House of Blue Fire is written by Mark Morris. His previous stories have included a single adventure in ‘Forty Five’ (2008) and Plague of the Daleks (2009). Set in 2020. The story is set in a hotel that seems to have people with fears (a bit like a certain Matt Smith story that aired recently). The story starts off like a ghost house and some sort of Halloween story. Story starts off with a woman arriving at a house she doesn’t know or is even aware of her own name. She has Mind-wipe Syndrome.
Something has drawn these four people to this house. According to the Doctor mentioning its name will strengthen it. The creature is the Mi’en Kalarash. Who is a scary bedtime story, a sort of bogeyman. The four people we meet at the beginning are Miss 5 –Apraphobia (An abnormal fear of water or drowning), Mr 12 – Catoptrophobia (Fear of mirrors, or seeing one’s own reflection), Mr 16 – Blattodephobia (The morbid fear of cockroaches), Miss 18 – Athazagoraphobia (Being forgotten or ignored). Big Finish gladly described the first three but I had to look up the final one. Which lead me to The Phobia List on the internet and some of the funniest phobias ever. I spent ages looking up some of the stupidest phobias including fears of chins, noses, sitting down, rooms and phobias of phobias.
The first half of the story is spent establishing the setting and the phobias of each person. The second half changes gear, the Doctor set up that house out of his subconscious. The Blue Fire System is a military base where they are trying to eradicate fear in the hope that soldiers would become better in war. The latter half of the story is spent trying to defeat the Mi’en Kalarash which is some sort of fear parasite which is very dangerous and due to the performances from the cast it’s a danger that is believable. It’s quite a good creature because it gets other people to do its work for it which is different to how most aliens/baddies act in these stories. The Doctor’s fear seems to be the deaths of everyone that he has encountered in his lives. This is revealed quite late in the day and like The God Complex the Doctor’s fear isn’t the same as everyone else’s.
The Doctor doesn’t appear until the end and in fact his appearance brings about the first cliffhanger. I may be wrong on this one but it has to be the first time that the first appearance of the Doctor is used in such a way (apart from a regeneration of course). It did through me a bit but I thought that this was a very clever thing and it meant that the supporting cast had to carry the story until McCoy appeared and they did it very well. McCoy’s Doctor is verging on the manipulative side of his character that he was famous for during his time on TV and has done from time to time in Big Finish stories. Timothy West returns after his 2007 appearance in Immortal Beloved. He takes a back seat role in the first half of this story and it’s only in episode 3 when the story moves into reality that he gets to be as good as we would want. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly massive role but West does do well with the role. I honestly couldn’t say that out of the four actors we meet at the beginning there was one that was better than the others and that’s because they were all very good. Amy Pemberton (18), Miranda Keeling (5), Ray Emmet Brown (16) and Howard Gossington (12) really did work well and were totally engaging throughout.
The cliffhangers were very enjoyable. The third one was possibly my favourite and I think that cliffhangers are pretty redundant on audio because people will listen to this story in one go and normally the cliffhangers are pretty ropey but in this story they are really well done. Even managing to make the Doctor’s first appearance dramatic is no easy task but credit to Mark Morris. The final scene is very interesting as Sally Morgan leaves with the Doctor in the TARDIS and it dematerialises which seems to imply that the character will feature again in 2012.
To show that I really like this story I am nit-picking and this is ultimate nit-picking because this is the biggest flaw with this story. After an apparent rest on rolling his r’s. McCoy is back on form with a few that actually didn’t need to be there but that maybe because of McCoy and not Morris. I didn’t think anything could be better than The Doomsday Quatrain but this one does it. It has to be in my top 3 of the year as from start to finish it was thoroughly enjoyable with some clever writing and some superb casting. In this series of Seventh Doctor adventures. Only Robophobia has disappointed me. It wasn’t terrible but when you compare it to this story and The Doomsday Quatrain it doesn’t stand up.
Something has drawn these four people to this house. According to the Doctor mentioning its name will strengthen it. The creature is the Mi’en Kalarash. Who is a scary bedtime story, a sort of bogeyman. The four people we meet at the beginning are Miss 5 –Apraphobia (An abnormal fear of water or drowning), Mr 12 – Catoptrophobia (Fear of mirrors, or seeing one’s own reflection), Mr 16 – Blattodephobia (The morbid fear of cockroaches), Miss 18 – Athazagoraphobia (Being forgotten or ignored). Big Finish gladly described the first three but I had to look up the final one. Which lead me to The Phobia List on the internet and some of the funniest phobias ever. I spent ages looking up some of the stupidest phobias including fears of chins, noses, sitting down, rooms and phobias of phobias.
The first half of the story is spent establishing the setting and the phobias of each person. The second half changes gear, the Doctor set up that house out of his subconscious. The Blue Fire System is a military base where they are trying to eradicate fear in the hope that soldiers would become better in war. The latter half of the story is spent trying to defeat the Mi’en Kalarash which is some sort of fear parasite which is very dangerous and due to the performances from the cast it’s a danger that is believable. It’s quite a good creature because it gets other people to do its work for it which is different to how most aliens/baddies act in these stories. The Doctor’s fear seems to be the deaths of everyone that he has encountered in his lives. This is revealed quite late in the day and like The God Complex the Doctor’s fear isn’t the same as everyone else’s.
The Doctor doesn’t appear until the end and in fact his appearance brings about the first cliffhanger. I may be wrong on this one but it has to be the first time that the first appearance of the Doctor is used in such a way (apart from a regeneration of course). It did through me a bit but I thought that this was a very clever thing and it meant that the supporting cast had to carry the story until McCoy appeared and they did it very well. McCoy’s Doctor is verging on the manipulative side of his character that he was famous for during his time on TV and has done from time to time in Big Finish stories. Timothy West returns after his 2007 appearance in Immortal Beloved. He takes a back seat role in the first half of this story and it’s only in episode 3 when the story moves into reality that he gets to be as good as we would want. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly massive role but West does do well with the role. I honestly couldn’t say that out of the four actors we meet at the beginning there was one that was better than the others and that’s because they were all very good. Amy Pemberton (18), Miranda Keeling (5), Ray Emmet Brown (16) and Howard Gossington (12) really did work well and were totally engaging throughout.
The cliffhangers were very enjoyable. The third one was possibly my favourite and I think that cliffhangers are pretty redundant on audio because people will listen to this story in one go and normally the cliffhangers are pretty ropey but in this story they are really well done. Even managing to make the Doctor’s first appearance dramatic is no easy task but credit to Mark Morris. The final scene is very interesting as Sally Morgan leaves with the Doctor in the TARDIS and it dematerialises which seems to imply that the character will feature again in 2012.
To show that I really like this story I am nit-picking and this is ultimate nit-picking because this is the biggest flaw with this story. After an apparent rest on rolling his r’s. McCoy is back on form with a few that actually didn’t need to be there but that maybe because of McCoy and not Morris. I didn’t think anything could be better than The Doomsday Quatrain but this one does it. It has to be in my top 3 of the year as from start to finish it was thoroughly enjoyable with some clever writing and some superb casting. In this series of Seventh Doctor adventures. Only Robophobia has disappointed me. It wasn’t terrible but when you compare it to this story and The Doomsday Quatrain it doesn’t stand up.
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