Now the stage plays were something of a known unknown to quote a certain US Defence Secretary. I had heard there were some but nothing beyond that. The only questions that were in my mind were 1) Would a stage play work on radio and 2) Why did it take so long for someone to come up with the idea? The first release is The Ultimate Adventure and is quite unique for several reasons. First of all is that it has Colin Baker as the Doctor, now Baker starred in the stage version back in 1989 after he took over from Jon Pertwee. Secondly we have David Banks who played the Cyber Leader in a few of the classic stories but most notably we have both Dalek and Cybermen in the same adventure. It was like Army of Ghosts & Doomsday only 17 years earlier.
This play was written by former Script Editor Terrance Dicks who worked on the classic series from 1968 until 1974 and contributed as a writer afterwards and also worked on the majority of the Target Novels. I really didn’t know what to expect, I knew that it wasn’t going to be quite like a regular release. I downloaded The Ultimate Adventure from the Big Finish website and listened to it and as I did notice quite early on is how unlike normal plays it sounded like and by that I mean how it just didn’t have the same feel as The Reaping or Catch 1782 for example. The scene where the Doctor and Jason meet Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street was quite possibly the strangest scene that I have ever heard from Big Finish.
Character wise it was all well constructed Colin Baker put in a solid performance as the Doctor. Despite it not being amongst his finest work, he doesn’t take things to seriously and treats it as a jolly adventure told in a different way. It’s a shame he doesn’t sing in this story as he can hold a tune which he showed in Doctor Who and the Pirates (release 43) back in 2003. Nadine Cox who did the voice of Margaret Thatcher did an OK job but I have heard better. I don’t know whether she is a proper impersonator but if not then I suppose she did an ok job considering. Noel Sullivan who I just discovered was in the pop band Hear’Say was good as Frenchman Jason. It was a slightly stereotypical accent from Sullivan but in the end it didn’t really matter as it wasn’t a story to be compared to a proper main range play. He played the character very well as fitted into the one-off companion role very well. Claire Huckle was also good as Crystal it was a good character which bordered on the annoying at times but managed to hold back. David Banks was very good as Karl, he played the Cyber-Leader in the 1980’s and so it was refreshing to see him play something else, quite like Terry Molloy not playing Davros in Kingdom of Silver. It was also nice that he played the same role he did on stage as it was a nice bit of continuity. The role of Karl was a nice strong one that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bond film. Other characters and actors that were very good in the role included Bryan Pilkington who played the Nightclub MC and Derek Carlyle who played the Envoy and also Zog. Also but by no means least there is of course Nicholas Briggs who did the voices of both the Cybermen and The Daleks (it’s a law which was passed in the House of Commons).
What I quite liked the most was the relationship between the Daleks and the Cybermen. What I was disappointed with in the 2006 two-parter TV series Army of Ghosts/Doomsday was how the Daleks and Cybermen didn’t try and forge an alliance but instead went against each other. It was a wasted opportunity that could have made those two episodes the benchmark for future series finale’s. In this story they were allies but there was still that underlying tension that you often feel when you hear of two rival political parties working together, you know that it’ll end in disaster which is really what you would want instead of them blowing the hell out of each other within seconds of meeting each other. The first act ends with a rather limp and weak ending but that’s not really a problem because its not a normal Doctor Who story and the normal rules of cliffhangers goes out of the TARDIS window in these sort of stories. Act 2 has a faster pace and that where the story really comes into its own. The moment where the Doctor reveals the conversation that he had with the Emperor Dalek to the Cybermen and the mercenaries was totally unexpected and yet turn the whole dynamic of the story. For those who saw the stage play it perhaps wasn’t such a surprise but for those like me who didn’t know anything about it then it was a nice twist.
The songs in this story were good, considering that with it being a musical stage play it was important for the songs to be enjoyable and they were on the whole. The first song was perhaps the best, it had a cheesy 80’s tune but it was still the best out of the three. The one with Crystal and Jason was also nice and it helped to create a positive view for a Crystal/Jason relationship. I think the tone that this play set was helped by with the songs. Overall, this was an enjoyable story and whilst it is not up to the same standard that the regular releases are it is still worth listening if you are ever feeling down and need pepping up.
Terrance Dicks wrote the original stage play and also wrote the audio version and that’s why it works so well. Even though Dicks has a limited contribution rate to the Big Finish series he manages to keep the story ticking over with enough going and seems to fit the action around the songs. Jason Haigh-Ellery did perhaps his best turn as Director for this story. He really kept the who thing interesting and it never became dull of lacklustre.
This is a gem of a story. Not to be taken seriously what it does do is give Doctor Who fans who want something a bit different from your run of the mill adventure that we all know and love and give us something that we could stick on the MP3 player on a Sunday afternoon and get lost in a battle with Daleks and Cybermen.
Top stuff.
This play was written by former Script Editor Terrance Dicks who worked on the classic series from 1968 until 1974 and contributed as a writer afterwards and also worked on the majority of the Target Novels. I really didn’t know what to expect, I knew that it wasn’t going to be quite like a regular release. I downloaded The Ultimate Adventure from the Big Finish website and listened to it and as I did notice quite early on is how unlike normal plays it sounded like and by that I mean how it just didn’t have the same feel as The Reaping or Catch 1782 for example. The scene where the Doctor and Jason meet Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street was quite possibly the strangest scene that I have ever heard from Big Finish.
Character wise it was all well constructed Colin Baker put in a solid performance as the Doctor. Despite it not being amongst his finest work, he doesn’t take things to seriously and treats it as a jolly adventure told in a different way. It’s a shame he doesn’t sing in this story as he can hold a tune which he showed in Doctor Who and the Pirates (release 43) back in 2003. Nadine Cox who did the voice of Margaret Thatcher did an OK job but I have heard better. I don’t know whether she is a proper impersonator but if not then I suppose she did an ok job considering. Noel Sullivan who I just discovered was in the pop band Hear’Say was good as Frenchman Jason. It was a slightly stereotypical accent from Sullivan but in the end it didn’t really matter as it wasn’t a story to be compared to a proper main range play. He played the character very well as fitted into the one-off companion role very well. Claire Huckle was also good as Crystal it was a good character which bordered on the annoying at times but managed to hold back. David Banks was very good as Karl, he played the Cyber-Leader in the 1980’s and so it was refreshing to see him play something else, quite like Terry Molloy not playing Davros in Kingdom of Silver. It was also nice that he played the same role he did on stage as it was a nice bit of continuity. The role of Karl was a nice strong one that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bond film. Other characters and actors that were very good in the role included Bryan Pilkington who played the Nightclub MC and Derek Carlyle who played the Envoy and also Zog. Also but by no means least there is of course Nicholas Briggs who did the voices of both the Cybermen and The Daleks (it’s a law which was passed in the House of Commons).
What I quite liked the most was the relationship between the Daleks and the Cybermen. What I was disappointed with in the 2006 two-parter TV series Army of Ghosts/Doomsday was how the Daleks and Cybermen didn’t try and forge an alliance but instead went against each other. It was a wasted opportunity that could have made those two episodes the benchmark for future series finale’s. In this story they were allies but there was still that underlying tension that you often feel when you hear of two rival political parties working together, you know that it’ll end in disaster which is really what you would want instead of them blowing the hell out of each other within seconds of meeting each other. The first act ends with a rather limp and weak ending but that’s not really a problem because its not a normal Doctor Who story and the normal rules of cliffhangers goes out of the TARDIS window in these sort of stories. Act 2 has a faster pace and that where the story really comes into its own. The moment where the Doctor reveals the conversation that he had with the Emperor Dalek to the Cybermen and the mercenaries was totally unexpected and yet turn the whole dynamic of the story. For those who saw the stage play it perhaps wasn’t such a surprise but for those like me who didn’t know anything about it then it was a nice twist.
The songs in this story were good, considering that with it being a musical stage play it was important for the songs to be enjoyable and they were on the whole. The first song was perhaps the best, it had a cheesy 80’s tune but it was still the best out of the three. The one with Crystal and Jason was also nice and it helped to create a positive view for a Crystal/Jason relationship. I think the tone that this play set was helped by with the songs. Overall, this was an enjoyable story and whilst it is not up to the same standard that the regular releases are it is still worth listening if you are ever feeling down and need pepping up.
Terrance Dicks wrote the original stage play and also wrote the audio version and that’s why it works so well. Even though Dicks has a limited contribution rate to the Big Finish series he manages to keep the story ticking over with enough going and seems to fit the action around the songs. Jason Haigh-Ellery did perhaps his best turn as Director for this story. He really kept the who thing interesting and it never became dull of lacklustre.
This is a gem of a story. Not to be taken seriously what it does do is give Doctor Who fans who want something a bit different from your run of the mill adventure that we all know and love and give us something that we could stick on the MP3 player on a Sunday afternoon and get lost in a battle with Daleks and Cybermen.
Top stuff.
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