Hothouse (2009)

The second story of this third series of Eighth Doctor & Lucie stories follows on from a very strange Orbis. Hothouse in my mind is the proper start of the third series for the Eighth Doctor & Lucie. Hothouse has a very strong environmental message and which is evident but doesn’t smother you and distract from the story. This story is written by Jonathan Morris who has contributed several stories to Doctor Who especially the second series story Max Warp. The Krynoids made their only appearance in Doctor Who in the 1976 story The Seeds of Doom. This story isn’t my favourite one and I don’t see why its so popular with everyone, that said the Krynoids are an interesting creation and I was really excited when it was announced that they were going to be returning.

The beginning of this story starts off with a realistic news report which has a barrage of clippings from other reports and at the end we are left with the surprising statement from Lucie Miller which then leads into the theme tune. We don’t know whether the Doctor is involved with Lucie who seems to have gone on the wild side and become an eco-demonstrator. As the story starts its obvious that Lucie is working as a mole and is to try and bring down the whole operation. It isn’t long before it becomes clear that the Bono style attitude that Marlow has isn’t reality and that he is breeding they Krynoids. One thing that I liked was the cliffhanger was really good and the best for quite sometime. The thought that Lucie could be turned into a Krynoid was quite a scary one and the question that entered my mind as I heard the ending was if Lucie did get turned into a Krynoid then how would the Doctor be able to save things? The inclusion of Alex Marlow is very similar to Harrison Chace and by that I mean someone who is quite wealthy putting their power and wealth to the wrong use.

I was dreading part two because I felt that the resolution of the story wouldn’t live up to the expectations that I had made on the ending of part one. When the story resumed it didn’t disappoint and my worries were unfounded as the story progressed the pace and enjoyment didn’t go down and didn’t disappoint. If I do have a niggling problem with Hothouse it is that the Krynoids don’t seem menacing enough. When they appeared in The Seeds of Doom they had the visual image to rely on but without that it was always necessary that they either don’t use as the main baddies or use them in a more creative way that the way that they were used.

Paul McGann put in a good performance as his reset Doctor was trying to figure out Lucie and this new version of the eighth Doctor gave a nice refreshing feel to the story. The addition of UNIT enabled McGann to put the Doctor in that role the Doctor was in back in the Jon Pertwee days. McGann seemed to enjoy this role and made it count. Sheridan Smith is really developing as a companion as she continues to remind the Doctor of what their relationship used to be like before the events with Morbius. This story sees Miller in a position that we haven’t seen her before and this is largely because it seems that she wants to prove to the Doctor that she is someone he needs.

Nigel Planer is very good in this story. He comes to my mind as playing the Hippie Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones. In this he plays a musician who has green credentials which is not unlike many popstars and people in the music industry today. Planer was very good in this story as his character was a good adversary for the Doctor. The character he plays is Alex Marlowe and his lifestyle is quite similar to events of The Seeds of Doom. As the story shifts into the second half it seems that Planner steps it up a gear and he becomes that much more of a threat to the Doctor, Lucie and everyone on Earth. Adna Sablyich is also good in this story as Christina Ondrak. I don’t know how much she had to exaggerate her accent but I think that it was dangerously close to being over the top. Also Lysette Anthony is a very good ‘one-off companion’ in Hazel Bright. Anthony previously appeared in Assassin in the Limelight and was good in that so it was no real surprise that she performed well in this one. With the absence of Lucie from the Doctor’s side it was good at how Bright was able to seem to fit in so well.

Jonathan Morris has been a very good writer in this story and he continues to do the same with Hothouse. It is a simple story that uses a monster which had potential for future stories to its fullest effect. Morris has become a dependable writer and it was only possible to give an established writer the responsibility of writing for a classic monster. Barnaby Edwards is a very good director and can always be relied upon to direct a story to make seem so enjoyable that you forget how long the story has been going on for and gets a shock when it comes to an end. Since Gary Russell left the range in early 2007, Edwards has taken over the role of lead director and it is easy to see why. He kept the action going at a nice steady pace and built it up towards the cliffhanger and then kept the same pace in the second half of the story.

Overall this is a story that gets back to business with an enjoyable story with strong characters and a pace that never stops. Hopefully we will see a return of the Krynoids to Doctor Who and this story shows what can be done with a classic monster that has tended to work on visual images but then has to work on audio images rather that visual.

The Death Collectors (2008)

The Death Collectors is a companionless story for the Seventh Doctor. It is the third one without a companion following on from Valhalla and Frozen Time. Here we have the third story in four that doesn’t see Hex or Ace and I get the feeling that maybe that they are considering doing more of these stories which would be a shame. This story has been written by Stewart Sheargold who had previously written the 2006 story Red which was a weird story. Another thing about this story is that this is one of those 3 plus 1 stories which sees three episodes form one story and a stand alone episode. I am not a fan of these releases because whilst the three episodes work really well but the single part stories never work because you can’t tell a good story in 25 minutes. Only one story since they have started doing this format has worked and that was Urban Myths in Exotron. Also this story sees Ken Bentley make his first contribution to the Doctor Who range.

Anyone who has been a fan of Doctor Who for more than 12 years will know that Puccini’s Madam Butterfly was played in the TV Movie. According to the Extras on the release this story is set just before the 1996 Movie so it seems that the music is similar to the watcher that appeared in Tom Baker’s finale back in 1981. It was quite a brave decision to set a story so much in Death. Its not exactly a family friendly topic and so it has to be dealt with cautiously. The story is set on a Sky Station above a planet called Antikon. As soon as someone visits the planet they become infected with Decay which slowly kills them. That when the Dar-Traders come in, they feed off death signatures and so anyone who visits Antikon is basically lunch for the Dar-Traders. As the story progresses we learn that the Decay is effecting everything and even travels through sound waves which is unusual for a virus.

Sylvester McCoy is really good in this story. I don’t get the feeling that McCoy was really tested in this story however he still managed to be enjoyable. It enabled him to form some fresh relationships with one off characters. In this story he developed well Katherine Parkinson. Katherine Parkinson isn’t a name that necessarily springs to mind but a little bit of research (god bless Wikipedia). She has appeared in several things but most recently the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd (since 2006). As Danika Meanwhile she plays a very strong character that starts to believe and work with the Doctor as the events on the Sky Station develop. The best example of that is the cliffhanger for Episode 2 where the Doctor has put himself in a coma and Danika has put the spacesuit on which has very little oxygen showed a lot of trust between the two. Alastair Cording was very good in this story as Professor Mors Alexandryn. We learn in this story that his character was once married to Danika Meanwhile. As this story goes on we go from hating him because it seems that his ambitions could endanger everyone but slowly he becomes the hero and fits in with the listener’s desire that the Doctor should be helped and not hindered. Derek Carlyle was very good for two reasons. The first being that he came up with the voice of the Dar-Traders. The voice was truly eerie and fit the character very well. It must have really hurt his voice doing the Dar-Traders for two days but the end result is well worth it. The second reason he was good was because of playing Smith Ridley. The Ridley character met a sticky end fairly early on but as the decay took effect it was Ridley that was the centre point for the events. His efforts helped make the story that much better. Katarina Olson has been in several Big Finish plays over the last few years and in this story she had another good role as Nancy the ships computer. The role didn’t seem to have a lot going for it to begin with but soon became quite integral to the survival of the Sky Station.

This story was very enjoyable. Every character had a good side and a bad side which were equally effective. Stewart Sheargold has written a story that benefited from the three episode time limit. Ken Bentley’s first Doctor Who story was a very energetic let downbeat story.

Now for some negative comments. I know I have never been a fan of single part stories but Spiders Shadow is the worst that there has been. I just didn’t understand why anybody bothered to be a part of it. That was my initial reaction but on second look it had improved slightly. There is a lot of moving around in time and that comes as a bit of a let down. This is because it should be done in a four part story. That said I did like the characters though we never really got to know them very well.

Katarina Olsson was given a slightly better role in this story as Martial Princess Keldafria. Carol Fitzpatrick was also very good as Martial Princess Keldafria Louisa who is perhaps a better character than Olsson’s character. Kevin McNally is a big name actor and it’s a shame that he was given this story and this character to work with. McNally has appeared in Bond Films and perhaps more famously the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. In this story he played Henry which was perhaps too small a character for such a big name.

As a release this story was very good. I think that The Death Collectors was the better of the two stories and suited the three episode format very well. On the other hand Spiders Shadow was a poorer effort which perhaps would have been better had it been a longer episode. But as I have said before 25 minutes is not long enough for a story, especially one as complex as Spiders Shadow.

The Scapegoats (2009)

The fifth story from this third series of Eighth Doctor & Lucie adventures sees them travel to Nazi occupied Paris. Pat Mills has written this story and is his second story following on from the 2008 story Dead London. The thing about Dead London was that it was a strange story that had enough different elements to make it a good story. It was clear just from the front cover that we were going to get something different in The Scapegoats. The setting was quite strange I did find the goat idea was quite funny as the baa’s became entertaining. Also Lucie’s desire/obsession to meet Ewan McGregor leads to some funny scenes between her and first encounter with Max Paul which was a mix between humour and disappointment. The friendship between them was very sweet and well acted between Smith and Rhys.

I quite liked the idea that someone gets disfigured for the tribe was quite an interesting idea. Another good idea was that when Max Paul had his head cut off and it was able to come back on because of the technology they get the head back at a time when it was attached to his body but it leaves a time scar. The Baroque Tribe need the Doctor’s TARDIS to power up the re-animator which becomes less effective every time it is used. That was a good plot point because it added some tension and created a purpose to get the Doctor involved in the action. The reason why Max Paul is going through this is simply because it’s a tradition. It just shows that just because it’s a tradition doesn’t mean it should continue. This shows the stupidity of what is going on here. Also the moment when Mother Baroque and the Doc found Lucie & Max at the machine led to another point to prove how stupid some tribes can be. It was that their tribe would make Max’s last day a misery because of his feelings towards a human.

Paul McGann put in another great performance as the Doctor. It did take him quite a while to get really get involved in this story. It was only once he got captured by the Gestapo. Once he encountered the Baroque tribe he seemed to get back right into his usual stride of being very witty with the enemy. Sheridan Smith performs very well in this story and her reaction to Max Paul and the events at the Theatre des Baroque is similar to what we would all have. As she spends most of the story with Max Paul its not doubt expected that that is where most of the action is starting from. Paul Rhys plays Max Paul and was very good. He seems friendly and someone that Lucie instantly trusts. His character is written as some sort of celebrity with the billing of The Most Assassinated Person in History but behind that claim is the tragic reality that he has to go through to keep his family happy. As the story progresses you feel sorry for him because of what he has to endure. Christopher Fairbank is very good as Doc Baroque. His voice is very strange but what I suppose we would come to expect from anyone playing a goat. Its clear that he has some influence over Max Paul. He has a dramatic presence and delivers himself very well. There were occasions where he was very sinister which I thought suited the tone of the story.

Samantha Bond is the big name star of this story. Formally Miss Moneypenny during Pierce Brosnan’s time as James Bond and in this story she plays Mother Baroque. Her selective hearing is something that most people have in reality so its funny that someone in this story has it. Bond has a nice voice and she is a very good actress so she thrived in this role and made a change for baddies in this story. She developed a nice relationship with Doc Baroque and had some nice dialogue with the Doctor. Clifford Rose who had appeared in the 1980 Tom Baker story Warriors Gate plays Major Treptow in this story. His involvement slowly gets bigger and better as the story gets going and in part one he spends most of the episode just with the Doctor. Thorston Manderlay is very good as a Lieutenant. His character was developed to work with the Major and as such he did well. He wasn’t the most memorable character that has ever appeared in a Big Finish play but he had a purpose and he served it well.

I think that the cliffhanger is the worst that has been used for quite sometime. In fact I am struggling to think of one worst. It just comes out of the blue with very little build up and I just thought that it was very poorly written. When the story resumed there was no drama just an explanation as to what is going on. What on earth was going on when the cliffhanger was being written, even a weak attempt at a dramatic cliffhanger would have been better than what we got. I also thought that the trauma that Max Paul was going through went on far too long and was quite uncomfortable. Admittedly there is the question of why they are showing but its not a threat and there’s no real menace to it.

The ending of it was good. The fact that the Baroque tribe could go back to their home world was a refreshing change. Normally the baddies would be killed or arrested and it was a nice conclusion to the story. When the story finished we had another burst of plot in the Lucie commented that the Doctor seemed sad since the events of Orbis. The Doctor comments that Orbis is the darkness but its been shown by the light and its those that he aims for the adventures which I thought was a really nice and touching conclusion cause it’s the first time that I can recall previous adventures being mentioned in this way.

Overall this was a good story. Not the best of this range but its still worth listening to again.

The Magician's Oath (2009)

The tenth story in the extended companion chronicles series sees Mike Yates tell his story of an adventure he had with the Third Doctor. Mike Yates was played by Richard Franklin between 1971 and 1974. In the end his character had a nervous breakdown and had to go off to a retreat. This sort of character development was unusual in Classic Doctor Who. This story is the first story to come from Scott Handcock who according to Wikipedia was a production runner of Doctor Who Confidential. This story seems to be set in the present as the dialogue seems to indicate that he has left UNIT and so has the Brigadier.

The first thing that I like about this story is Franklin himself. When the voice is right then the story could be the phonebook and it would still be interested. Franklin gives a nice straight forward performance and he manages to get the right tones for Jo, The Brigadier and the Doctor. He opted to go for tones instead of doing impersonations that very rarely work in these stories. He also managed to bring back that thing which was obvious on the TV and that was the relationship between Jo and Mike. It was obvious to everyone that they had feelings and at the end you felt sad that they never got together and Jo went off with that Welsh Hippie. The story itself is quite a good one, UNIT are trying to solve what the cause is of these freak cold snaps that can turn a public area like Hyde Park into a ice rink killing everyone. The character of Diamond Jack was well written and what I liked most was that he had a past to him that almost made you feel sorry for him because he had been exiled to Earth (like the Doctor) and had his mind erased which was quite horrific. I quite like the idea that there are different version of Jack. The first is the form that he takes now so that he can blend in with everyone and then there is his true form which seems to be a springy monster and then there is the card which has his memories on it and what he is really like. Why the people who exiled him to earth don’t just destroy it is a mystery to me and that’s my only problem with this story. The final scene which was set on the walkway between the towers on Tower Bridge was really really dramatic and had me gripped all the way, it shows what can be achieved with this range that doesn’t always happen. The cliffhanger was a nice one which is another area that other companion chronicles has because whilst it can be difficult to create an effective cliffhanger its something that needs to be really thought about for it to work.

Richard Franklin was very good as mentioned as Mike Yates. Yates isn’t the a character I would have thought off for a companion story but I am glad someone did because it gave Franklin to show us what Yates would be like now. Hopefully they will ask Franklin to do more stories not just in this series but in the main one. Michael Chance was very good as Diamond Jack and he gave the character a very clear aura of menace about him and the fact that he had the power to kill people in a truly horrific way whenever he wanted. You felt his desperation and sadness in certain scenes which made it difficult to know whether you were supposed to hate him or like him.

Scott Handcock has written a good story for his debut. It was a nice gentle paced story that accelerated when it needed to. The back story behind Diamond Jack was a very good creative move and added some tension in the latter scenes that I really enjoyed. Nigel Fairs was very good as the director. Fairs has directed several of these stories and is really good at keeping the pace and the story going. His previous story was The Transit of Venus which is one of the best stories of the season and perhaps in the entire series.

The Mahogany Murderers (2009)

2009 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Companion Chronicle

The Mahogany Murderers is a unique point in the Companion Chronicles. This story is the first story in the Companion Chronicles series that doesn’t feature the Doctor in any shape or form. It is also the first time that a story from this series features someone who didn’t actually set foot inside the TARDIS or travel with the Doctor. However it’s a testament to the popularity of the characters of Jago and Litefoot that this story has been chosen to be released at this point.

This story does have a disjointed way of telling with Jago telling his side of the story and then Litefoot interrupting and vice versa. I quite liked the end of the episode because there is the revelation from Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago says “Your climatic ending was better”. Normally I would have been disappointed with such a strange ending but somehow due to the good feeling that I held this story in I loved it. The Professor’s story was entertaining as his reaction to the wooden mannequin and then for it getting up was priceless. It was however Jago’s story that was perhaps the more interesting as it in his side that we learnt more about what was going on. The two sides meshed quite well. I did like how they made references to The Talons of Weng-Chiang and also a brief mention of the Doctor. I think that failure to do this would have led to this story feeling a bit hollow but thankfully they stuck these references in to please the die-hard fans like myself but not alienate newer fans.

What we have is that the wooden mannequins are in fact prisoners who’s souls have been taken from their real bodies in prison and put them in these wooden dummies is a superb idea. It’s the sort of thing that is so bizarre that it works somehow. Its towards the end of the story that we discover that all this has been down to a Dr Tulip but we never know whether he is alien or whether he works for aliens. Then we have the introduction of Jack Yeovil who seems to be a big gang leader who is desperate to get out of prison.

It’s amazing that after 32 years that Christopher Benjamin (Jago) & Trevor Baxter (Litefoot) sound exactly the same. It seems hard to believe that they haven’t played these characters since 1977. I always liked Jago because I think that he is sort of cheeky chappy with a good heart. Benjamin has recently appeared in Doctor Who appearing alongside David Tennant and Catherine Tate in The Unicorn and the Wasp. In this story he slipped back into the role like a duck to water. Trevor Baxter also returned to the role of Litefoot like he only played it a month ago not 32 years ago. In the interview at the end of the story the pair of them as well as Lisa Bowerman seemed to get on which shines through.

Lisa Bowerman is the only other star of this story. She has a brief role as Ellie but it is her directing that is what I would like to write about. This is her best story as director because she manages to get the disjointed storytelling entertaining and with such eerie sounds and it helps that Benjamin and Baxter are so enthusiastic and clearly enjoying themselves. Andy Lane has written a superb story, getting the characters spot on and interacting so well with each other after 32 years. Compared to his first story in this series Here There Be Monsters, The Mahogany Murderers is a thoroughly entertaining and at times completely amazing story and that is what makes it a contender for story of the series.

Here There Be Monsters (2008)

2008 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Companion Chronicle Story

Here There Be Monsters is the opening story of the Third Series of Companion Chronicles. It’s safe to say that this range has become more popular than anyone could have imagined and its impact is felt through other ranges in Big Finish. Such as Highlander, Robin Hood and Dark Shadows have benefited from this simple yet effective format. The third series is going to be 12 stories long instead of the previous 4 releases which came out for Series One and Two. This first story sees the return of Susan Foreman who was the very first companion in Doctor Who way back in 1963 played by Carole Ann Ford. Ford played Susan from November 1963 until December 1964 and whilst is the first of the companions she isn’t the most highly regarded which is a shame because she did have potential and there were areas of her character that just were not explored. She was always written as a child that just got into scrapes as the adults did all the exciting stuff and that’s the main downside to the early years of the show is that they never really explored what a character could do. Nowadays you get companions with families and husbands or boyfriends but you got none of that stuff in 1963.

It is nice to hear Carole Ann Ford back in Doctor Who. I always wished she had stayed in the show for longer but I understand her reasons for leaving. I wish that they had bought her back in Series One or Two but at least they bought her back and gave a story that really showed a grown up Susan instead of a child like Susan. I also thought that Stephen Hancock put in a good performance as The First Mate. Hancock biggest role of his life is playing Ernie Bishop in the popular soap Coronation Street from 1969 until 1978. I didn’t realise this until I looked it up on other websites. It’s quite important that in these stories the supporting actor puts in a good performance. Hancock does this which is very well and his interaction with Susan is very gentle and sincere which I liked a lot.

This story is written by Andy Lane who is making his debut for the range and whenever we get a new writer it’s always quite difficult to judge what sort of story we are going to get and that can be quite exciting. Lane has written a very good script that whilst it is brilliant it is a good first attempt. What he has managed to do is capture the essence of the group and the dynamic that we all know from that period. Lisa Bowerman is making her directing debut with this story. She is really better known as Bernice Summerfield who she has been playing for 10 years but also appeared in the last of the Classic Doctor Who’s in Survival (1989). I don’t think that the story flows quite as well as it perhaps could. There are several moments especially early on where you are just praying that it will move on a bit quicker. By the latter part of the story it has got up to a good pace and enjoyable.

This is an enjoyable opening story for the third series of the companion chronicles. The music and sound effects really added to the action but it doesn’t dominate and allows the actors to take centre stage. The setting was very good and what it managed to do was feel like it was one of the many 1960’s Doctor Who stories that only exist in audio format.