The third part of this impressive series takes a slightly different tone. Written by Scott Handcock (writer of The Magician Oath) and Gary Russell, this story deals with Vampires and I will state now that I cant stand Vampires. Not that I have a phobia of them or something but they just bore me. I wasn’t overly over the moon with The Time Vampire from the Companion Chronicle series. There are two big names in the guest cast list. Katy Manning returns to Big Finish playing Magistrix Borusa whereas Geoffrey Beevers (formerly the Master in The Keeper of Traken) plays Lord Prydon.
This version of Gallifrey sees a civil war (what else) and its between two groups led by Prydon and Borusa. They have been fighting for quite sometime and there is a feeling in the performances that this is the case. In this version of Gallifrey they are not called Timelords but True Lords which is quite a strange title and doesn’t quite sit right in the story. I think it’s a good thing it will probably never be used again. I think that the writers have done a clever thing but referring to Leela’s blindness. I had forgotten about Leela’s age progression being held back whilst being on Gallifrey and despite it being Gallifrey, its not the original and she starts to age but in a clever scene, she is cured and most importantly her eye sight has returned which is a relief because it was restricting what the companion could do and now it wont be referred to ever five minutes. Louise Jameson is on good form again and this is the seventh story within a couple of weeks that I listened to and that she has been in and she is simply wonderful.
Katy Manning is brilliant as Borusa. Having not heard as Iris Wildthyme since Excelis Rising, I am more use to hearing Manning play Jo Grant. She plays the role brilliantly and like Colin Baker in the previous story is one of the best things in this story. That said this story isnt a patch on the previous one but I was still impressed with her performance and it was made even stronger when its compared to Geoffrey Beevers. He has a superb voice and I think that whilst he doesn’t sound that different from when he appeared in Dust Breeding (2001) and also the Target audios but to be honest I don’t really care. The two of them could read the phone book and it would still be interesting. I also have to say that Lalla Ward was very good in this and its her best performance of the series so far.
Annihalation is the inevitable weak link in the chain. It’s not a terrible story by any stretch of the imagination and I would quite happily listen to this story again but I think whereas the previous stories in the series have been so high in terms of quality that anything that was remotely off-target would result in the story being not as highly regarded as other stories. I still think that this series is the best so far and this story has a lot of strong points but one minor point (the vampires).
This version of Gallifrey sees a civil war (what else) and its between two groups led by Prydon and Borusa. They have been fighting for quite sometime and there is a feeling in the performances that this is the case. In this version of Gallifrey they are not called Timelords but True Lords which is quite a strange title and doesn’t quite sit right in the story. I think it’s a good thing it will probably never be used again. I think that the writers have done a clever thing but referring to Leela’s blindness. I had forgotten about Leela’s age progression being held back whilst being on Gallifrey and despite it being Gallifrey, its not the original and she starts to age but in a clever scene, she is cured and most importantly her eye sight has returned which is a relief because it was restricting what the companion could do and now it wont be referred to ever five minutes. Louise Jameson is on good form again and this is the seventh story within a couple of weeks that I listened to and that she has been in and she is simply wonderful.
Katy Manning is brilliant as Borusa. Having not heard as Iris Wildthyme since Excelis Rising, I am more use to hearing Manning play Jo Grant. She plays the role brilliantly and like Colin Baker in the previous story is one of the best things in this story. That said this story isnt a patch on the previous one but I was still impressed with her performance and it was made even stronger when its compared to Geoffrey Beevers. He has a superb voice and I think that whilst he doesn’t sound that different from when he appeared in Dust Breeding (2001) and also the Target audios but to be honest I don’t really care. The two of them could read the phone book and it would still be interesting. I also have to say that Lalla Ward was very good in this and its her best performance of the series so far.
Annihalation is the inevitable weak link in the chain. It’s not a terrible story by any stretch of the imagination and I would quite happily listen to this story again but I think whereas the previous stories in the series have been so high in terms of quality that anything that was remotely off-target would result in the story being not as highly regarded as other stories. I still think that this series is the best so far and this story has a lot of strong points but one minor point (the vampires).
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