2.1 Beachhead by Nicholas Briggs
In an attempt to recharge his batteries after his confrontation with the Eleven, the Doctor takes Liv and Helen to the sleepy English seaside village of Stegmoor. But they find the village in turmoil and, to make matters worse, their arrival uncovers a mystery from the Doctor’s past which threatens the future safety of the planet. Can the Doctor prevent the Voord from invading Earth? And more importantly why have they come in the first place?
2.2 Scenes from Her Life by John Dorney
Investigating the appearance of the Voord on Earth, the Doctor, Liv and Helen follow a trail which takes them to the other side of the universe. There they discover a mysterious and almost deserted gothic city lost in space and time, in which the grotesque inhabitants are conducting a vile and inhumane experiment. The Doctor and his companions must hurry to save the lives of those in danger before the experiment is a success and the unimaginable consequences become all too real.
2.3 The Gift by Marc Platt
The TARDIS deposits its crew on Earth in San Francisco, 1906. There they find an actor-manager desperate to stage his definitive production of King Lear. But a real storm is headed their way when he becomes the possessor of a mysterious psychic ‘Gift’ which is hungry for power and intent on wreaking havoc and destruction. But exposure to so much psychic activity has the Doctor becoming increasingly erratic. Can he battle his demons and save the world?
2.4 The Sonomancer by Matt Fitton
On the other side of the galaxy a mining company is exploiting the already unstable planet of Syra for every precious mineral it contains. River Song is attempting to save the native people. She needs the Doctor’s help, but she also knows he mustn’t yet discover her true identity. The final confrontation sees the Doctor once again face his enemy the Eleven in an attempt to prevent the destruction of Syra and the genocide of its inhabitants.
DOOM COALITION: BEACHHEAD
The first Doom Coalition set from Big Finish was refreshing: while it attempted to establish another plot arc for Paul McGann’s eighth Doctor, it was free of many of the more tedious elements of the Dark Eyes series. If anything, it was a bit too light on arc – after four hours of audio drama, there’s absolutely nothing to indicate why the range is called Doom Coalition! Still, I was optimistic for the second set, and then I saw the first story credited to Nicholas Briggs, which dampened my enthusiasm somewhat.
That story, “Beachhead,” seems to be almost entirely standalone, and involves an interesting buildup followed by an utterly disappointing resolution. We’re definitely in Briggs territory – a remote village populated by regional accents – but the first half of the story builds a genuinely effective sense of unease. Mysterious floods are destroying the community, and the Doctor, Liv, and Helen end up in the middle of it. But the Doctor is haunted by decisions made several lifetimes ago, as well as the apparent history he has with local innkeeper Phillipa Gregson (Julia Hills). And when Liv and local girl Matilda (Rebecca Night) find an unconscious alien, things get increasingly uneasy. At this point I was excited to learn what would happen next. So what went wrong?
To start with, Briggs decides to use the Voord as the villains of the piece. I have no idea why: there is absolutely nothing distinguishing about the Voord in this story, as they are presented as one-dimensional villainous caricatures. Why not take some continuity from “Domain of the Voord” and work it into the script? Andrew Smith had some interesting ideas there, if nothing else. And there’s no subtlety here, either; their world was destroyed and now they want to conquer Earth. None of the Voord we meet have any desires other than to kill everyone and take over – they’re basically a plot device, which is both poor writing and a waste of a continuity reference. The resolution is unintentionally hilarious, though – the police strike team rolls up and kills the Voord! Is this the first time in Doctor Who history that humanity has defended itself without the Doctor later decrying the violence? Probably not, but I still laughed.
The other major plot element is similar to “Timelash” – talk about a story you want to emulate, right? – in how we learn that the Doctor has been here before. Briggs sets up an interesting conflict: what must have seemed like an insignificant UNIT mission ended up changing the face of a community for a generation, and now the Doctor must deal with the fallout. And it seems as though this fallout is quite serious, to the point that Phillipa holds the Doctor at gunpoint, furious over the fate of her late husband. But then the Voord attack, and all is forgotten, nicely papered over by the conclusion. This should have been the focal point of the entire story: we should have followed the Doctor as he first realized and then atoned for his past mistakes, instead of putting small parts of that idea into a generic action epic with faceless bad guys. I understand this is a Briggs story, and that nowadays he prioritizes nostalgia above everything else, including good storytelling, but “Beachhead” could easily have been so much better. The design is convincing, the direction is capable, and, as usual with Briggs scripts, there’s nothing especially bad about it… but there’s nothing making me want to tune in “next week,” either. What happened to the planet of the Voord? Who cares?
5/10
DOOM COALITION: SCENES FROM HER LIFE
John Dorney, one of the most reliable of Big Finish’s newer crop of writers, delivers “Scenes from Her Life” as the second installment of Doom Coalition 2. Tasked primarily with introducing a new recurring villain, it accomplishes this goal by telling a story with a strong emotional foundation and some fantastic imagery.
Dorney is usually good for at least one great image or revelation per script, and here he wonders what a TARDIS would look like without its outer shell in place. The answer is a Gothic castle lookalike hanging in the time vortex – it’s a fairy-tale image but one that works rather well with what we know about TARDIS interiors. And so the inhabitants of this “naked” TARDIS think they’re living in a castle and adapt themselves correspondingly. There are a few parallels here to “The Doctor’s Wife,” including the bizarre, dreamlike setting and the grotesques populating the supporting cast. And while it’s unfair to compare Dorney to Neil Gaiman, one of the masters of this genre, “Scenes from Her Life” comes off rather well by comparison. My only complaint is that Stormblood (Vincent Franklin) and Sepulchra (Jacqueline King) were too over the top, though admittedly that’s an issue I have with most stories like this.
On the other hand, Caleera (Emma Cunniffe) gets a fantastic amount of development. Interspersed through the story are, well, scenes from her life, showing her journey through the Time Lord Academy, how she developed advanced telepathic abilities, and how the Time Lords acted to suppress these abilities. Dorney smartly frames this within the Time Lords’ desire not to interfere: by extension, “you’re just like everyone else” is an ideal description to them. So why would she even want to keep her abilities? But we know that she longs to be different, to stand out – it’s a similar thought process to the one that drove the Doctor from Gallifrey but with a much different conclusion. After she escapes, her vengeance is sadly predictable – but as she flees into the vortex, it’s hard to say where she’ll wind up. The eventual destination is disappointing, but that’s not part of Dorney’s script.
“Scenes from Her Life” also provides some much-needed development to Helen, a character who has otherwise felt pretty generic to this point. “Compassionate” is hardly the most intriguing character trait, but at least it’s distinguishable. Caleera plays Helen’s insecurities like a musical instrument, correctly reading her desire to be special and her frustration at being held back by the male-dominated museum community. Her desire to free Caleera is naïve, yes, but it’s totally understandable given her past. And the Doctor thoroughly understands, maintaining throughout that it was ultimately his decision to push the button. Neither Liv nor the Doctor get much to do in this story – mostly they wander around the “castle” until Caleera’s imprisonment is discovered. But it works because it puts Helen front and center, planting some seeds that future writers will hopefully encourage into growth.
Overall, “Scenes from Her Life” is a strong story that lays the groundwork for interesting future material. We’ll see what happens in that future material, but this bodes well.
8/10
DOOM COALITION: THE GIFT
Marc Platt is quite well-known among Doctor Who authors for his high-concept stories, and “The Gift” is the most high-concept he’s been in quite some time. The TARDIS crew pursues Caleera to the eve of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, where a cunning trap awaits the Doctor: a telepathic “gift” passed from person to person with the power to amplify the earthquake and destroy the entire city, if not the Earth itself.
I’m not a fan of “crazy” acting in general, especially on audio, so “The Gift” was fighting an uphill battle with me from the start. Much of this comes from local eccentric Sam (Cory English), someone who has been irreversibly affected by the “Gift” and whose insanity affects his ability to help. I did enjoy how the Doctor turned to Sam for a haircut to clear his mind, and more so how that actually worked – the idea of this Doctor showing different haircuts at different points of the story is a good one, and easy to communicate on audio. But then you’ve got Charles Virgil McLean (James Jordan), who is basically a less interesting, American Henry Gordon Jago, and whose arrogance and incompetence make him rather unsympathetic. He’s fine in the beginning, but his performance after obtaining the “Gift” grated on me.
So we follow the “Gift” as it moves from person to person, from Sam to Mexican gambler Pepé Gonzalez (Paul Marc Davis… by the way, was “Pepé Gonzalez a tribute to the Vampirella artist or just the best Mexican name they could come up with?) to McLean to the Doctor himself. And we learn that Caleera is behind the whole thing, and that the Doctor possessing the “Gift” is the final step of her plan to destroy the Earth. Of course the Doctor saves the day, but let’s talk about Caleera – in “Scenes from Her Life,” she was introduced as a character with some considerable depth, one who was rejected by her fellow Time Lords as too different. But here, she’s a generic, cackling megalomaniac. Why does she want to destroy the Earth? I’m not entirely sure, other than it’s something a crazy person would want to do. Why take a character with such potential and reduce her to this?
Speaking of wasted characters, Helen doesn’t really get to do much in this story after her turn on center stage in the last one. There’s an entire subplot about a mobster, Aldo Deluca (Enzo Squillino, Jr.), who takes Helen prisoner at some point, but it goes nowhere and adds nothing to the story. Do we really need padding like this in stories that run less than an hour?
When the earthquake comes, the realization is excellent. The sound design from Benji Clifford deserves special mention as it communicates the scale and horror of the disaster without ever resorting to incomprehensible loud noises. There’s not much else to the scene, sadly – Liv gets trapped in a collapsed building, the Doctor saves her with the “Gift” – but the design work is an example of Big Finish at its best.
Overall, “The Gift” is a solid entry in the Doom Coalition series. A large number of minor annoyances keep it from anything more than an above average rating, but there’s enough intrigue to hold the attention and it’s nice to see Marc Platt telling an off-kilter story once again.
6/10
DOOM COALITION: THE SONOMANCER
So here we are, eight hours and two box sets into the Doom Coalition series, and we still haven’t heard the words “Doom Coalition” or indeed much of any hint about what this Coalition might be or what its goals are. As good as some of the individual stories have been, if someone asked me right now what the Doom Coalition series is about, I wouldn’t have any idea. The fourth and final story in this set, Matt Fitton’s “The Sonomancer,” provides a couple of hints in that direction, but unfortunately those hints don’t bode well for an impressive revelation.
I mentioned this briefly in my review of “The Gift,” but this is the second story in a row where they’ve reduced Caleera to a generic villain obsessed with destroying everything. We receive confirmation in this story that she’s working with the Eleven, but their plan doesn’t seem to amount to anything more than “blow a bunch of stuff up.” Is this what the Doom Coalition is going to be? A collection of original villains teaming up to accomplish something doom-related? If so, I hope it goes somewhere more interesting. Right now you’ve got the Eleven, a character with an interesting backstory reduced to a cackling megalomaniac, and Caleera – sorry, the “Sonomancer” – a character with an interesting backstory reduced to a cackling megalomaniac. Their relationship is exactly what you’d expect from two supervillains thrown together: disagreeable and combative. We sure forgot about all that “my love” stuff from “Scenes from Her Life” in a hurry, didn’t we?
River Song is also in this story for some reason. This isn’t a complaint, really – I like the character and I like Alex Kingston – but it feels like they’ve thrown her in because they have the license instead of anything story-related. Between this and “The Diary of River Song,” we’re rapidly learning something frustrating about her involvement in these stories: she can’t actually meet the Doctor, so each story has to invent an excuse for them not to meet. In the final part of “Diary,” they communicated solely via communicator; here, River only meets Helen and stays out of the Doctor’s view. While I’m certainly not arguing that River should be defined by her relationship with the Doctor – in fact, I like seeing stories where she isn’t – that relationship is still an appealing part of the character and I’d like to see more of it. I suppose we’re just waiting for the inevitable moment where she drugs Colin Baker and gives him amnesia, right?
(Also, as an aside, how does River even get to interact with pre-War Doctors? It’s quite clearly established in the TV series that the Time Lords are inaccessible, but River can just drop in on previous Doctors or other Time Lords with impunity? Can, say, Peter Capaldi fly back and visit Romana? If so, why hasn’t he? If not, why can River do it?)
The biggest problem with “The Sonomancer” is that it’s so empty. Nothing much happens – yes, it’s an action epic, with lots of running around and things exploding, but we don’t learn anything about the characters or what they want. Liv gets some great scenes fighting the Eleven – I enjoyed the protracted robot suit battle – but all we get out of the Eleven is more insanity and “Silence, all of you!” That doesn’t bode well, since Fitton wrote his introductory story – even his creator can’t figure out anything interesting to do with him? Uh oh. Helen spends most of the story as River’s companion, but all we get from that is Helen promising never to tell the Doctor who “Melody Malone” really was. Is this going to pay off in the future or is Helen actually going to take this secret to her grave? In addition to the Eleven and the Sonomancer, there’s also an evil capitalist giant bear (Derek Ezenagu) who adds nothing to the story apart from sloppy political commentary. Nothing more to say about that.
“The Sonomancer” is a letdown. “Scenes from Her Life” and “The Gift” had their problems but they seemed to be building toward something interesting. “The Sonomancer” is not that. It’s an action epic that doesn’t make a lot of sense populated by ill-defined characters and crowbars River Song into the plot for no apparent reason. Where are these stories going and why? Shouldn’t we have some sort of answer to that question after eight hours?
Sigh.
5/10