The Doll of Death (2008)

The third story of the third Companion Chronicles series sees Jo Grant return to the show for the first time in 30 years. Katy Manning played Jo Grant from January 2 1971 to June 23 1973 and is one of the best female companions in Doctor Who history. She just has that sort of aura about her and it might also have something to do with the time that she appeared in the show. Her dress sense as well as her urge to get involved in matters despite being told not to interfere by the Doctor. Even though Jon Pertwee only had three companions, Jo Grant was the best, she seemed to form the best bond as with Liz Shaw (Caroline John) was more cleverer and on the Doctor’s intelligence level and Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) just didn’t really seem to fit with Pertwee’s Doctor and really shined with Tom Baker’s Doctor. Elisabeth Sladen is still a very good companion but she only really suited Tom Baker's Doctor. The story was written by Marc Platt who makes his third contribution to the Companion Chronicles series and this also sees Lisa Bowerman direct her third CC story in a row.

I liked the idea that Jo had stuck with her principals and was still an environmentalist and still living with Cliff. You wish she had not gone off with the Welsh Hippie but had in fact either gone off with Benton or Yates. The story hinged on a toy shop and the actions of Mrs Killebrew who always had something to hide. The use of the idea of Retro causation is not something that I have ever heard of. Despite this lack of knowledge it didn’t stop me from enjoying certain elements of this story. The idea that things were running backwards was something that I struggled to try and understand but there was something that I found quite interesting. The cliffhanger was perhaps the best that has been done in this series because it had been building for sometime and the execution was bang on. Another point worth raising is the point of impersonations. Now normally they are not brilliant and actually in this story there not much better but then again Katy Manning isn’t an impressionist but what she does do is sound like Jo Grant did 30 years ago and also get the mannerisms of the Brigadier and the Doctor right.

Marc Platt is perhaps one of the best writers of Doctor Who. His stories are complex but unlike Alan Barnes who tends to writer complex stories, Platt manages to get enough elements to help the listener understand. The Doll of Death is not the best story to come from Marc Platt but its still a good effort. Lisa Bowerman does a really good job with this story. Despite the complex story, Bowerman keeps the story interesting with eerie sound effects and dramatic direction. Katy Manning is simply great as Jo Grant. I think that she has a really good voice and it is used to good effect in this story. She does the other roles really well and makes the story enjoyable. Jane Goddard is also very good as Mrs Killebrew, her character interacts with Jo very well and was a very strong and well written part of the story.

Overall this is a good story but not quite as good as other stories of this season. Theres enough for people like me who doesn’t like to complicated a story to happen to often. Its worth a listen even if your not a Marc Platt fan cause there are some really good things happening in this story.

Brotherhood of the Daleks (2008)

2008 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Cover Design (Alex Mallinson)

Brotherhood of the Daleks is the most complicated story that I have ever listened to. I have never felt so confused when listening to a story There have been complicated stories like The Chimes of Midnight but Brotherhood beats Chimes by miles. Going on Internet Forums I don’t think I can recall anyone who has understood it and even if they did whether it was on the first listen. This story was written by Script Editor Alan Barnes who has written such stories as Storm Warning, Zagreus & The Girl Who Never Was so when it was announced he was writing this story you knew you were getting something really good. This is the first release featuring the Daleks in the regular releases since last March’s Renaissance of the Daleks. Its quite good that they limit the Dalek stories to one a year because I think that otherwise it would be overkill.

This story is the third to feature the Sixth Doctor and Charley storyline in which the Doctor is trying to figure Charley out and what she knows that the Doctor doesn’t. There was certainly a hope from me that there would be something that might slip out from Charley. As the story progresses you think that you know that the Doctor & Charley are on Spirodon which is where the Third Doctor and Jo Grant went in the 1973 story Planet of the Daleks. Just when you think the adventure is going to take place on this planet you learn that all is not what it seems and as the story progresses you get further confused and you realise that the Daleks are trying to understand the word and throughout this story I was desperate to find out what the word was. When the word was revealed I must admit it was the last word I was expecting. Folkestone isn’t perhaps the most magical world but it ties in with Charley who was leaving Folkestone when she boarded on the R101 back in Storm Warning. The idea that Thals have been planted into Daleks is a good one and it would be nice to see that explored in future stories. They might sound differently to normal Daleks but that’s good. Another moment that I liked was when Charley revealed that she was a Dalek replicant. I thought that was a brilliant cliffhanger and it made some sense as to the riddle of why the Eighth Doctor doesn’t remember any adventures the Sixth Doctor had and I was disappointed when I discovered that this wasn’t the case. But then after listening to it I thought that it was quite a good choice not giving too much away now because there is potential to this storyline.

Colin Baker and India Fisher worked very well and they did the best they could with this complicated script but even in the Extras they admitted to not being 100% clear on the plot. Colin Baker is on good form in this story which is not exactly a surprise and it shows what a good actor he is because he helps make the story bearable and also you want to get to the end of the Charley mystery. India Fisher is also putting in some of her best performances since she first appeared as a regular companion in 2001. When I thought that she was in fact a Dalek replicant after all these years it was a genuine shock and Fisher played this well. You didn’t know just who side she was on is and that’s a testament to Fisher’s acting. Of all the guest stars it is Michael Cochrane was the best. Most Doctor Who fans will remember Cochrane when he appeared in the 1989 Seventh Doctor story Ghostlight and then he also appeared in the 2006 Seventh Doctor story No Man’s Land. His voice works very on audio and hopefully he will do more of these stories in future. He played Murgat which as I was listening to the story just thought that he was a plant man that was in a glass scuba diving suit type thing which is quite a strange thought. Ultimately the character was a very well written and a very well acted character that interacted very well with the main characters.

Alan Barnes has really written a very clever, very multi layered, very complex story which only the very smart of Doctor Who fans will really understand it. Barnes doesn’t compromise for fans that aren’t as smart and part of me thinks that this is a very poor attitude to have because it means that a certain part of fandom will be left out because they don’t understand but then part of me thinks that this is great because at least you know your not going to get a story that hasn’t got 100% of Barnes’s enthusiasm. Nicholas Briggs has directed this story and as usual you get a nice well paced story and even despite the confusing plot I found the pace of it was always consistent. I think at time it needed to be slowed down to help some of the more confusing plot points sink in but overall his directing is good. He did do a good job with the Dalek voices as usual and its hard to believe that there was a time when he wasn’t doing them but amazingly we were Brigg-less concerning the voices.

This story will need to be listened to several times to even understand half of it. Needless to say that curiosity gets you through these stories and that is what I liked about this story cause I was thinking what was going on. After listening to it once I have no idea about the exact plot points so that is why it is the least successful of the three stories that have the Sixth Doctor and Charley. I think that because expectation is growing as time goes on anything that doesn’t quite match the proceeding story is going to be viewed as a letdown which is a shame because with a few tweaks it quite possibly could have kept the trend going.

Live 34 (2005)

Live 34 is the most unique play that has been done in Doctor Who. This story is the first contribution from James Parsons and Andrew Stirling-Brown. It sees the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex try and infiltrate a Colony and investigate the dealings of their leader, Premier Jaeger. This story is quite unique because it is told in the form of a genuine radio broadcast. For the only time in the shows history there is no theme tune. All you get is static with a few snippets of sound including the Seventh Doctor theme.

What is stranger is that we don’t hear from Ace until Part 2 and we don’t hear from Hex until Part 3. The first we hear from the Doctor is that he is somehow a leader of the FDP (Freedom and Democracy Party). Its not exactly original but it suits the way that the Seventh Doctor has been played over the last few years. We learn very quickly that Premier Jaeger is someone with a dodgy attitude. The fact that he has delayed elections for five years shows that he is someone who is afraid of people telling him what they think of him. The Doctor increasingly becomes a target for Pro-Jaeger supporters. At one point we are led to believe that he is dead, though that is just a lie because it was just to make Jaeger think he is dead. The companions are given perhaps the best material that they have ever had. Hex’s story in this is that he is a paramedic which is near what he was like back in The Harvest in 2004. He teams up with Charlotte Singh and the two seem to have a nice chemistry. This is part of the Live With series and as this segment reaches it’s climax we discover that one of the people they visit Gina. Hex investigates the hole that is in her living room and when they go down that it contains bones and it turns out that it is a mass grave. Soon after the transmission is cut. Ace’s story is perhaps the most intriguing. In this story she gets the title The Rebel Queen which is quite apt. Her story is told in Wareing’s World. The build up to her first involvement in the story is a slow burner. The reporter is led through a series of mysterious requests but soon encounters The Rebel Queen. When the interview between Wareing and Ace gets started we learn what the planet was like to begin with and it sounds a really nice place. What we also learn is that Ace bombed some buildings which is a truly shocking thing for a companion of someone like the Doctor to do. Even though the buildings were thought to be empty and in a state of disrepair it still seems like a totally strange thing to do. The revelation at the end of part four is totally amazing. We learn that Premier Jaeger is not in fact the real Jaeger. The story was that the real Jaeger contracted a minor disease and that fearing he would be unelectable got someone who looked like him and after some changes to his appearance, this guy would become the face of Premier Jaeger but the real one would work away from the public eye. Soon the fake Jaeger slowly became corrupt and put his friends in positions of power and fearing that with limiting resources and power failures he would soon be out of office and so forced terrorist attacks to delay elections. It was a brilliant build up and the execution of the story was superb.

Sylvester McCoy puts in his best performance to date. His plays the role of Resident Doctor with the realism of a politician. You can sense that he is working hard trying to defend the actions of the FDP whilst condoning the actions of the bombing. There is a question as to whether the Doctor knows that Ace did the bombings but that is never made clear. The announcement that the Doctor is dead comes as a surprise because we all know that the star of the show never dies (well not until the TV Movie) but you know he is up to something and then comes the big reveal which he revels in. Sophie Aldred performs well as the Rebel Queen. Her story had more of a story and she played the role very well. Her acting in episode four had me feeling a little uncomfortable because you could imagine what she went through at the hands of the security forces. Philip Olivier is very good as Hex. This is perhaps his best story since he joined the series. The problem with the Hex character is that unless he has something relevant to his talents then he is just someone who hangs around the Doctor and Ace. His story was the best of the three and that was because of the revelation that the house he is visiting is a mass grave. Olivier shows what he can really do when he is given the right script.

William Hoyland was the star of the show as Premier Jaeger. He was you typical Politian. He pretended that he was for the people but you knew pretty early on that something was up. The truth was denied pretty well and you knew that this Politian exists in the real world and not just in Colony 34. Andrew Collins was also very good as Drew Shahan. Collins has regularly appeared on Doctor Who Confidential and so you knew he was a fan and he plays the DJ very well and gives the perfect employee role when he has to apologise for the comments made in the programs. Zehra Naqvi puts in a great performance as Charlotte Singh. She plays the sort of journalists who work on a local newspaper or on local tv. She is trying to come across as someone who is going places but is struggling with small stories. The character gets her dues though in part four when the truth is made public.

Duncan Wiseby is also very good as Ryan Wareing and his programme was very tense and was enjoyable throughout. Wiseby does the same style of wannabe bigshot journalist that Naqvi puts in but seems to do a better job at it. Joy Elias-Rilwan is good as Lula who we learn has an emotional edge. With the loss of her brother. Her character is the deputy to Ace and then it turns out that she betrayed Ace. She is a character seems to be a likeable one but then turns out to be one that the listener dislikes and Elias-Rilwan plays well. Ann Bryson is the last of the guest stars as Gina Grewal. She is a nice character that serves her purpose and Grewal does well to create the impression she is a lonely old lady who just listens to the radio for entertainment.

Andrew Stirling-Brown and James Parsons have written a truly superb story that has all the elements that are needed for a totally original story. All the characters are well copied from real life and you feel like you are listening to real politicians and real protestors. Gary Russell does a superb job as director and perhaps does his best work for quite sometime. He manages to keep the intrigue going and by using some good music he creates an impression that Colony 34 is a truly depressing place and after the Doctor and co have done their thing the Colony will be a better place.

Overall there is nothing more than fantastic that can be said about this story. I honestly can’t think of a single thing that is wrong with this story and that’s rare in Doctor Who. I would love for Big Finish to do something like this in the future. Good stuff from everyone involved.

Time Reef (2008)

Time Reef is the concluding part in the Thomas Brewster story arc. This story has the responsibility of tying up the story strands in a satisfactory way and that responsibility falls upon the mighty pen of Ghostlight writer Marc Platt. Marc Platt has really clocked up his Doctor Who stories recently. In the last 16 months he has released six audio plays (including this one). Valhalla was a seventh Doctor story which was a mixed play and wasn’t brilliant partly because it didn’t seem to have much of a fast enough pace to it which was a shame really. The Skull of Sobek was too complicated and was the weaker of the Eighth Doctor’s second series. I think the plot to it was quite clever it was just in the execution of the story. The next contribution was Mother Russia was a Companion Chronicles story which was a lot better and highly enjoyable. It wasn’t because it had Peter Purves as Steven Taylor but because the story was relatively simple and it was well directed. His third contribution to the Companion Chronicles series was The Doll of Death and that was another complex story that worked quite well but didn’t quite have the effect that Mother Russia had.

For the plot that Platt put into this story it was just the right length, I think four parts would have resulted in a lot more padding which would have given Platt an opportunity to include some scientific mumbo-jumbo that would have ruined it. The first half of Part One was absolutely fantastic, the dramatic scenes in the TARDIS and the relationship between the Doctor and Brewster were enjoyable. Any scene that is set inside the TARDIS is also a great one for me because not enough stories have long enough or enough scenes set there. I would love it for them to do just one story purely set inside the TARDIS. Peter Davison was great as a frustrated Doctor, it sort of mirrored his relationship with Adric which obviously ended in tragedy and that left the Doctor feeling sad. You do think that the reason that the reason the Doctor was like this to Brewster was because of his fear of Brewster turning into another Adric. I found the moment when the inhabitants thought that Brewster was the Doctor and the Davison was ‘the blonde one’ was very funny though slightly predictable.

John Picard was very good in this story, he has played Thomas Brewster well and it was good thinking of casting Picard in the role. Despite starring in the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks he showed that he can diversify into Science Fiction. There was always the fear that because he is in a popular show like Hollyoaks that he may not take the role of Brewster seriously but that isn’t the case. He has always put his best effort into the stories that he has appeared in. The idea of him stealing the TARDIS and having adventures whilst the Doctor and Nyssa were taking part in the events of The Boy That Time Forgot was something that helped create this whole scenario and make it something different. Other characters in this story were all very well written and none were what you could class as wasteful. Nicholas Farrell was very good as Gammades as was Beth Chalmers who played the very seductive sounding Vuyoki. The scenes that she had with Brewster were very enjoyable and you feel that the slightly primitive Brewster would be embarrassed by such as character. Sean Connolly was also a good actor in this story as Lucor.

The Cliffhanger in this story was the best so far this year in all Doctor Who stories. In the past few stories the cliffhangers have been disappointing and have been anti-climatic before the next episode began. I don’t know why but they just didn’t really grab me and I thought that it was a real shame. The second cliffhanger was the best because it had the music and it had the actors sounding really tense. After two mediocre Marc Platt stories it was back to business for him and shows what a great author he has been to the Big Finish series. He has the tendency like Alan Barnes to write complex stories which can at times be a bit of hit and miss. Barnaby Edwards did a really good job in directing this three part story and that was because he managed to maintain interest and the pace was always consistent. Edwards is perhaps one of the best directors that Big Finish have and you know that when his name appears in the credits then you know that at least if the story is poor then its not because of the direction (well not in this case anyway!).

Now when it comes to the single stories its safe to say that they have been poor in recent months and whenever I have heard that they are doing a ‘three plus one’ release I always prepare myself for the worst because the single part stories really let a release down. In fact out of all the single parters that they have done only Urban Myths which was in Exotron (release 95) was the best one but Perfect World is now the best. This story wasn’t written by Marc Platt, it was written by James Swallow who wrote The Haunting of Thomas Brewster was the right choice to write Brewster’s exit. The idea that a simple sentence changed the whole into a nice Bunny Rabbit happy hippy world was something that could have lasted two or three episodes but worked for this 25 minute story.

This story was a fitting end to the Brewster story arc. The Brewster character was sent off in a dignified way which leaves the listener thinking of Brewster in the future in a positive way. This single story shows that Big Finish seem to be getting to grips with what sort of stories can be told in 25 minutes. The November release Forty Five will compose of 25 minute single stories so I am more confident of this release than I was before I heard Time Reef. Though after a half dozen releases and only two of them being any good it not the best record to have but it can only improve.