never understand why anyone became romantically involved with anyone else – “Infamy of the Zaross” is as resolutely chaste as the classic series.
Overall, though, this story is a success, and a great way to start off the set. It’s smart, it’s relevant, it’s layered, and it feels like the soundtrack to a missing TV episode. I just wish it went for something a bit deeper.
The third release in the fourth series of Early Adventures is “The Morton Legacy” by Justin Richards, and like every other Justin Richards script in history, you should already know what to expect. There’s a workmanlike, competently structured plot, an accurate yet shallow capturing of the regular characters, and some sort of superficial revelation intended to make the story seem more surprising than it is. Hooray?
Perhaps most surprising about “The Morton Legacy” is just how threadbare the plot is. The Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie land in 1860s London, but their explanations are quickly soured when the TARDIS is stolen. They track it back to the estate of antiquarian Josiah Morton (David Sibley) where they are promptly embroiled in a murder mystery which they must solve to reclaim the TARDIS. We’ll start with the absolutely contrived way in which Richards keeps the crew stranded: though they know Morton just picked the TARDIS up off the street that same day, they decide not to tell him it’s theirs because, if they do, he’ll realize it has value and refuse to give it back. As the story progresses, we learn that Morton is an eminently reasonable and fair-minded person who almost certainly would have given the TARDIS back had they asked. But they didn’t, so the story lasts four episodes instead of four minutes.
This would be acceptable if the plot was interesting, but it isn’t. Morton is embroiled in a legal dispute over his collection of rare artifacts, but the litigants are being murdered one by one. The police accuse Morton of murder, leading to an awful “if he’s arrested, we’ll never get the TARDIS back!” cliffhanger that depends on the TARDIS crew being unable to breach a locked door – but the cliffhanger is easily resolved when the Doctor asks the police if they have any evidence whatsoever and they say no and leave. This is followed by some excruciatingly slow investigations involving a large gemstone that appears to have supernatural powers. The twist is a good one in theory: this is actually a pure historical! The Doctor’s suspicions are proven utterly wrong when it turns out the killer is a human being using human methods. This would be great if it was used to make a point about how the Doctor sometimes misses the obvious by immediately looking for alien involvement in even the simplest situations, but there’s no point here, it’s just a simple plot device. As a result, it makes the characters look stupid – not a single one of them even considered any other possibilities.
The characters are what you’d expect. Polly gets kidnapped, Ben gets in fights, Jamie falls in unrequited love with Morton’s daughter. The Doctor is oddly helpless – he doesn’t figure anything out until the end, when almost everyone is dead. The supporting characters are thinly sketched, engagingly performed but utterly predictable. The production is fine – Lisa Bowerman directs an engaging historical setting, while Toby Hrycek-Robinson’s sound design is effective in spite of a somewhat intrusive score. Overall, there’s not much more to say about “The Morton Legacy.” It’s bland, inoffensive Doctor Who that’s more entertaining than watching paint dry for 2 hours. If that’s all you need, have at it, I guess.
The second release in this year’s Colin Baker trilogy is “The Middle,” from Chris Chapman. It’s a great riff on Logan’s Run that addresses its central concept with honesty, provides incisive social commentary and only falls down slightly at the end. In other words, it’s the best Colin Baker story in a long time.
The Doctor, Constance, and Flip land in the underground colony of Formicia, looking to take some time off and celebrate Constance’s birthday. At first, it appears the population spends its time in leisure and luxury, with no responsibilities – until the crew notices that nobody in Formicia seems to have reached middle age. This is where we learn how this society is structured: from birth to age 35, you have no responsibilities. At age 35, you are taken away to the Middle, a giant tower at the heart of the colony where the important work of management is done. And lastly, when you reach age 70, you are sent into the military, where you fight in giant mechanical suits until you are either killed or die of old age. Chapman structures these revelations brilliantly: the entire first episode seems to be presenting the Logan’s Run scenario where people are executed on their 70th birthday. It’s only after the Doctor – who confuses the age-detecting machines, naturally – is put through the process that we discover the truth. And by centering the story around Constance’s 35th birthday, Chapman has an effective way to keep the crew apart, with each member in a different stage of the society.
As the story progresses, we learn more and more about Formicia. The military is there to keep the colony safe from outside invaders who seek to slaughter the population. It is stocked with elderly people through pragmatism: instead of sacrificing the young to the horrors of war, why not the old, who have already lived full lives and contributed to society? It also allows the Doctor to fight the system from within, though unfortunately this sounds almost identical to the eighth Doctor going through boot camp in the recent Time War box set. That’s not Chapman’s fault, of course, but it does feel like retreading old ground. But all of that pales before the revelations in the final episode, which frame the story in an entirely new light. I think this is the only significant flaw in “The Middle,” in that the revelation about Formicia is almost too huge to take entirely seriously – but I’m not one to fault a story for ambition. There are also plot-related nitpicks, if you’re interested in that sort of thing – but I’m not.
Chapman also does very well with the characterization. Colin Baker has seemed progressively neutered over the past few years, but this story allows him to summon up his moral indignation and rage against the horrors of an unjust society. Constance’s military background enables her to take to the Middle like a fish to water, and of course Flip fits in just fine in the lap of luxury. Chapman also writes a little friction between Constance and Flip, though it’s more like an older sibling rolling her eyes at her little sister than anything else. It’s a bit of a dangerous line to walk, since you don’t want to make Flip irritate the audience at the same time she irritates Constance, but Chapman basically pulls it off.
Jamie Anderson directs a relatively fast-paced story, while the sound design from Joe Meiners and the score from Jamie Robertson ably support the effort. Overall, “The Middle” is a very successful story. It presents a fascinating society and keeps the revelations coming at a pace that holds the listener in rapt attention. It nails the regular characters and shows a sympathetic guest cast at the same time. It’s well-produced, well-made, and well-acted. I wish that a story like this could be the norm in the monthly range instead of an outlier, because this was genuinely good.
“The Eighth Doctor: The Time War” has been on the schedule for quite some time, but only recently was it announced as the first in an ongoing series. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is intended to replace the War Doctor series following the unfortunate passing of John Hurt. It shares many of the characteristics of that series, for better and for worse – there’s some fantastic material for Paul McGann, but its lack of imagination once again proves Russell T. Davies right about the Time War.
Over the course of four stories, the box set follows the adventures of the Doctor and a group of ordinary travelers whose lives are turned upside down and inside out by the Time War. The stories, written by John Dorney and Matt Fitton, follow a consistent through-line, but occasional moments of greatness are balanced by questionable decisions. The first story, Dorney’s “The Starship of Theseus,” is also the best. The title refers to the philosophical question of the Ship of Theseus: if every component part of a greater whole is replaced over time, is the result still the same object or a new creation? Dorney’s script applies this concept to a person’s life: what happens when a person’s history is rewritten? The script doesn’t really ask the “are they the same person?” question – though the starship is in fact called “Theseus” – but it puts the listener right in the heart of the matter in its treatment of the Doctor and his companion. When the story begins, the Doctor is traveling with a young woman named Sheena (Olivia Vinall). As the story continues, the Doctor addresses her by different names while his tales of how they met continue to shift. Finally, she vanishes from the play entirely and nobody remembers that she even existed. It’s a shockingly effective device, expertly seeded through the script and hitting like a ton of bricks. History is changing because the Theseus is caught in the fallout of the Time War, and even the ship itself changes from a luxury space-liner to a ship full of desperate refugees. Things get less interesting when the Daleks show up, but the story is rescued because it wholly embraces the utterly ludicrous conceit of space trolls living in hyperspace tunnels demanding tolls for passage.
If the rest of the stories followed suit, this would be an amazing set. Unfortunately, the set slowly shifts to telling more ordinary war stories. “Echoes of War” by Fitton is the second story, featuring the Doctor and the refugees from the first story traveling across a jungle planet in search of shelter. But a Dalek is trapped with them, and its damaged casing coupled with Time War fallout means it no longer has its memories. So the travelers must work with the Dalek without accidentally jogging its memory, lest it wake up completely and kill them all. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like the recent Companion Chronicle “Across the Darkened City,” you’re right – it’s basically the same story. It retreads the “can a Dalek be good” ground, and the tension it creates is undercut somewhat by the fact that the travelers just have to avoid saying the word “Dalek.” The story is thrilling enough to be entertaining, but it’s crying out for more depth.
The low point is the third story, Fitton’s “The Conscript.” For some reason, they decided that the Time War needed a “new recruit” story, so the Doctor is forcibly conscripted into the Time Lord army. There’s a drill instructor, a sadistic underling, and every clichéd sequence you’ve seen since Full Metal Jacket killed the genre. Yes, there’s a bit where Time Lord recruits march while chanting to the “I don’t know but I’ve been told” cadence. The Doctor doesn’t want to cooperate, of course, but complies when the platoon is punished in his place. The end of the story makes a play for relevance, when we learn the essential hopelessness of the war, but it doesn’t make the preceding hour any more interesting. If you really want to see the Doctor go through boot camp, I guess this is the story for you – but why do we need to reduce the Time War once again to 20th century war clichés?
Fortunately, things pick back up at the end, with Dorney’s “One Life,” which attempts to tie the overarching plot up in a neat bow and largely succeeds. We spend the first story in pursuit of a Time Lord renegade we simply assume is the Doctor; here, both we and the Doctor learn that he was never the renegade in question. In fact, the renegade is potentially the way for the Time Lords to win the war: he has the ability to alter the course of history using nothing but his mind. Rather than use this awesome power to end the war, he goes into hiding, using a Chameleon Arch – so naturally we discover that he’s been in the story the whole time as one of the supporting characters. There’s some good characterization here – the renegade exhibits a ton of pathos as he tries to construct an ordinary life for himself, Ollistra cares only about ending the war as quickly as possible, and the Doctor positions himself furiously between them, understanding the desire to end the war but not wanting to force that viewpoint on another. The big flaw here is that the renegade is too powerful, and as such the story doesn’t provide a truly satisfying explanation of why he didn’t win the war. If he possessed a literal weapon, and didn’t want to carry it into battle, it would sit more easily – but as he can literally rewrite reality itself, that explanation doesn’t satisfy me. I understand the slippery slope argument and not wanting to act like a god, but ending the greatest and most destructive war in the history of existence is hardly something that necessarily leads to seeking universal domination on one’s own.
After Sheena is unceremoniously written out, we’re introduced to our actual new companion for this range: Bliss, played by Rakhee Thakrar. Unfortunately, she’s totally unmemorable. I kept waiting for her to set herself apart from her comrades and make it obvious why the Doctor wants her around, but no. Hopefully she’ll get some actual material to perform in future sets. Overall, The Eighth Doctor: The Time War, Series 1, is a mixed bag. When it’s blazing new trails into the Time War, it’s excellent; when it’s retreading old ground or regurgitating war clichés, it’s tedious. Thankfully, Paul McGann is excellent throughout. Furthermore, this is much better than any of the War Doctor sets. But yet again, I ask: was RTD right? Is it possible to dramatize the Time War? Or will every attempt fall frustratingly short? I suppose we’re going to find out.
The second of this year’s Early Adventures comes from Simon Guerrier, which is always a good sign. “The Outliers” brings the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie to an underground mining town on an alien planet, and slowly builds the suspense into an interesting, if morally questionable finish.
I’ll start with the setting, which is fantastic. The TARDIS lands on a mining colony, which is so massive that it constructs housing in each excavated section to house additional workers and increase productivity. There’s no sky, just a massive rock ceiling far above, and everything exists in what must be a perpetual state of gloom. Deep in the colony, the streets of one of its towns are flooded, and the houses are empty. Naturally, there’s an alien creature abducting people, and just as naturally the Doctor and his companions are thought responsible for the disappearances. In this way, there’s very little that’s unexpected about the story – it’s much like “The Savages” or “The Sensorites,” where the humans turn out to be the bad guys and the alien outsiders turn out to be the victims.
There’s one particular twist that complicates matters, however. We discover that the alien creatures living in the water have been taking the human miners, and we also discover that they have been doing so because they feel threatened by the human intrusion onto their world. The mining technology, in fact, is quite capable of wiping them out entirely. But rather than capturing the humans and holding them captive, the aliens, in a desire to learn more about their “enemy,” have been dissecting (vivisecting?) them. The Doctor stumbles upon a room full of human body parts, organized into piles by type – and it’s implied that thousands of people have disappeared in this manner. Given that most of those that disappeared were, presumably, ordinary mine workers, it’s remarkably cold how quickly the story writes them off in the interests of sending everyone home happy. Neither the Doctor nor his companions seem particularly bothered by the slaughterhouse – I don’t mind stories where an evil villain gets his or her just desserts, but these are largely innocent victims. I don’t mind exploring this idea, either, but at least half of one episode should have given over to this moral debate if this was the direction they intended. Instead, it’s brushed aside as the story rushes through the denouement in typical Troughton-era fashion.
Of course, if there was a ton of incident in the story and there wasn’t room for such a debate, I’d understand – but this is one of the slowest-burning Big Finish stories in recent memory. And it works quite well: Toby Hrycek-Robinson’s sound design skillfully uses silence to enhance the creepy nature of the script, while the moments of action spring out effectively at the listener. Guerrier’s characters, while drawn from archetypes, are hardly one-dimensional; even the “villain,” Richard Tipple (Alistair Petrie), is operating from conflicting and interesting motivations. This isn’t surprising, given that Guerrier remains one of the best writers in the Big Finish stable, but it’s always nice to hear stories like this set in an era that didn’t like to focus too much on its characters.
The regular cast is fantastic as well. Frazer Hines plays the Doctor, of course, as well as Jamie, and his Troughton impression is simply effortless by this point. Anneke Wills handles the bulk of the narration, which plays to her strengths, and Elliot Chapman continues to acquit himself as a superior Ben Jackson. Add in Lisa Bowerman’s fine direction and you’re looking at a very strong story. As above, the ending raises questions that were perhaps unintended, but that’s the only flaw in an otherwise intriguing script and excellent production.
Marc Platt’s “The Behemoth” gives us something we haven’t had in a while: a pure historical featuring Colin Baker. As you’d expect from this author, it’s a smart story that spends a great deal of time developing its environment. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly slow and features a surprisingly low amount of incident and character development.
“The Behemoth” is evidently based on a true story of a Dutch captain, Van Der Meer (Giles New), and his captive rhinoceros, Lady Clara. But it’s actually about different possessive relationships in 18th century England. Central among these relationships is Sir Geoffrey Balsam (Glynn Sweet), who owns a massive brassworks operated by slave labor. His sister, Mrs. Middlemint (Georgina Moon), has one of his slaves, Sarah (Diveen Henry), as a servant. While slavery provides “The Behemoth” with its most obvious social commentary, as well as the moral imperative for the Doctor and his companions to intervene, the script doesn’t examine it beyond the superficial level. It’s a very traditional tale of an oppressed people finally rising up and overthrowing their oppressors, but it shies away from showing any of the truly horrifying elements of the slave trade. I understand that there are probably content guidelines restricting Big Finish from showing things like that – and Platt isn’t a visceral writer in any case – but without that, the message is a fairly anodyne “slavery is bad.” Okay, cool.
The script’s exploration of the treatment of women is much subtler. Mrs. Middlemint is, on the surface, a clichéd portrayal of a vapid lady of means, but Platt includes interactions that demonstrate her capability and intelligence. Yet these qualities are being suppressed, largely by her brother, in the interest of protecting her from herself. This sort of paternalistic thinking is one of many ways that women were denied equal place in society, and Platt’s script illuminates this in a subtle, intelligent fashion. Mrs. Middlemint’s final victory is easily the most cathartic in the story as a result. Of course, there’s also Titus Craven (Liam McKenna) physically abducting Flip and dragging her off to become his wife – this is, shall we say, much less subtle. But while Craven viewing women as property isn’t that surprising, the way that most people automatically take his side is much more shocking.
This is the first full story to feature Constance and Flip together in the TARDIS. I made this comment in my review of “Quicksilver:” “If the next story with this TARDIS crew shows Constance and Flip laughing and carrying on like old friends, it will be a crushing disappointment.” Well, here we are in that next story, and sure enough, Constance and Flip are laughing and carrying on like old friends. “Quicksilver” was appealing in large part because of the differences between the two women, and how they had to learn to tolerate one another. To see that entirely abandoned in their first full story together is disappointing, but entirely expected from Big Finish. And it’s a shame, because they’ve been giving Lisa Greenwood much better writing since her return to the monthly range, a trend that continues in this story.
As far as the plot goes, there’s virtually nothing to discuss. The story’s pace is positively glacial, with very little happening episode-to-episode. Platt fleshes out a very believable setting and populates it with detailed characters, which helps a great deal, but the story isn’t deep enough and the regular characters aren’t served well. Jamie Anderson really captures the feel of the era from the director’s chair, and the sound design from Joe Kraemer and Josh Arakelian is quite believable. Overall, “The Behemoth” is a solid story, worth a listen – but is too flawed to become any more than that.
We’re into a fourth series of Early Adventures, and while I’m still surprised that they haven’t expanded this range to release every month, the first story, Roland Moore’s “The Night Witches,” demonstrates that they certainly wouldn’t have enough ideas to support a monthly schedule.
It’s a historical story, set in Soviet Russia in the run-up to the battle of Stalingrad. While the German tanks approach, the Soviets deploy air force units crewed entirely by women and flying strategically obsolete planes to destroy the encroaching forces. These women, and their planes, are nicknamed the Night Witches by the Germans due to their attacks under cover of darkness and the sounds of their aircraft. It’s a fascinating bit of history, one ripe for exploration – but unfortunately, Moore’s script does nothing interesting with the material.
This is a difficult review to write because there is so little to talk about. The story features very little incident and very little character development. The TARDIS lands, the Doctor and his companions are captured, and they spend four episodes escaping capture and being captured again until they finally escape in the TARDIS having resolved nothing. The plot, such as it is, revolves around the very 1960s idea that Polly, by complete coincidence, is an exact double of one of the Soviet pilots best known to the Germans. Not only that, the doppelganger Tatiana (Anjella Mackintosh) can do a perfect impression of Polly’s voice, so much so that Anneke Wills plays her when she is doing so. Naturally, the story doesn’t even attempt to provide an explanation for this.
Moore tries to give Ben and Polly the biggest roles in the story. Ben, with his military background, is helpful to the Soviets, while Polly is caught up in a plot to fake Tatiana’s death and make the Germans think she has supernatural powers. The Doctor is “off camera” for basically an entire episode and keeps to the background the rest of the time, and Jamie has almost nothing to do. Still, there’s opportunity for Ben and Polly, but we don’t get anything beyond anguish. Ben is in the Royal Navy, after all, and now he finds himself in the middle of a war whose consequences are still being felt in his own time – and all we get is tortured refusal to tell the Soviets how the war ends. Has Ben seen combat like this before? In either case, how does he respond to finding himself in a war zone? These are opportunities to learn more about one of the least explored Doctor Who companions and yet the story doesn’t engage with them. As for Polly, she gets a great moment at the end where she selflessly protects Tatiana at the possible expense of her own life, but “willing to die to protect others” is Companion 101 – it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.
Helen Goldwyn directs a solid production, with capable sound design from Toby Hrycek-Robinson. In the end, it’s not that there’s anything particularly bad about “The Night Witches” – it’s just that there isn’t enough story here for a Companion Chronicle, never mind a two-hour production.
One of my persistent complaints with the Doctor Who monthly range is about its general lack of imagination: most stories follow the patterns of well-worn Doctor Who stories and are, after 200+ releases, both predictable and forgettable. It’s a rare treat when a monthly story comes along that defies this trend, and “Time in Office” by Eddie Robson certainly does the trick.
The premise is simple: after dropping the Gravis off on a deserted planet, the Doctor and Tegan are hijacked by the Time Lords and brought to Gallifrey. Once there, the Doctor is forced to assume the mantle of Lord President and rule over his people. “Time in Office” presents a few scenes from this presidency but never takes itself wholly seriously, making a refreshing change from the serious overtones of other Gallifrey stories. Robson aims for an honest examination of what the fifth Doctor would be like as Lord President, and I think he nails it. Take the third episode, where the Doctor is confronted with a student protestor advocating for the same reforms the Doctor intends to make. It’s obviously funny, as the student consistently refuses to pay attention, but it also shows the Doctor’s willingness to take input from anyone in his pursuit of better things. It also shows the Doctor’s lack of patience with the pomp and circumstance of Gallifrey: he knows he looks ridiculous in his ceremonial robes, he mocks the endless lists of Things of Rassilon, and so forth. I’ve often found Big Finish’s Gallifrey stories to be caught between two worlds: they don’t want to lampoon it, but they don’t push the boundaries to truly explore the incomprehensible technology at Gallifrey’s heart. Robson ignores this to blaze his own trail and it works remarkably well, especially in his exploration of Gallifreyan diplomacy in episode two.
I’m also a fan of the supporting characters. This is one of the best-ever Tegan stories, as she quickly assimilates into Gallifrey’s culture while bringing her brash, human sensibilities to bear. She’s smart, creative, and resourceful, and she manages to exhibit this determination while maintaining a healthy level of snark. The “mouth on legs” descriptor could not be less apt. And then there’s Leela, captured expertly by Robson. She retains her “savage” instincts despite years in Gallifreyan society, but Robson doesn’t make the mistake of portraying her as a fool. Her ideas may be simple, but they’re incisive – her marriage idea is exactly the right way for a writer to respect the intelligence of a “primitive” character.
The production is great as well, from director Helen Goldwyn to sound designer Andy Hardwick to the excellent performances across the board. Even if the story trips up a bit in the final episode, it’s not enough to prevent the overall success of the release. There’s not much to “Time in Office” – it’s light, it’s breezy, it’s comedic, and even when the stakes are high it doesn’t feel important – but what we have is both refreshing and entertaining. This is the sort of story I once expected from Big Finish as a matter of course. Now, for better or for worse, it’s something rare, to be treasured.
I’m not sure if Marc Platt really sticks the landing with “The Thief Who Stole Time,” the concluding part to “The Skin of the Sleek” and the final episode of the sixth series of Fourth Doctor Adventures. It’s entertaining, as things go, but it doesn’t provide very interesting answers to the questions posed by the first story.
The big question in “The Skin of the Sleek” was about the planet Funderell itself: what was its purpose, and why was it originally put there by the Time Lords? Platt answers this, but the answer is characteristically vague: the planet sits over a convergence of potential timelines and serves as a way to keep them from bleeding into one another. Quite what this means and how it works is not explained, but Sartia (Joannah Tincey) wants the planet’s power for herself so that she can do… something apocalyptic. Platt doesn’t dwell on this, which is a good thing, because a lesser writer would have focused entirely on Sartia as a crazed megalomaniac who wants to take over and/or destroy the universe. Here, she’s unbalanced, yes, but also desperate to be free of the boredom of Gallifrey once and for all. It’s not very rewarding, but at least it’s rooted in the character and her established motivations. It also makes sense of Sartia’s attitude toward Romana: she had to watch as Romana, the perfect student and representative of the establishment, got to travel with the Time Lords’ most famous rebel. So it works, all things considered – it just doesn’t lay out a rewarding conclusion.
Where the story really succeeds is in its world-building, something that Platt really nails down. All of the disparate elements of Funderell are revealed as part of a larger Time Lord plan to keep the planet working. As an example, the people worship Funderell’s Daughter, a massive electric sleek, and keep it in a chamber under their city. But that chamber also contains the backup computer systems operating the planet, and the giant sleek is there to charge them with electricity! It all fits together quite elegantly, a testament to Platt’s skill at this part of the job.
The character work isn’t bad. The Doctor is downbeat and angry, and for the first time all series actually sounds like the Doctor we saw in season 18. Romana doesn’t do as well, though – when she’s not helpless, she’s reactive, and she doesn’t contribute very much to the resolution. The supporting characters work, especially Blujaw (Des McAleer) and Linnis (Alex Wyndham), both the most intriguing and most sympathetic characters. As for the production, it’s quite good, from director Ken Bentley to sound designer Jamie Robertson. But I must point out that, as interesting and different as these stories were to most of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, they still don’t sound anything like season 18 stories. The script would fit in, at least, so I suppose they deserve some credit for that. Overall, “The Thief Who Stole Time” is a solid conclusion both to the story and to the series. There’s room for improvement, but given how these series-ending spectaculars usually go, perhaps I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
I guess I should be careful what I ask for. I’ve been complaining since they started this series of seventh Doctor audios that reunite Mel and Ace, pointing out that Big Finish seems to have completely abandoned anything resembling character development for Ace and doesn’t seem at all interested in doing anything with Mel now that she’s back. Well, here comes “The Silurian Candidate” from Matthew J. Elliott, and while it tries to engage with the characters, it’s written so incompetently that it fails badly.
The seventh Doctor isn’t an easy character to write, especially when he’s in his enigmatic moods. If you want a helpful guide on how not to write him, check out this script: he’s capricious, manipulative, and totally uncaring. See, when this Doctor manipulates his companions, he’s either doing it to accomplish a greater goal or for what he thinks are their best interests. When done properly, this leads to serious conflict: think of his relationship with Hex heading into “A Death in the Family,” or the events of “Love and War.” But that conflict is nuanced, because the audience understands that both the Doctor’s goals and his companions’ feelings are worthy of sympathy. In “Silurian Candidate,” he doesn’t tell Mel anything about what they’re doing, and only tells Ace that his plan is to give Earth back to the Silurians. He’s being vague for absolutely no reason – it does nothing to advance his plan, nor does it trick or otherwise manipulate Ace or Mel into doing things that help him succeed. At one point, Ace locks him in a closet in utter disbelief, and she’s right to do so! There’s no point at which the listener realizes “oh, THAT’S what he was trying to do” – the Doctor is just an ass in this story, and that’s it.
Of course, this is also a Silurian story, which means it’s Elliott’s turn to make the same mistake that every other Silurian story has made since the first one: making the Silurians genocidal maniacs. The fundamental conflict in these stories is between the different sides of our nature: the Silurians are meant to mirror humanity’s own attitudes, with some advocating for peaceful coexistence and others advocating from a place of paranoia and racism. If humans can live together, humans and Silurians should be able to, and the Doctor is caught in the middle, trying desperately to stop them from killing each other and to get them to talk. But in stories like this, from the moment we meet the Silurians, they’re planning the mass genocide of the human race. Yes, Karlas (Caitlin Thorburn) eventually realizes the error of her ways, but the absence of a sympathetic voice for the majority of the story means the Silurians themselves are utterly unsympathetic. Every single time the Silurians wake up they try to commit genocide, so why on Earth does the Doctor keep taking their side? Ace even points this out at various points throughout the story! Of course, her complaints come to naught – the lesson is that when your own script tells you that something doesn’t make sense, you really should go back and rewrite.
Even apart from storytelling and characterization critiques, this script falls apart at a fundamental level. The tone of the story is laughably inconsistent, veering from farcical comedy to intense emotion – and no, this isn’t a melodrama. Chairman Falco (Nicholas Asbury) is an obvious Donald Trump allegory written with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the teeth – and if that wasn’t enough, Asbury plays him as a comedy Australian. At one point Mel reflects on her role in the TARDIS – perhaps she’s there to show the Doctor and Ace the human perspective that they’ve lost after so many years of TARDIS travel? Sure, that makes sense – unfortunately she doesn’t serve that purpose in this story, and indeed hasn’t served that purpose in any of the other stories leading up to this one, so why bring it up? Is anyone in charge of this? Does anyone care?
I could go on, but let’s change gears and look at the production, which is shockingly poor for a Big Finish story. Ken Bentley directs well enough, but the sound design from Luke Pietnik is embarrassing – there’s no sense of place, no perception of where the characters are, and the action scenes are utterly incomprehensible. The dinosaur attack is a particular low point, with the actors’ shouted descriptions the only way to understand what’s happening. Overall, the only saving grace of “The Silurian Candidate” is that it aspires to great ideas. It wants to take a deep dive into the Doctor, Ace, and Mel, and how they relate at this point in their lives – and unfortunately that dive is straight into an empty pool. Otherwise, there are no redeeming factors here. I often complain that the monthly range is unambitious and often boring – “The Silurian Candidate” only wishes it was merely unambitious and boring.
I’ve noticed a trend in Andrew Smith scripts – “Full Circle” notwithstanding – to introduce fascinating concepts and then disregard them in favor of standard Doctor Who plotting. That’s definitely the case in “Storm of the Horofax,” which spends its first two episodes setting up a thought-provoking conflict and then abandoning it almost entirely.
I was genuinely interested to find out what would happen next. During a naval exercise, an alien ship lurking underwater is accidentally damaged. The alien vessel is brought aboard the Navy ship, and the Doctor, Jo, and a UNIT operative, Major Paul Hardy (Robert Hands) arrive via helicopter to investigate. The sole occupant of the alien vessel is a time-traveling historian named Arianda (Robin Weaver), a woman who has the ability to perceive the future and even manipulate time itself with her mind. The script sets up a mystery: what is the extent of her powers? What is her true intent? Is she really a historian? What was the relationship between her people and the Time Lords? Will the Doctor be forced to intervene against a person with no ill intent? For two episodes, we ask these questions and set up what should be a thought-provoking conclusion.
Guess what happens next? Yep – turns out she’s been lying the whole time and she’s actually a deranged megalomaniac in charge of a band of fanatical mercenaries who aims to destroy the Earth and kill every living human being. Why does she want to do this? Because her people lose a war with humanity in the future, which breaks apart their empire. Instantly, all ambiguity and intelligence is stripped from the script. We’re back in a world of absolute good and absolute evil with nothing even remotely resembling a moral dilemma, and at this point it’s just a question of how many times the Doctor and Jo will be captured and escape before they finally save the day. Sure, a few other things happen. Hardy vanishes from history, then reappears, then dies, and then Jo cries over him even though we never got to know him and therefore have no sympathy for his loss. The Doctor isn’t affected by the time weapons of the Horofax because he’s a Time Lord. He even identifies Gallifrey by name, which seems to contravene Big Finish’s continuity rules – he’s not supposed to do that until “The Time Warrior,” right? Oh, who cares.
The production is fine. Nick Briggs directs, the sound design comes from Joe Meiners, and Jamie Robertson contributes the music. The performances are solid across the board, though Jo has a cold for some inexplicable reason but Katy Manning only remembers her stuffy nose acting about half the time. Ultimately, it seems as though the Third Doctor Adventures are going to head down the same road as every other range. Don’t try anything new, don’t try anything different, don’t take advantage of having a genuinely convincing actor to play the third Doctor – just write generic Doctor Who and sell it based entirely on nostalgia. I’m sure lots of people like this, because they simply won’t stop making it, but I’m so, so bored.
I’m fairly sure that Big Finish is just mocking us at this point. We’re into the third set of Third Doctor Adventures, which means it’s time for a Nick Briggs Dalek story! This time around it’s called “The Conquest of Far,” and it’s expectedly mediocre. At this point, Briggs basically writes one of two stories: a gritty Dalek story based on an old war movie or a massive explosion of continuity porn. “Far” is the former, which is good, because at least Briggs makes Dalek war stories entertaining – but it should go without saying that there isn’t anything even remotely interesting about the story.
For some reason, we pick up immediately after “Planet of the Daleks,” with Jo asking to return to Earth. But the TARDIS is drawn off course, onto a planet (Far) that has been conquered by the Daleks! What follows shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Doctor ends up with the military planning to retake the planet while Jo cycles between a Dalek prisoner and a prisoner of the resistance. We have betrayals and double-crosses. We have military pig-headedness pitted against Dalek extremism. We have the possibility of Robomen working as spies. We have two rebels in love, torn apart by circumstance and their different moral compasses. We have a patently ludicrous Dalek scheme that nonetheless almost works until the Doctor foils it at the last moment. In short, we have yet another generic Dalek war story told by the man who’s been repeating the same ideas over and over since Dalek Empire. I don’t understand why there’s a market for this – even if you like traditional Doctor Who, there are already a bunch of other Big Finish stories just like this one.
The production is solid. Briggs directs his own script and could work with this kind of material in his sleep by now. Tim Treloar turns in his best performance yet as the third Doctor – while it’s not note-perfect, he’s finally capturing some of Pertwee’s emotion instead of just aping his voice. I found myself forgetting I was listening to an impression on multiple occasions, which I suppose is a big compliment. Katy Manning is great as well, easily recapturing Jo’s demonstrative idealism. Beyond that, though, I have very little to say about “The Conquest of Far.” You know what this is and you know if you’ll like it. Hopefully the second story will make this set more worthwhile.
I’m genuinely unsure what Big Finish is trying to accomplish with these seventh Doctor, Ace, and Mel stories, apart from the most basic desire to have Ace and Mel together in the same TARDIS. The latest installment in this effort is “The Blood Furnace,” and it’s so bland and uninspiring you’d never guess that Eddie Robson wrote it.
It’s 1991 Merseyside, and the shipping industry is on its last legs. Native son Stuart Dale (Todd Heppenstall) has returned with a new discovery: the Dark Alloy material, and a mysterious client (Julie Graham) who wants it used to build a ship. The locals are back to work, and everyone is happy, but the true nature of the client’s proposal is about to come to the fore. As setups go, this is good enough – I like the 1991 setting in particular, as it’s in our past but the companions’ present, and Robson actually makes it feel like a historical setting. But the secret plan is boring – yep, they’re aliens and they want to conquer the universe – and the aliens themselves are uninteresting takes on the Carrionites. They can turn an entire warship into a flock of birds with a few words, which really makes their defeat unbelievable – yes, I know they can’t build their own warships, but nearly limitless power like that should make them impossible to oppose.
Worse, though, is that this story was billed as a look into Mel’s past and at the experiences that shaped her. Stuart is her old college boyfriend, he’s back in her life, and now her past and present will collide. And then… nothing happens. We don’t actually learn anything about Mel as a person, we don’t learn much about Stuart, and we barely learn about their relationship. Stuart offers Mel a job, which she first accepts and then declines, without any explanation of why or why not. It rang so false, in fact, that I just assumed her initial acceptance was a ploy to gain access to the shipyard. And it might have been! We never find out if she was being sincere or not. For that matter, we still haven’t learned much about how Mel has changed since she first left the TARDIS. There were hints in the first couple of stories featuring this group, but that’s been utterly abandoned – now she’s just the same old character we know from the 1980s and it’s like she never left. And don’t even get me started on Ace – I know it’s beating a dead horse by now to point out that any character development has long since been stripped away, but it’s still true and it’s no less annoying. The story is also full of moments of the Doctor sending his companions on missions, not explaining his motives, trusting their survival based on nothing in particular… and none of that leads to anything interesting either.
It’s getting more and more difficult to review most of these monthly releases because there’s not much to say about them. I can spend more time outlining the plot, but when nothing new or exciting happens, there isn’t much of a theme, and the characters remain totally static, it’s hard to offer a substantive critique. And that’s exactly the case with “The Blood Furnace,” an anodyne, inoffensive story that sticks around for a couple of hours before fading entirely from the memory.
With the sixth series of Fourth Doctor Adventures drawing to a close, I steeled myself for the inevitable series ending “spectacular” penned by Nick Briggs. The range is largely a test of endurance and the final episodes are always among the worst. But finally we’re doing something different: “The Skin of the Sleek” is the first of a two-part story, yes, but it’s written by Marc Platt, it doesn’t (yet) have any returning monsters, and, most surprising of all, it’s actually interesting!
There’s a lot of variability in Marc Platt’s writing. When he’s firing on all cylinders, he’s capable of producing all-time classic stories; often, however, his plots can be unfocused and his characters unrelatable. While “The Skin of the Sleek” doesn’t yet seem to be one of the greats, it’s definitely one of his better stories. The setting is utterly fascinating: a planet covered entirely by an ocean with a very high surface tension. In other words, you can walk on the ocean – but if you don’t keep moving, you’ll sink into it. The people who live on the planet get around by carrying methane balloons that keep them from sinking. I also like their society – it’s a bit of a generic “primitive hunting encampment” variant but Platt injects it with enough originality to keep it interesting, such as the Skalds, seers of the future kept chained to their journals. And, of course, there’s a dark secret at the heart of it all, which we will learn next month.
But it gets better – for the first time in a long time, a Fourth Doctor Adventure actually does something interesting with one of the main cast. A group of strangers with unclear motives has crashed on the planet, using drones to film everything for an eventual documentary feature. Their scientific researcher is Sartia (Joannah Tincey), soon revealed as a fellow Time Lord. She and Romana are old friends from the Academy, and hearing them reminisce about their past is incredibly refreshing. There’s nothing too surprising – it sounds like Romana was exactly what you’d expect her to be in school – but the simple recognition that Romana is a three-dimensional character and not just an irritable collection of put-downs is a first for this sixth series.
At this point, there’s not much more to add – “The Skin of the Sleek” is very much a setup for next month’s conclusion and very little of the plot is resolved. But it inspires a ton of confidence by creating a unique, interesting world while recognizing that there’s more to character than cliché. I’m genuinely excited for “The Thief Who Stole Time” and I can’t remember the last time I thought that about this range.
Even though the show has been off the air since “Miracle Day” ended, it’s never been a better time to be a Torchwood fan. After establishing a monthly range with occasional special box sets, Big Finish has secured a coup: “Aliens Among Us,” the official “series 5” continuation of Torchwood, created with input from creator Russell T. Davies. Set in the aftermath of “Miracle Day,” the series sees Jack and Gwen rebuilding Torchwood in Cardiff and a new cast of characters joining them against the backdrop of alien colonists living alongside the human population.
“Aliens Among Us” is designed as a full series of 12 stories, released in three box sets of four stories each. As such, it embraces the modern TV storytelling format: each episode tells a self-contained story, but each story has elements connecting it to a larger whole. It’s refreshing to experience this from Big Finish, given that they usually release stories or box sets that stand alone, and it would be delightful if they could explore a format like this for their Doctor Who range. For the first set, I’m opting to review it as a whole, rather than writing separate reviews for each story, but I reserve the right to take the opposite approach when volume 2 comes out.
As an official Torchwood continuation, we see both returning and original characters becoming part of the regular cast. Jack, of course, is still the leader of Torchwood Cardiff, and he hasn’t changed too significantly from the end of Miracle Day. He’s still dealing with the emotional fallout of Ianto’s death, but the writers keep this relatively subtle – on the surface, Jack is his usual confident, flirtatious self. He, along with the series in general, is unafraid to curse or use strong sexual innuendo – this is definitely a return to the more in-your-face storytelling of the TV series over the subtle techniques of the audio stories.
Gwen is the other major returning character, but something doesn’t seem quite right about her from the beginning. Multiple fans, after hearing the first story, questioned why Eve Myles sounded different – well, that’s because it’s not Eve Myles at all, it’s actually Alexandria Riley. Something has taken over Gwen’s body, leaving Gwen herself trapped in her own head, forced to watch the terrible actions of her replacement. Riley plays the possessed Gwen, while Myles still voices the real Gwen inside her head, and Riley is a very convincing impressionist. The end of the second story, furthermore, is genuinely shocking, and not just in how it confirms the listener’s suspicions about Gwen. We don’t really know this imposter’s goals yet; it’ll be interesting to see how this thread develops. Kai Owen has also returned as Rhys, but at least in this first set he is relegated to a few short appearances, so we’ll see if he becomes more involved.
The first new Torchwood member is Mr. Colchester (Paul Clayton), a civil servant assigned to Torchwood to manage its budget. The character was introduced in “The Torchwood Archive,” but this is the first time we’ve seen him in extended action. Despite his official job, it’s clear that he’s been in Cardiff for a while, as he’s very used to Torchwood’s mission and very good at dealing with alien incursions – the budgetary assignment almost seems superfluous. Colchester is gruff and irritable, coming across as a grumpy, aging, conservative, traditional man completely set in his ways. As a result of this, it’s a major surprise to learn that he’s gay and married to a Muslim man – Clayton does a great job of bringing across his character’s emotions even through his deep, gruff voice.
Much of the story involves Tyler Steele (Jonny Green), the point-of-view character that drives the first story in the set. He’s a former tabloid sleaze artist trying to go straight, investigating a new anti-immigrant movement in Cardiff. The racism on the rise might not solely be down to human bigotry, though – there are inexplicable associated events, and his investigation leads him straight to Gwen Cooper and Torchwood in an explosive, entertaining pre-titles sequence. From there, we follow his growing relationship with Torchwood – and the first episode, in which he works alongside Jack and reveals just how suitable he is for the job, is a smart way to introduce a new cast member. We see the story from his perspective, so when Jack refuses to hire him, we feel sympathy – but since we know and trust Jack, we understand his position as well. It takes good writing to make the listener feel torn and James Goss, writer of the “pilot,” is certainly up to the task.
The final recurring character is Orr (Sam Béart), an alien shape-shifter who manifests as whatever an observer desires sexually. This extends to gender, meaning that Orr doesn’t fit into our sexual binaries – even describing Orr as trans isn’t sufficient. Orr’s introductory story, also titled “Orr,” is by Juno Dawson, author of the disastrous “The Dollhouse,” possibly the worst Torchwood story ever produced. “Orr,” however, is anything but disastrous – it’s actually a smart, sympathetic introduction to a character that seems to defy understanding. I’m sure Dawson, herself a trans woman, writes Orr from her own experience – but whatever the inspiration, the script is fantastic. The end sees Jack at his most sympathetic and human and provides arguably the most emotional moment in the entire set – while Orr is perhaps the most “pure” character in the whole thing.
As mentioned above, James Goss writes the first two stories, “Changes Everything” and “Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy.” The first story is a fine pilot episode that lays the groundwork for everything to come while giving us an entry point through Tyler, while the second is pure Torchwood: Gwen and Colchester go undercover to investigate an alien bachelorette party. A spoiled alien princess and her friends devour male strippers before making a late-night booze run? Why not! They also set up the plot for the series, which conflates an alien migration to Earth with the very real refugee crisis. Yes, this leads to some on-the-nose political commentary, but there’s nothing wrong with that in a series hardly known for its subtlety. We spend more time with the aliens in the final story of the set, “Superiority Complex” by A. K. Benedict, which takes place in and around a luxury hotel for aliens. Benedict manages to incorporate both racial and economic politics into the story – the humans massed outside the hotel protest both the presence of the aliens and their ostentatious wealth, while the aliens act like clueless colonials. While the ending is ridiculous, I did like how Orr tried and failed to talk down the murderous “smart hotel” AI.
This is a great start to a new series of Torchwood. All four stories have unique selling points, and each one retains the over-the-top nature of Torchwood the TV show. The performances are excellent across the board, and the mysteries are intriguingly laid out. As much as I’ve enjoyed the monthly Torchwood releases, I’m excited to continue with “Aliens Among Us” and its more explicitly serialized format.
Big Finish’s monthly Torchwood releases are among the best work the company is currently doing, and for the final story in the third series, they secured a major casting coup: Simon Russell Beale, widely considered among the greatest stage actors of his generation. He stars in “The Dying Room,” by Lizzie Hopley, one of the “historical Torchwood” stories the range has been attempting recently. And while everything about the story is extremely well done, it’s still underwhelming for how ordinary it is.
This is a down-the-line World War II noir story set in Nazi-occupied Paris. We have a beautiful woman, Mme. Berber (Emma Cunniffe), with mysterious motives. We have the Nazi investigator, Herr Grau (Mark Elstob), on her trail. And we have M. LeDuc (Beale), the innocent theology professor traveling with his son Gabriel (Aly Cruickshank), caught in the crossfire. There are betrayals and surprises along with painful interrogations. Hopley’s script is a great example of this sort of story, striking all the right notes – but the problem is that if you have any familiarity at all with this genre, you’ll know exactly where it’s going. If it seems odd to you that they would hire Simon Russell Beale, put him on the cover in a dashing outfit looming over the word Torchwood, and then cast him as a theology professor, well… yes, that would indeed be odd.
LeDuc is a fantastic character. He’s driven and resilient, yet he still responds in a vulnerable, human way to torture. His relationships are written carefully and believably. Beale chooses to underplay the role in quiet, soft-spoken fashion, which makes it all the more effective when the steely side of LeDuc’s personality comes to the fore. Unfortunately, Grau and Berber are ciphers – Grau is the traditional “polite Nazi” concealing a cruel, vicious personality, while Berber is the sort of femme fatale you’d expect in a spy movie. Gabriel appears to be a fascinating character, but we are only given brief encounters with him, something that frustrates more than it rewards. The performances, across the board, are very good – Elstob is terrifying, while Cunniffe and Beale have very good chemistry.
The production is equally strong. Director Scott Handcock and sound designer Howard Carter produce an utterly believable Paris while even the more overt sci-fi elements sound convincing. You may have noticed this is my first mention of the sci-fi elements; this is because they take a back seat to the historical drama, something that plays to the story’s strengths. Overall, “The Dying Room” is flawless in the literal sense – I can’t find a thing wrong with it. But it feels unrewarding, as though I’ve encountered it before. Given some of the raw, emotional, and often innovative ground other Torchwood releases have covered, I find it disappointing to get Simon Russell Beale and then use him in something this familiar. It’s still recommended – highly, even – but I wish there had been more to it.
CLASSIC DOCTORS, NEW MONSTERS: DAY OF THE VASHTA NERADA
To round off the set, and perhaps the entire Classic Doctors, New Monsters series, we have Matt Fitton’s “Day of the Vashta Nerada,” a sequel to the first story in the set starring Paul McGann that also incorporates Time War mythology. Much like “Night,” it’s a dark, downbeat story about facing defeat before hopeless odds. Unlike “Night,” however, it’s somewhat unfocused and gets a bit silly near the end.
I like how Big Finish is trying to construct a consistent Time War mythology across multiple ranges. To that end, we see Cardinal Ollistra (Jacqueline Pearce) in this story, paying a human research station to develop weaponized Vashta Nerada. By programming them to consume Dalekanium, they can be released on Dalek worlds and into Dalek fleets and wipe the Daleks out without any danger to the Time Lords. Naturally, the Doctor shows up, and he knows exactly how dangerous the Vashta Nerada can be – but before he can intervene, a greedy lab technician (Himesh Patel) allows them to escape into the station. What follows is very typical sci-fi horror – the characters have to traverse the station to reach safety, facing traps and dangers along the way.
As this is a biotech station, the dangers come in various mutated versions of the Vashta Nerada. While I appreciate that Fitton is trying to branch out, and not just repeat the same tropes we’ve seen in their other appearances, the ideas here are fairly silly. At one point, they come across a room containing a giant Vashta Nerada, which roars and pounds against the walls and so forth. What does this thing even look like? Does it have corporeal form? We never get an explanation, even as it eats one of the supporting characters. I don’t mind having things left to my imagination, but since I don’t know what an individual Vashta Nerada looks like, what am I supposed to be picturing here? They also find “reverse” Vashta Nerada: they shun the darkness and live in the light, meaning the characters must stick to the shadows to survive. It’s not a terrible idea – though the characters calling them “Nerada Vashta” is so on the nose it hurts – but this is an audio story, and since you can’t hear light, the characters have to yell out what’s happening. The same problem happened with “Night” and I’m not surprised it came up again here.
Even for a Time War story, “Day” is particularly grim. Everyone except the Doctor and Ollistra winds up dead, most in painful, pointless ways. There are a couple of heroic sacrifices, of course, but the bloodlust is still remarkably high – especially considering what happens to Dr. Morrison (Jan Ravens). Unfortunately, we don’t get much out of either the Doctor or Ollistra, as the story hits many of the same beats we’ve seen already. The eighth Doctor is disgusted by the behavior of the Time Lords and rejects any role in the Time War – he even spells out that he’s a doctor, not a warrior, foreshadowing the decision that precedes his upcoming regeneration. Ollistra is ruthlessly pragmatic, irritated by the Doctor’s frivolity while knowing he is one of Gallifrey’s best assets. As we’ll soon be heading into Time War-themed box sets for this Doctor, it would be nice if these smaller stories pushed things along, but until then we’ll have to settle for more of the same.
Overall, “Day of the Vashta Nerada” is a very solid story and a good conclusion to a solid box set. I wish it had distinguished itself in ways other than unintentionally humorous modifications to the title monsters, but Matt Fitton’s script nonetheless combines with a strong production to produce an entertaining hour of drama.
CLASSIC DOCTORS, NEW MONSTERS: THE CARRIONITE CURSE
This one sounded promising. A story featuring the return of the Carrionites, meaning that it would naturally involve language as a plot device, and written by Simon Guerrier? Sounds perfect, but “The Carrionite Curse” doesn’t work out that way – it’s actually repetitive and surprisingly uninteresting.
It’s the 1980s, and a small town is putting three of its citizens on trial for witchcraft. Katy Bell (Maya Sondhi), a local girl returning home after years away, is appalled, and so is the sixth Doctor, who’s there posing as a clown for the local children for some reason. They intervene, and it turns out that the women are on trial for witchcraft because they actually are witches – or, more specifically, Carrionites. With his enemies revealed, the Doctor must defeat them before the town is destroyed and the Carrionites (probably) go on to destroy the world. Nothing is too surprising about any of that, but Guerrier tries to change things up by getting to the Carrionite revelation only a few minutes into the story. I like the idea – a “new series” set should try to do away with the often ponderous format of the “classic” – but unfortunately there’s not enough plot to keep things going from there.
The Doctor figures out a way to stop the Carrionites. But the solution only holds for so long, and they escape to wreak havoc once again. Repeat this sequence several times until the story ends. It’s very much a runaround – the Doctor and the locals spend most of the story literally running from location to location. And this continues until they finally finds a way to stop the villains – and that’s just the same thing they’ve been doing all along, except more intense. See, in “The Shakespeare Code,” language gave the Carrionites power and language was also their downfall. By feeding Shakespeare the lines to complete a paradoxical play, they gained power over reality – and by naming them, and feeding them lines in opposition, the Doctor was able to limit their powers and defeat them. That worked because it relied on the presence of the greatest author ever to write in English, plus the joke incorporating some Harry Potter. In “The Carrionite Curse,” Guerrier reduces this to specific words being enough to stop the Carrionites. At first, the Doctor thinks that long, complex words are the answer, something that plays to Colin Baker’s strengths – but then he realizes that short, sharp words will also do the trick. The idea of different words serving as different types of weapons is interesting, but in practice it just sounds like Colin Baker reading from a vocabulary book. There’s no explanation for why some words work and others don’t – the whole thing feels arbitrary and unrewarding.
Much like the last story, “The Carrionite Curse” isn’t bad. But there isn’t enough plot to sustain even an hour, and the character work is too shallow to make up for it. Katy’s father Douglas (Michael Fenton-Stevens), the local vicar, is the most interesting character, but he spends too much time running around for us to get to know him. Colin Baker always loves scripts like this, but even he struggles to make it interesting. I must say, though, that the references to a book by Professor Litefoot serve as a fine tribute to the late Trevor Baxter, even though I’m sure this was written long before his passing. Overall, “The Carrionite Curse” is fairly entertaining but unrewarding.
CLASSIC DOCTORS, NEW MONSTERS: EMPIRE OF THE RACNOSS
“The Runaway Bride” was the second Christmas special of the Doctor Who revival, and it’s remembered largely for introducing future companion Donna Noble. It’s also memorable for introducing the idea that the Doctor needs a companion to stop him from flying off the deep end. The image of the Doctor, willing to die to exact revenge, stopped only by Donna’s intervention, is haunting in its reflection of how the Time War has affected the character. I’m not sure anyone really remembers it for the Racnoss, however – and yet we’re already digging for material in the Classic Doctors, New Monsters sets, so here comes “Empire of the Racnoss” from Scott Handcock.
I frequently complain about Big Finish stories that present fascinating ideas and then promptly abandon them to tell generic Doctor Who stories. “Empire of the Racnoss” doesn’t quite do this, but it largely ignores a fascinating potential story. The fifth Doctor encounters the Racnoss in this story at the height of their empire and during their war with Gallifrey. This happened billions of years in the past, and the Doctor encounters two Gallifreyans that have been imprisoned by the Racnoss. This is rife for conflict: how do these ancient Time Lords think? How does their morality differ from the Doctor’s? Do they prefigure how the Time Lords will act billions of years later in the Time War? But Handcock dances around this in favor of focusing on the Racnoss.
That wouldn’t be so bad if the Racnoss weren’t so uninteresting. They’re a warlike society wracked with internal strife – nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before. The Empress (Adjoa Andoh, and I’m not sure if she’s playing the same character as Sarah Parish on TV) is simultaneously fighting the Time Lords and a civil war against her former husband, the Emperor (Nigel Planer). What follows is a series of double-crosses, in which every time the Doctor begins to think that there might be some depth, some emotion to the Racnoss, he is proven wrong as they lapse back into cackling threats at each other. And let’s not ignore just how irritating the Racnoss voices are – it’s not Big Finish’s fault, of course, but when you’re making an audio story it’s usually wise to stay away from the aliens with the most annoying speech patterns.
Fortunately, this is a great story for Peter Davison. As with the other stories in this range, he’s traveling alone, and he’s particularly desperate to see a good outcome. This strikes me as a fifth Doctor in the depths of season 21, who wants to know that there is a better way to resolve difficult situations than everyone dying. Davison brings emotional weight to his performance; you can feel how each Racnoss betrayal pains the Doctor and forces him to take unwanted action. He’s also at his most sarcastic in this story – we don’t get the “old man in a young man’s body” thing very often, but here it comes through in spades. We’re fortunate that Davison is still making these so many years later, and we should not take his performances for granted.
I suppose this is the result of taking a monster from the TV series about whom we know very little and trying to stretch their culture out into a one-hour story. There’s nothing particularly bad about this story – Handcock’s script is tight, the performances are good, the sound design is effective – but there’s nothing memorable about it either. Yep, the Racnoss are angry and untrustworthy. I would have liked to learn more.
CLASSIC DOCTORS, NEW MONSTERS: NIGHT OF THE VASHTA NERADA
I’m not sure why we have these separate “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” sets, apart from Big Finish’s need to put everything into a box set. They would make for a perfect series of monthly range stories and leave that range with fewer spots to fill with its general lack of imagination. Are there still “classic” Who fans so opposed to the new series that they’ll refuse to buy anything with new series elements? In any case, the second set starts with “Night of the Vashta Nerada” by John Dorney, notable for being the first Tom Baker story to incorporate new series elements. And it’s surprisingly good!
The Tom Baker stories Big Finish has released outside of the Fourth Doctor Adventures range have largely been of much higher quality. I don’t have a good explanation for this disparity, but “Night of the Vashta Nerada” illustrates it further. Set during one of the fourth Doctor’s companionless periods, it’s a fairly standard Doctor Who story: a group of mercenaries is sent to a planet to investigate disappearances, but when they arrive all they find is an odd man in a long scarf. Dorney has the Doctor talk them around fairly quickly, sparing us the capture/escape dynamic, and from there it’s all about figuring out what happened and how to stop it happening again.
As the title implies, the Vashta Nerada are loose and they are angry. An entire world of forest was bulldozed to construct a planet-wide amusement park, destroying the habitat and food supply of the shadow-dwelling creatures. So they have no choice but to consume the humans working to open the park – and indeed they want to do so, to take revenge on the humans for destroying their world. This is a very traditional “humans reap what they sow” story, but the story embraces the theme and runs with it, making it work. Tom Baker is perhaps the most serious he has ever been for Big Finish – this is an angry Doctor who despises what the humans have done but knows he must still try to protect them. And it’s a very dark story – the casualty rate among the supporting cast is very, very high. I do wish Dorney hadn’t succumbed to the temptation to turn the Vashta Nerada into a universal threat at the conclusion, but that’s a minor complaint with a largely successful story.
The problem is with the production, and it’s not the fault of the people working on the story. Rather, it’s a similar problem to the Weeping Angels: the Vashta Nerada derive much of their menace from visual clues. They inhabit the shadows, but you can’t aurally represent encroaching shadows, so the characters have to describe it. Before they strike, their intended target has two shadows – but again, how can you represent this on audio? And the script doesn’t even incorporate the more horrific elements: there’s no “Who turned out the lights?” and no creepy skeletons stalking the characters. To Dorney’s credit, he largely makes the descriptive dialogue sound natural, but it still stands out for what it is.
All that said, “Night of the Vashta Nerada” is a very enjoyable listen. It’s a dark story taken straight from the Hinchcliffe era featuring one of Tom Baker’s most intense turns in the role. The supporting cast are all ciphers, but Dorney sketches them out well enough to be effective. And despite the issues above, director Barnaby Edwards and sound designer Howard Carter provide an eerie, threatening soundscape. It’s not groundbreaking in any way, but unlike so many of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, it feels vibrant and exciting and it’ll leave you wanting more.
After “Voyage to Venus,” I assumed I knew what to expect from the second “special” Doctor Who release pairing the sixth Doctor with Jago and Litefoot: a fun, entertaining story featuring the infernal investigators getting out of dangerous scrapes in an unfamiliar time period. What I actually got from Matthew Sweet’s brilliant script was one of the most atmospheric, compelling stories I’ve heard from Big Finish in quite some time.
The story deals with a historical mystery I’m surprised Doctor Who has never touched: the complete disappearance of the colonists at Roanoke, who vanished without a trace, leaving behind only the word “Croatoan” carved into a post. To be fair, it’s not much of a mystery – there’s a nearby island called Croatoan and various circumstances prevented the empire from going there to search, so they probably just relocated there – but Sweet incorporates this into his story, turning Croatoan from simply a nearby island into a mystical place evidently possessed by the ghosts of small children.
Surprisingly, the story doesn’t dwell on the ghosts to any great extent. Rather, it’s concerned with building up an atmosphere of dread and suspicion: the Algonquin, the English, and the TARDIS crew are all suspicious of one another and tensions ratchet up throughout the first half of the play. Add to this a mysterious illness and disappearing people, and mix in the astonishingly good sound design from Fool Circle Productions, and you have a recipe for atmosphere unmatched in most recent Big Finish stories. Much like Sweet’s own “The Magic Mousetrap,” “Voyage to the New World” feels like it is building toward a terrifying revelation, and is utterly gripping as a result.
And yet the end result isn’t terrifying. In fact, it’s a time travel plot about Sir Walter Raleigh (Mark Lockyer), who gains possession of the open TARDIS and tries to divine its secrets. Sweet pens some wonderful scenes in this sequence, including one of the TARDIS itself trying to tempt Raleigh into pulling the fast return switch by drawing undue attention to it. The resolution is quite elegant, so much so that it’s easy not to notice that it’s a bit of a cheat. Frankly, I love this script. To date it’s Sweet’s third and final Doctor Who audio script, though he’s penned a few Jago & Litefoots since. I’m not sure if he’s willing to be tempted back to Doctor Who, but if so, Big Finish really should make it happen.
As for the TARDIS crew, this is a fantastic display of their abilities. I love the Doctor and Litefoot teaming up: more than any other story in this pairing, here they really feel like two scientists working together. And Jago, on his own again, gets to shine: Christopher Benjamin is a fantastic actor, and his portrayal of a feverish, confused Jago is his best performance in the role since all the way back in the first Jago & Litefoot story. Frankly, I’m surprised that Big Finish didn’t leave any room for additional stories with this group, and I’m sad to see it come to an end despite the uneven start in the actual Jago & Litefoot range.
I mentioned it before, but the sound design and score from Fool Circle Productions are first-rate even according to Big Finish’s usual high standards. Ken Bentley directs, expertly capturing the atmosphere of Sweet’s script and getting some great performances from his cast. Overall, “Voyage to the New World” is fantastic – if, like me, you’ve gone this long and haven’t heard it yet, make the small investment and pick it up. It’s well worth it.
At the end of series 4 of Jago & Litefoot, the two investigators of infernal incidents step aboard the sixth Doctor’s TARDIS and leave the bonds of Earth behind. But rather than leave the subsequent adventures to the imagination, Big Finish did something unusual: they brought the stars of their spinoff back into the parent series with two Doctor Who stories. The first of these, “Voyage to Venus” by Jonathan Morris, is an entertaining, if somewhat generic, story that delights in putting our heroes in bizarre situations and seeing how they react.
Apart from a couple of Missing Adventures, Doctor Who hasn’t spent much time on Venus, so it’s interesting to see the planet represented here. It’s many years into Earth’s future, and Venus is now a lush world with a city suspended in the clouds over the jungles below. The people are ruled by a Grand Empress, Vulpina (Juliet Aubrey), whose power rests on a dark secret. Naturally, the Doctor, Jago, and Litefoot are captured soon after landing. The Doctor and Litefoot investigate the secret behind Vulpina’s rule while Jago serves, embarrassingly, as her pet. The central revelation, that the people of Venus are actually human refugees from Earth who altered their biology to adapt to their new planet, is predictable as these things go but lends the story some additional weight. It also leads to the expected ending where the Doctor must convince someone that humans aren’t all as bad as their worst individuals. Morris is a skilled writer, so the material doesn’t feel stale, but there isn’t much ground being broken in this story.
There is, however, a ton of continuity porn. We have Venusian shanghorns, and references to perigosto sticks. We have an explanation for why a traditional Venusian lullaby has the same tune as “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” And we even have an explanation for why the third and sixth Doctors seem to have been here at different times. Fortunately, Morris is one of the best-ever Doctor Who writers when it comes to incorporating continuity, so this comes off as appealing instead of annoying.
The main attraction here is finally seeing Jago and Litefoot along for a TARDIS trip. Now that they’re back in a Doctor Who story, they slide easily into the companion role, and their Victorian perspectives allow the Doctor and others to explain what’s going on. I enjoyed their takes on the usual Doctor Who tropes: Jago thinks that everyone on Venus speaks English because it’s the lingua franca and sees nothing unusual about it, Litefoot dives right into an alien autopsy without a second’s thought, and so forth. Morris really understands these characters, and pairing them with the spiky, irritable sixth Doctor adds a little tension to the affair. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter are, of course, wonderful – this is the first review I’ve written since Baxter’s unfortunate passing and it is very clear that he will be missed.
The production is similarly strong. Ken Bentley directs to his usual high standard, while the sound design and electronic score from Fool Circle Productions is striking – it really feels like it’s set in an alien jungle at times. Overall, “Voyage to Venus” is a fine little bonus story that continues the Jago and Litefoot story in admirable fashion.
After playing around with the format for three releases, we’re back to the normal routine, with a seventh Doctor, Ace, and Mel trilogy starting here with John Dorney’s “The High Price of Parking.” It’s conceptually interesting, but falls down significantly in the execution – it would fit in quite well in season 24, for better or for worse.
I didn’t listen to the extras, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dorney was inspired to write this story by seeing a “Free Parking” sign and envisioning it as a call to action rather than a statement of fact. It’s set on the planet Parking, so named because it serves as a moon-sized spaceship parking structure for a historically preserved planet. From here, Dorney builds a fairly standard sci-fi society: the Wardens are the ones in charge, the “natives,” who became separated from their ships and now live in the underground parts of the planetoid, and the Free Parkers, the extremists who want to overthrow the Wardens and declare Parking a free state. Naturally, the Doctor and his companions become separated, each ending up with a different faction. It’s the sort of story built on misunderstandings: the Wardens are just trying to get by with scarce resources and little support from home, while the Free Parkers are actually in favor of a nonviolent resolution to the conflict, even though each sees the other as a dangerous threat. And the central theme of the story is advocating nonviolence as a solution: one of the climactic moments is a speech by Ace, of all people, decrying the use of violence to achieve political ends.
The tone of the story fascinates me. As I stated above, this production sounds like it was lifted wholesale from season 24. It’s lighthearted, with a satirical tone, but never quite takes the next step into outright comedy. The villain is so far over the top in her villainy that it feels like the story is telling a joke, but we never get the punch line. And while the Doctor doesn’t go back to using malapropisms, he’s still bumbling around in search of answers instead of executing a manipulative scheme. The problem, of course, is that season 24 isn’t good. It feels like a show flailing around while trying to find its feet, and that feeling is on full display in “The High Price of Parking.” Is it supposed to be satirical? Is it supposed to be heartfelt? It veers back and forth between humor and earnest moralizing without any serious attempt to blend the two.
Thankfully, Sophie Aldred isn’t playing Ace like she just walked on board the TARDIS immediately before this story – but that still means her characterization is wildly inconsistent from story to story. I like Mel in this: she’s smart, capable, and easily able to take charge of complicated situations. She’s a good match for Cowley (Gabrielle Glaister), the head Warden, and their pairing is easily the most entertaining in the story. Ken Bentley directs, doing a good job for the most part, but yet again the story falls down when attempting crowd scenes. At least this time they recorded some crowd reaction noises, but it still sounds unnatural when the room containing that crowd is eerily silent while the main characters are talking. It’s very easy to forget that there are a bunch of Wardens in their HQ, because they only make noise when Cowley addresses them directly.
Overall, “The High Price of Parking” is a letdown. It tries to be about something, yes, but the message is obvious and trite, and the story never manages to find a consistent or even understandable tone. Everyone is entitled to an off day, of course, but it’s still disappointing to get a result like this from one of the best writers currently on the Big Finish staff.
I’ve belabored this point over and over with regard to this series of Fourth Doctor Adventures, but I’m going to come back to it anyway: the suggestion that these stories are set in season 18 of the TV show is utterly laughable. In “The Movellan Grave” we get a script from someone who actually wrote for season 18. Andrew Smith wrote “Full Circle,” a layered, intelligent, and moody story that kicked off the E-Space trilogy and happily embraced the season’s theme of entropy increasing. And now he’s back in that era with “The Movellan Grave,” an obvious evil monster runaround that has nothing to do with season 18 and feels like it was written in about ten minutes. Perfect!
By the time you know what’s happening in “The Movellan Grave,” you should also know exactly how it’s going to end. The only defining trait of the Movellans is their emotionless machine logic, so this story shows them trying to develop an emotion-driven Movellan, Chenek (Chris Jarman), to break the Dalek stalemate. Smith toys with an intriguing premise: the Movellans model their creation’s emotions after captured Dalek slaves, meaning that his actions are dictated by paranoia, fear, and hopelessness. But instead of spending time with Chenek and really examining his thought processes, the script casts him as the killer in a monster movie, stomping around tormenting the innocent. Lots of running around ensues until the Doctor is finally able to reprogram Chenek and save the day. All of this, plus the “twist” at the very end, is predictable from miles away.
As I always say, a predictable plot is acceptable if the story has other interesting elements. Had we spent more time fleshing Chenek out, the story would have been better. Had the Doctor or Romana been given any sort of a challenge to take them out of their comfort zones, the story would have been more intriguing. Had the supporting cast had any depth whatsoever, the story would have been more compelling. But none of those things happened, and as a result “The Movellan Grave” remains dull. Nicholas Briggs directs well. The performances are generally good – Lalla Ward finally dials the sarcasm and hostility down a notch while Tom Baker is always great, though Chris Jarman’s performance is a bit too broad. The sound design from Jamie Robertson is fine, but even though I listened to the story earlier today I already can’t remember anything about the score. In the end, I don’t have much more to say about “The Movellan Grave.” It’s an obvious, predictable story that offers nothing of interest and continues the streak of failing to sound even a little like a season 18 story. If you’ve never heard a Doctor Who audio before, this might not be too bad, but I’ve heard quite a few by this point.
While I rarely dislike anything that Justin Richards writes, I think it was a mistake for him to write “The Hourglass Killers,” the final story of Jago & Litefoot’s fourth series. This story, which ties together the various plots running through the series, requires more than the workmanlike Doctor Who plotting that Richards typically brings to the table, meaning that it feels empty and unsatisfying. I call it Doctor Who plotting for a reason: theme music aside, this is absolutely a Doctor Who story and not a Jago & Litefoot tale. The Doctor drives the action and ultimately saves the day while Jago and Litefoot are reduced to supporting roles in their own series. While this makes sense – why wouldn’t the super-intelligent time-traveling alien be the one to save the day? – it shows the dangers of taking the Doctor out of his own series and putting him in others. It’s patronizing at best: every time Jago or Litefoot says or does something useful, the Doctor congratulates them like children in need of validation. Even Leela isn’t immune: gone is the intelligent, dangerous warrior of the past few stories, replaced by a cipher tasked with asking the Doctor questions and cheering his resourcefulness. Kempston and Hardwick are defeated and the day is saved, but it’s hard to get excited when our favorite characters have little to nothing to do with it. I’m curious to finally hear the two Doctor Who stories that follow “The Hourglass Killers” – hopefully they’ll get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Torchwood was never intended to portray the adventures of a group of hyper-competent government agents. Indeed, as seen on television, Torchwood Three was intended to be out on the edge – a group of intelligent yet untested agents constantly replacing those killed in action. They’re supposed to screw up, supposed to sometimes make bad situations worse. But we haven’t really explored that element of Torchwood in the audio range until now, in “The Office of Never Was” by James Goss.
The premise is very simple: Ianto investigates an abandoned Cardiff office block that is rumored to be haunted. Once there, he discovers that things are not how they seem. The building doesn’t seem to respond to his presence: the motion sensors don’t recognize him, for example, and strange voices seem to call his name. Soon, he meets a young woman (Bethan Rose Young) who thinks she’s the security guard but doesn’t seem to remember anything about her own life. Has Ianto been there before? Does he know her? He doesn’t remember either. The first two-thirds of the story take place entirely within this eerie, mysterious setting, building a legitimate sense of dread.
The revelation, however, turns the story on its head, when former executive Oliver (David Shields) emerges from the shadows to confront Ianto. It’s a big info-dump that slows the story to a halt, but the questions it poses are interesting nonetheless. The company purchased alien brain modifications, possibly from the Committee, to enhance its employees. Torchwood found out and sent Ianto to intervene, putting Retcon in the water supply to reverse the modifications. But they got it wrong: rather than curing the employees, the Retcon caused massive neural failures and killed them. And finally, rather than living with his guilt, Ianto took Retcon himself and forgot about the entire affair. What’s presented as a ghost story, then, is actually about lost memories and how Ianto’s mind is dredging them up despite the influence of the drug. Oliver is manipulating him, trying to get Ianto to a place where he will remember his actions and face his guilty conscience. It’s unclear exactly how much of the “haunting” was Oliver and how much was in Ianto’s head, but in any case we learn a lot about Ianto and how he deals with the consequences of the actions he takes as a Torchwood operative. The ending is particularly effective: the story is about the importance of memory and how Retcon is simply a way to avoid responsibility, and while it appears to be building toward Ianto realizing this and accepting his past, it takes a sharp turn in the opposite direction right at the climax.
Overall, “The Office of Never Was” is another strong entry in the Torchwood range. There are a few niggles with the script, particularly the mid-story info-dump, but it’s largely successful. Scott Handcock directs and the results are excellent: along with Rob Harvey’s sound design, the haunted feeling is inescapable. As with so much of this range, “The Office of Never Was” is highly recommended.
Matthew Sweet is one of my favorite writers in the Big Finish stable: he captures the characters incredibly well, he has a knack for intriguing plots, and his scripts are always literary but never try to show off. Here, in “The Lonely Clock,” he’s channeling “The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad as well as the Hitchcock adaptations that followed. But that’s just the background to a fascinating story in which Jago and Litefoot find themselves trapped on an Underground train endlessly traveling in a loop, devoid of passengers, and accompanied by a mysterious woman. Simultaneously, Leela and Ellie search for them, aided by the same woman. The woman, Winnie (Victoria Alcock), just murdered her husband – but she didn’t, she was just tricked into thinking she did. It’s all part of a scheme by Hardwick and Kempston – and a spatio-temporal discontinuity generator – to put Winnie in two places at once. But there’s no grand scheme at work here, no universe-spanning threat: they’re doing it because they want to attract the attention of the one person who would never permit such shenanigans. That person, of course, is the mysterious Professor Claudius Dark, finally revealed here as the sixth Doctor all along. What impresses me most about this story is the way it hangs together flawlessly while maintaining such an effective, eerie atmosphere. This is a story in which the characters are constantly a step behind, and Lisa Bowerman’s directing captures this feeling quite well – the opening scene in particular is strikingly effective. I’m very curious to see how this series wraps up – the Doctor almost never appears in the spinoff series, after all – but even if that story is a step down, I still got to experience “The Lonely Clock,” which is excellent.
Jago & Litefoot has largely stayed away from introducing “celebrity” characters from the time period, but that’s certainly not the case in John Dorney’s “Beautiful Things,” which features none other than Oscar Wilde (Alan Cox). Dorney and Cox do a wonderful job of introducing Wilde into the world of the infernal investigators – he’s portrayed not entirely as an arrogant jerk but rather as a man in a constant state of melancholy knowing that very few people in the world are on his intellectual level. And each character reacts differently to him: Jago is naturally an admirer – the scene where Wilde bests him at alliteration is wonderful – Litefoot finds him insufferable, and Leela doesn’t understand why he is acclaimed in the first place. And then there’s the mysterious Gad, a Dorian Gray homage that maintains his youth by shunting the passage of time into an elderly avatar. And his scheme gets down to the main question of the play: what is art and what is its value? An infinite library, existing (like the TARDIS) extradimensionally, is draining human minds and constructing art by assembly line: each book on the shelf contains a slightly different combination of words in infinite iterations. Gad thinks this will allow him to consume all possible art, but it takes Wilde to explain that art derives from an act of creation, not random chance. Given enough time, a room full of monkeys and typewriters might one day produce Hamlet, but it would be lost under billions of iterations of meaningless nonsense. I could go on – the characterization is great, the dialogue is smart throughout – but suffice it to say that “Beautiful Things” is quite good, a highlight of the range thus far.
The fourth Jago & Litefoot series starts with “Jago in Love,” a story by Nigel Fairs that does exactly what it says on the tin. The characters visit Brighton for a holiday, and while there, Jago meets an actress who is basically his dream partner. While he romances her, Litefoot and Leela become involved with a man who lost his fiancée. That spirals out of control due to a time distortion until Litefoot’s soul is imprisoned in a mirror and the fiancée is inside his body. The focus of the story is on Jago, as the title implies; the Litefoot plot doesn’t go anywhere interesting. But Jago and Abigail (Elizabeth Counsell) are a delight: Christopher Benjamin in particular throws everything into his portrayal of the smitten impresario. It’s very mannered and polite, of course, and you believe him entirely when he decides to propose marriage. The problem is that Abigail is faking it, and Fairs writes her in a way that makes her trickery incredibly obvious. So while Jago’s emotions feel honest, the story also makes him look like a gullible fool – and while Jago’s impulsiveness often gets him into trouble, he’s absolutely not an idiot. It’s great, in the end, to hear him choose his friends over his new love, but I wish it wouldn’t have felt quite so inevitable. “Jago in Love” isn’t a bad opener, but I’ve heard better.
Finally, in Guy Adams’ “The Plague of Dreams,” we get a story that feels like an “old-school” Companion Chronicle. There’s a narrative device, it’s actually about something – of course it’s also overwritten and its attempts at arc plotting don’t work, but it’s still an ambitious script that rewards the listener.
For those who differentiate between such things, “The Plague of Dreams” is actually a “full-cast” story rather than a narrated drama. It certainly seems to be narrated at first, with Elliot Chapman’s Player describing the events of a late-period Hartnell story, but when Polly enters the scene we realize they’re actually performing her memories of the story on stage. The Player talks her through it, encouraging her to act out various roles – it’s very self-referential, but it avoids being smug and thus gets away with it. This is one of the few times that a Companion Chronicle has pointed out that the companion herself is doing an impression of the Doctor, and Anneke Wills makes it entirely convincing. But while the meta-narrative elements are very entertaining, the story (specifically the Player) is obsessed with Shakespeare, something that never fails to annoy me. It’s nothing against Shakespeare, who was one of the greatest and most influential writers in human history – I just don’t like stories in which characters recite entire parts of the script from various plays. It invariably feels like the author bragging about their education rather than any sort of dramatically necessary element.
The other significant part of “The Plague of Dreams” is its ties to the Time War. I was waiting for an explanation of why certain lines of dialogue were distorted and repeated in the earlier stories, but all we get is “the Time Lords are watching.” As it turns out, the explanation is in the trailer – assuming your audience listens to every piece of supplementary material is not wise. Though it does explain why the box set includes its own trailer on the final disc. As for the Time War material, it’s necessarily vague because it’s set in the Hartnell era. But why? You’re already bringing material from the new series back into 1966, so why now decide that you can’t use the words “Time Lords” or “Gallifrey” because they weren’t spoken on TV until years later? As for the material about the Doctor’s regeneration, it’s ineffectual because we don’t see it on screen by definition. Apparently the Doctor voluntarily decided to go to Antarctica in order to start down the path to becoming the War Doctor, and then immediately forgot all of that as soon as the TARDIS was in flight. Great?
“The Plague of Dreams” is, on the whole, a very smart story with a brilliant delivery – but it gets bogged down in arc plotting and continuity and ends up weaker than the sum of its parts. Get rid of the Time War stuff, ease up on the Shakespeare references, and this could be a 10 – as it is, it’s not quite there.
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: THE BONFIRES OF THE VANITIES
The third Companion Chronicle in the set is “The Bonfires of the Vanities” by Una McCormack, and it’s about as straightforward as the first story. The TARDIS lands in 1950s Lewes right as the Lewes Bonfire celebrations are about to begin on Guy Fawkes Night. And while the people of the town are rowdy in their celebration, something more sinister is going on, driving otherwise reasonable people to acts of violence.
There’s not much to recommend the plot. An alien force is terrorizing the city, animating Guy Fawkes masks and robes into imp-like creatures that do its bidding. There’s an attempt to give the alien some depth – when it first arrived on Earth, the people of Lewes thought it a monster and threw it into a bonfire – but this ultimately falls into the traditional Doctor Who storytelling trap of becoming a megalomaniac. Some of the people were cruel to me, therefore I’m going to kill every single one of them, burn the town to the ground, and salt the ashes! Ha ha ha ha ha! It’s not interesting and the historical trappings do nothing to counteract the lack of interest.
I like some of the surrounding material. Much of the story is set around an old library, which is a wonderful location for a tale like this. The librarian is a fantastic character, a woman ahead of her time who even catches Polly out making sexist assumptions. And the atmosphere is effective: it genuinely feels like a festival but with something malevolent slowly encroaching. The narration is also effective, splitting the duties between Anneke Wills and Elliot Chapman. We get to hear Chapman’s take on Hartnell, and while he captures the vocal mannerisms well enough, his relative youth and accent make the Doctor sound overly patrician. And while both narrators are more than capable, I don’t like how the story is split between them – it removes a lot of the potential uniqueness of a Companion Chronicle and makes the story feel more like a talking book. There’s also no character development here whatsoever, meaning the story relies almost entirely on the plot, and I’ve already said the plot is disappointing. This story is a Companion Chronicle in name only; had it come out in the old release schedule, it would have passed without comment and sunk quietly to the bottom of the ratings. Oh well.
THE COMPANION CHRONICLES: ACROSS THE DARKENED CITY
One of the best elements of the Companion Chronicles was their willingness to push the boundaries of Doctor Who audio storytelling, whether through unconventional plots or altering narrative convention. Since the move to box sets, this has not been on display nearly as often – but fortunately “Across the Darkened City” by David Bartlett delivers a plot we haven’t seen before.
As a concept, the plot is very simple, and therefore I don’t have much to say about it: Steven is marooned on a planet with a lone, damaged Dalek that needs his help to survive. The planet, meanwhile, is shrouded in darkness, and so Steven needs the Dalek’s infrared vision to get around. Two natural enemies thrown together on a “road trip” narrative – as I recall, we’ve never seen this in Doctor Who, and it’s a compelling hook for a story. Bartlett tries to evoke audience sympathy for the Dalek by having it act out of character: it insists upon keeping Steven alive, to the point of exterminating another Dalek that tries to kill him; it speaks approvingly of teamwork; it claims it’s not like other Daleks because it’s a new, superior genetic variant. Steven, always ready to help the unfortunate, starts to think of the Dalek as an individual, referring to the Dalek by its designation rather than just as “a Dalek.”
Of course, the Dalek betrays him at the end, largely because Steven forgets himself and puts the Dalek mutant into a fully functional casing, eliminating his own usefulness. But it’s important to point out that the two really were relying upon one another; it wasn’t like the Dalek could have murdered Steven and escaped whenever it liked. This prompts an interesting question: is a wounded Dalek worthy of sympathy? Of help? It’s not “The Scorpion and the Frog” territory, because the Dalek resists its nature. Steven struggles with this question throughout the story – we don’t get a concrete answer, but perhaps that’s for the best.
The plot and its related questions comprise the entirety of the story. The narrative is ordinary and while we spend a great deal of time with Steven’s thoughts we don’t learn anything interesting or surprising about him. As such, the story as a whole could be better. But what we do have is executed quite well, and the presence of Peter Purves elevates everything – he’s a masterful narrator. I wish these stories would be a bit more ambitious, but what we have is quite entertaining.
The Companion Chronicles are back, with another four-story box set focusing on the Hartnell era. The first of these is “Fields of Terror” by John Pritchard, a story that returns us to the time of the Reign of Terror, but in a much different and much more dangerous part of France.
While Paris was relatively civilized even in the depths of the Terror, other areas of the country did not fare so well. Bands of soldiers, referred to as “columns of hell,” ransacked the countryside, brutally murdering anyone suspected of anti-revolutionary thoughts or sympathies. It is into this mess that the TARDIS lands, stranding the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki with one such band of soldiers and their leader Lagrange (Robert Hands). The plot is quite simple: the soldiers have been destroying everything in their path, and now something is stalking them through the forests and killing them off one by one.
The title, the setting, and various conversations by the characters all illustrate that this story is about terror: how it is inflicted, its effects, and whether it can be controlled. The Doctor astutely points out that terror can never work as a strategy to rule because those inflicting the terror will always ultimately fall victim to its effects. And so is the case in this story, as the same soldiers wreaking havoc are the ones who cannot function in the face of the creature stalking them. It’s never explained what is following them, only that it seems related to a hospital the soldiers burned to the ground. I think this is a smart move by Pritchard – putting a name to the creature would strip it of its mysterious power.
Unfortunately, the story does virtually nothing with the lead characters, which renders it something of a lost opportunity as a Companion Chronicle. There’s no narrative frame – although we haven’t had one of those in quite some time, so perhaps I should stop expecting them – and despite Maureen O’Brien’s expert narration, we never really get a good look into Vicki’s head. She’s plucky, outspoken, and cautiously brave, but we don’t get to see how the story affects her. The narrative itself is also rather close to an audiobook, complete with frequent “said the Doctor” lines. The sound design is great, the atmosphere is creepy, and the plot is intelligent – I just wish they’d done more with the characters.
The final two-story release in the monthly range features the seventh Doctor, Ace, and the return of Hex, set during his initial travels in the TARDIS. The first story, “Shadow Planet” by AK Benedict, dives into a philosophical exploration of its characters but ultimately doesn’t go far enough. The TARDIS lands on the planet Unity, where the Unity Corporation offers a unique service: they can separate out your “shadow self” and enable you to reconcile with the darker aspects of your personality. Of course, this technology functions by exploiting and damaging the planet itself, so the Doctor must put a stop to it. There’s not much to the plot: in fact, the Doctor talking the planet into saving the day resolves the story.
But “Shadow Planet” isn’t really about its plot; rather, it’s about this Jungian idea of the “shadow self.” Everyone has a side they don’t talk about, and on Unity this side can be manifested as a robotic duplicate. Importantly, the shadows aren’t purely evil: Ace’s shadow, for example, mostly wants to be left alone to relax with her thoughts. The company extracts shadows from its employees and keeps them imprisoned, thus guaranteeing that the employees only demonstrate desirable personality traits. Even Wheeler (Belinda Lang), the woman in charge, isn’t immune, though you can see that revelation coming from a mile away. But while the script is much too intelligent and nuanced to make the shadows evil clones, it doesn’t go far enough to teach us more about the regular characters. Hex’s shadow’s nihilism is interesting but overcome too easily; meanwhile, we don’t actually see the “real” Ace or Hex acting any differently with those parts of their personalities extracted. And while it’s not surprising that the Doctor – especially this Doctor – is most integrated with his shadow, it’s a bit disappointing not to see more of his internal struggles. In any case, the fact that I’m engaging with the story on this level is quite refreshing for the monthly range. “Shadow Planet” is interesting and thought provoking, even if there’s room for improvement.
7/10
WORLD APART
And then there’s Scott Handcock’s “World Apart,” which also takes place on a bizarre alien world but features a much different approach to its counterpart. The TARDIS nearly collides with the planet Nirvana and is forced into an emergency landing, leading the crew to explore their new surroundings. But disaster strikes, and soon Ace and Hex are marooned on the surface without the Doctor. That’s the cliffhanger, by the way – the entire first episode is about the TARDIS crew exploring the planet and the slow realization about what’s going on. After that, we spend most of the second episode in a two-hander with Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier as Ace and Hex struggle to survive until the Doctor can save them. I like stories that take their time, and Handcock does a fantastic job of building atmosphere and suspense in both situations.
The characterization is a little confusing, on the other hand. We’re back in the days when Hex was nursing a crush on Ace, which is jarring given that this story takes place immediately after “Shadow Planet” which didn’t mention the idea. It’s also odd because Ace comes across more like her early days in the TARDIS rather than as the mature, experienced time traveler that Hex grows to like. The situation doesn’t help matters – so they’re stranded for weeks with only each other as company, and sleep together at night to conserve heat, but this unrequited love thing isn’t hashed out at some point? Fortunately, Handcock captures the seventh Doctor magnificently, giving us a long look at his alien morality and using Hex as a mirror to understand why the Doctor can sometimes seem monstrous even when he’s trying to help. I liked “World Apart,” perhaps even a bit more than “Shadow Planet.” Neither story is perfect, but both are smart stories that will stay in the memory for quite some time. If the monthly range could tell stories like this more often, I would be thrilled.
There’s a lot of Big Finish product that feels like it was generated on autopilot, but the Fourth Doctor Adventures feature the greatest concentration of such stories. We have yet another example in Jonathan Morris’ “Subterranea,” a story that creates an alien civilization with potential, couples it with some whimsical flourishes, and then does precisely nothing interesting or exciting.
So we have a civilization of alien mole people who spend their entire lives underground on massive city-ships (“Drill-towns”) mining the supplies they need from the surrounding rock. But there are monsters underground as well: the monstrous Silex, cyborg creatures that devour entire Drill-towns and leave chaos in their wake. This is a great setup, but Morris employs it in the most generic Doctor Who plot imaginable: the Doctor and Romana land on one of the Drill-towns, get separated, meet up with different factions of the native race, and ultimately come together to defeat the enemy just in the nick of time. The Silex are basically just this planet’s equivalent of the Cybermen: native people modified into partially robotic monsters who reject emotion and praise the cold efficiency of pure logic. At least they’re not allergic to gold, but it doesn’t take much for the Doctor and Romana to defeat them.
About the only thing that sets “Subterranea” apart is its sense of whimsy. Morris is clearly going for a Dickensian feeling – the captain of the Drill-town, for example, is named Maxwell Wilberforce Bell (Matthew Cottle, great), an unassuming man who nevertheless has a strong sense of what’s right. He wears a jaunty top hat, and argues with his wife (Abigail McKern). The story even ends like a 1970s sitcom, with the characters standing around laughing at a terrible joke. I might be inclined to cut the story some slack for its sense of humor, but that would be forgetting that it is yet again supposed to be set in season 18 and as such feels catastrophically out of place. I wonder how many season 18 fans Big Finish tricked into buying a subscription, and how many of them won’t make that mistake a second time?
Nicholas Briggs directs to his usual high standard, and Jamie Robertson’s sound design is quite good, though his score is only barely reminiscent of the supposed era. But none of that is enough to save the story. I’ve come to expect mediocrity like “Subterranea” from this range, but I’m disappointed to see it come from Morris’s pen, especially given that he wrote the best stories in the entire Fourth Doctor range thus far. For this range, “Subterranea” isn’t bad, but that is most certainly not a compliment.
“Cascade,” or more properly “torchwood_cascade_CDRIP.tor,” by Scott Handcock is a Torchwood story designed around the audio medium that seems to work on a metafictional level. The plot on its own is genius: someone has created a sentient computer virus that tracks down online pirates, killing them and making the evidence disappear. One of the few moments of clunky exposition refers to DRM, and that underscores just how terrifyingly plausible this story is. Imagine if a media conglomerate could order a takedown request not to the hosting site but rather to the person who copied the material in the first place – it’s exactly the sort of plot you’d expect to see on Black Mirror, and to me that is very high praise.
The most interesting part of “Cascade” is its presentation, and how it seems to bleed over into the real world. The title of the story is meant to imply that the listener is hearing a pirated audio file, but the story is not presented as a series of audio recordings. Non-diegetic sound is heard throughout, and the narrative segments are told in ways that render laughable the suggestion that the characters are being recorded. The virus also directly addresses the listener from time to time, warning of impending doom should you continue to listen. It’s a bit over the top, but Handcock, who directs his own script, together with sound designer Rob Harvey want you to feel as though this is a pirated audio file and that you are therefore complicit in its distribution. That said, these elements are largely decorative – the non-linearity of the story doesn’t add much to the experience, while the distortion and interference is basically just a cool trick.
The character work is fascinating as well, especially with the lead role. The relationship between Tosh and former Torchwood One operative Stephen (Robbie Jarvis) is a fairly straightforward tale of unrequited love, but the “corrupted” nature of the presentation allows us to hear some of his future communications. We hear a number of voicemail messages in which he references “explosions in Cardiff,” and concludes by Tosh’s failure to respond that she isn’t interested. But I’m assuming he’s referring to the events of “Exit Wounds” – which means that Tosh is dead and Stephen will never know, a tragic bookend to an effective story. After a couple of missteps, the Torchwood range is back on excellent form with “Cascade.”
The final story in The Lives of Captain Jack, “Month 25” by Guy Adams, takes us back to a time we’ve never seen before: when Jack worked for the Time Agency. It’s so early that he hasn’t even taken the name Jack Harkness, and as a result we learn his real name: Javic Piotr Thane. The story even deals with the missing two years that Jack mentioned in his TV debut and then never came up again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any of these things particularly well.
Every story in this set has tried to focus on Jack as a character, and “Month 25” is no different as it shows us what Jack was like before we met him on television. The answer just isn’t very interesting: he’s arrogant, brash, somehow even more sexual, and self-obsessed to the point of narcissism. The story even throws in a future Jack for the sake of comparison – but makes a serious misstep by not really showing Javic taking any steps down the road to becoming Jack. Even at the end, when he has risked everything to save the day, he’s just as insufferable as he was at the beginning. Javic is rather one-note, to be honest; if not for John Barrowman’s boundless charisma, this might have been a boring listen.
As for the missing two years – the twenty-four months prior to the one in the title, presumably – there really isn’t much to it. Jack was used as an assassin by the Time Agency, who wiped his memory after every mission. I admit Adams is in a bind because we know from TV that Jack still doesn’t know what happened in those two years by the time he meets the Doctor and Rose, but the inevitable memory wipe at the story’s conclusion still drew an eye-roll from me. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what the point of this one is: it’s “The Adventures of Young Jack Harkness” with nothing to say beyond that. I suppose Javic’s plan to save the day is interesting? A disappointing end after such a strong start to this box set.
At the end of “The End of Time,” David Tennant’s final Doctor Who story as the lead actor, the tenth Doctor visits all of his old companions one last time before his regeneration. This includes Jack, freshly damaged from the events of “Children of Earth” – and the Doctor sets him up with Alonso Frame (Russell Tovey) from “Voyage of the Damned.” The third installment in The Lives of Captain Jack, “One Enchanted Evening” by James Goss, picks the story up from there: what happened after the Doctor left? Well, it’s not just an hour-long sex scene – they’re interrupted by an alien invasion.
I think the character work trips up a little bit in this story. While I’m not sure if “The End of Time” ever specifically confirmed that Jack was coming off “Children of Earth,” that’s clearly what we’re meant to think – and yet “One Enchanted Evening” makes virtually no mention of this. Jack doesn’t even seem particularly upset, and you’d think that there would be at least one reference to Ianto. The story is in part about moving on from tragedy, and that’s a legitimate angle to explore, but we see much more of Alonso’s pain from the Titanic incident than we ever do of Jack’s. The other problem is that the plot is threadbare: an almost comically evil alien invades the station and attempts to steal a giant diamond, and that’s it. This does nothing to help us understand Jack or Alonso, and while Katy Manning is delightfully over the top as Mother Nothing it’s difficult to understand how it all fits together. The ending is odd, too – Alonso gets some sort of catharsis out of the experience, but Jack just loses another person, which seems to be the exact opposite of the Doctor’s intent. This does not seem intentional.
In any case, the story is entertaining, Barrowman and Tovey are great, Manning is unrecognizably enjoyable, and the story moves along at quite a clip. But after the character focus of the first two stories in this set, “One Enchanted Evening” is something of a disappointment.
THE LIVES OF CAPTAIN JACK: WEDNESDAYS FOR BEGINNERS
Pairing up Jack Harkness and Jackie Tyler seems so natural, so obvious, that I was actually surprised to realize that the characters had only met once before, in “Journey’s End.” This is the main drawing point of “Wednesdays for Beginners” from James Goss, the second story in the set. The story is basically a two-hander between John Barrowman and Camille Coduri, which means that they spend a lot of time together – but it also means that Jackie spends most of the first half of the story talking to herself. Admittedly, she’s one of the best possible characters to do that, but it feels less like an exploration of Jackie’s scatterbrained personality and more like all the money ran out and they couldn’t afford a supporting cast.
That’s my only complaint with the story, though. Much like the first story, “Wednesdays for Beginners” focuses primarily on the characters, showing how much Jackie misses Rose yet how much she respects the Doctor, and then showing the ways in which Jack is and is not like the last Time Lord. He’s oddly prone to long-winded technical explanations here, but he lacks the Doctor’s preternatural ability to divine the solution to every problem. So we end up with the two characters working together, trying various solutions, succeeding and failing and building a rapport throughout. I liked how the plot tied into this, how Jackie walked right into the invaders’ trap because of her love for Rose and her trust in the Doctor. It’s entertaining and compelling, and the exact opposite of the “idiot plot” – it feels like we’re right back in the heart of the RTD era, and for me that’s quite a compliment.
Here’s an interesting idea for a spinoff set: stories about the life of Captain Jack Harkness outside of Torchwood. That’s “The Lives of Captain Jack,” and the first story in the set, “The Year After I Died” from Guy Adams, explores Jack’s life in the immediate aftermath of “The Parting of the Ways.” As mentioned in “Utopia,” Jack has no idea that Rose resurrected him – indeed, at this point he doesn’t even know that he is effectively immortal. All he knows is that he was cornered by Daleks, blacked out, and woke up later to find himself the only survivor of the attack. Adams takes an interesting approach to the character: this is not the brash, confident Jack we’re all used to. Instead, he’s cautious and even nervous, as he knows he was given a second chance at life and doesn’t want to lose it again. So he tries to avoid conflict, but like all Doctor Who heroes, he’s drawn into it whether he wants it or not.
In this case, the story takes a harsh anti-corporate message: in the months after the Dalek attack, wealthy outsiders swooped in to the ravaged Earth to loot the planet for resources. These resources include the people, who are taken away to have their organs harvested and their blood drained. A journalist investigates this, Jack gets involved, things go south, and soon he finds himself compelled to risk his life to save others. After a brief Tennant-like moment of doubt, he commits, dies, and revives in the usual way minutes later. It’s obvious at this point that there’s still a long way to go before Jack becomes the man we see in Torchwood, but Adams still presents a landmark moment in his character progression. It’s interesting, it’s written and performed well, and it fleshes out a character we already know. It’s a great example of spinoff media, in other words, even if the plot is a bit weak.
The third series of Jago & Litefoot closes just like the first two: with an Andy Lane script, this time entitled “Chronoclasm.” And while this story doesn’t feature the bad guy growing to immense size and smashing things up, it’s still somewhat muddled. The problems with time have reached boiling point, and the effects are seen in various ways: multiple Jagos running around, the unnecessary presence of Nikola Tesla, and even the resolution, which ties things back to the eventual destruction of Jago’s theater. We finally meet the mysterious Dr. Payne (Phillip Bretherton) and learn the motivation behind the time distortions, and while I’m pleased that Lane went for something more complex than simple megalomania, it’s hard to sympathize with the villain’s motivations when we haven’t been given any reason to. Still, Lane carefully ties everything together in a way that is much more satisfying than the previous two finales. The story also allows each of the regular characters a share of the spotlight, so there’s something here for every fan of the series. “Chronoclasm” is an uneven conclusion to an uneven series, but it’s still quite entertaining – and the cliffhanger, while feeling inevitable, has me interested for the next set. Recommended.
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