It’s been 18 months (roughly) since Turlough last featured in a Big Finish play, here we have a story that features Werewolf’s. It amazing to note that in the 26 seasons of TV Who that a werewolf never appeared. This is also the first Big Finish play to be written by Marc Platt who is the first person to have written for both the TV series and Big Finish (not including Andrew Cartmel as he was a script editor and never contributed a story!). Platt wrote Ghost Light (1989) which was a story that I still don’t understand to this very day. However, I was hoping that this story would be different. I was hoping that Platt would deliver a story that had a nice mix of confusing elements like Ghostlight yet had bits of what made a lot of the previous Big Finish such as success.
This story doesn’t quite work for me. I felt that it dragged on quite a bit and there were times when I was actually a little bored. I think that the story is slightly confused in what it wants to be. Part of me thinks that Platt was trying to do a spooky Werewolf story but in fact got replaced with a mixture of other things that just bemused me. The Doctor and Turlough are very good in this story however they deserved better. It just felt like they were going through the motions and you could have plonked any Doctor/Companion combination into this story and it wouldn’t have made an impact on the writing. The characters were also a bit flat with the exception being Burt Kwok as Doctor Hyashi. Kwok had appeared in Four To Doomsday (1982) and actually is quite entertaining in this. Other people who appeared in TV Who include as well Eleanor Bron who previously starred in Revelation of the Daleks (1985). Her character was a wealthy Ileana de Santos who was a ok character elevated by Bron.
It’s a shame that this story followed four really good stories from the Eighth Doctor. I think that had this been released a few months later then it perhaps would be had a better chance to succeed. Actually that point is mute because the problems with this story are littered throughout. Marc Platt has written a terrible story but unfortunately it wont be remembered as his best work. Nicholas Pegg didn’t do a great job as director, the plot was let down a bit by the confusing way it moved. Pegg is a good director as he has shown in The Spectre of Lanyon Moor but on this occasion he wasn’t a great story.
This story doesn’t quite work for me. I felt that it dragged on quite a bit and there were times when I was actually a little bored. I think that the story is slightly confused in what it wants to be. Part of me thinks that Platt was trying to do a spooky Werewolf story but in fact got replaced with a mixture of other things that just bemused me. The Doctor and Turlough are very good in this story however they deserved better. It just felt like they were going through the motions and you could have plonked any Doctor/Companion combination into this story and it wouldn’t have made an impact on the writing. The characters were also a bit flat with the exception being Burt Kwok as Doctor Hyashi. Kwok had appeared in Four To Doomsday (1982) and actually is quite entertaining in this. Other people who appeared in TV Who include as well Eleanor Bron who previously starred in Revelation of the Daleks (1985). Her character was a wealthy Ileana de Santos who was a ok character elevated by Bron.
It’s a shame that this story followed four really good stories from the Eighth Doctor. I think that had this been released a few months later then it perhaps would be had a better chance to succeed. Actually that point is mute because the problems with this story are littered throughout. Marc Platt has written a terrible story but unfortunately it wont be remembered as his best work. Nicholas Pegg didn’t do a great job as director, the plot was let down a bit by the confusing way it moved. Pegg is a good director as he has shown in The Spectre of Lanyon Moor but on this occasion he wasn’t a great story.
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