December 31, 2007

Old Soldiers (2007)

The third part of the companion chronicles sees Nicholas Courtney reprise his role for the first time in 19 years. The one thing that strikes me is how good his voice is, he sounds nothing like the Brigadier from the 1970’s but even so it is a nice voice and is easy to listen to like Tom Baker’s when he is narrating Little Britain. James Swallow has written this story and his previous contribution to the Doctor Who range was the 2005 story Singularity which was a slighltly dull adventure so I had a slight hesitation when I started to listen to it. The first thing that I noticed was the chronological setting of the story, it was set straight after the 1970 story ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ which made it feel like a proper adventure.

The main problem I have with this story is that it seemed to really lack a proper menace. I found myself really struggling to enjoy this apart from Courtney. In fact Nicholas Courtney was the best thing in this story as it feels like he is telling the story from experience and his voice works well on audio and should be encouraged to do more Big Finish stories in the future. Swallow’s story was not terrible but compared to Mother Russia and Helicon Prime which were fantastic stories this one is the weakest of the series so far.

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