The First Sontaran (2012)

The First Sontaran is the third and final Sixth Doctor story in this current series of Lost Stories. We have had the return of the Melkur, the return of Victoria Waterfield and in this story we get the return of the Sontaran’s and also the return of the Rutans. The Sontarans last appeared in HEROES OF SONTAR in 2010 and the Rutans in CASTLE OF FEAR in 2009. This is the first encounter between the Rutans and Sontarans ever. It’s an encounter that I have personally be looking forward to for years and was hoping that it would take away the disappointment of the Daleks/Cybermen battle in DOOMSDAY in 2006. According to the interviews at the end of the story this was replaced with THE TWO DOCTORS. The story starts off with an interesting scene which a very dark scene which then moves into a nice little scene with the Doctor and Peri on the moon. I liked it because it captured the tentative relationship between the Doctor and Peri. We got an unexpected reference to THE CHASE and more specifically the Mary Celeste section of that story. I always love it when there are references that just turn up out of the blue.

Despite knowing that the Sontarans are going to appear its near the end of the episode before we meet our first Sontaran. It’s a nice way to end the first episode, it’s the end of second episode before we get our first Rutan so the story takes its time and is able to do this because of right sort of characters and a story that is very interesting. I wasn’t as wild about the episode three cliffhanger as I thought that it didn’t have the killer punch that I thought it should have had, it wasn’t terrible but the weakest out of the three. I thought there was a nice bit of humour in the story, my favourite line was when they were describing the Doctor’s outfit and we get the line “like every headache I’ve ever had”. It’s the best way that anyone has ever described the Doctor’s unique outfit.

The First Sontaran is effectively the Genesis of the Daleks/Spare Parts for the Sontarans and gives us something else we haven’t had before and that’s a bit of back story to the Sontarans. The Kafeech are the original in habitants of Sontar and it was Meredith Roth who created the Sontarans before they turned on him and forced him to flee to Earth. Not only is it a nice bit of backstory but it’s a nice lead into this story. It makes the Sontarans look a bit more than just a bunch of war hungry people. Another thing that helps give them weight is when its revealed there is a hatchery that has 600,000 Sontarans which is a wonderful idea of that many Sontarans which you just know that they wouldn’t have had that many on TV in 1985. 6 maybe but not 600,000.

Only issue I have with this story is that they did the whole ‘companion is killed’ thing. I just don’t buy it and don’t know why they persist in doing it. It happened in THE EMERALD TIGER and I just think that it detracts from the story and we have about 10-15 minutes of the Doctor thinking he has lost someone he cares about. Thankfully it’s pretty brief and Peri’s return is actually quite surprising but I still wish that they wouldn’t do it. Apart from that I really liked The First Sontaran. I had high expectations and they were met. Out of the two Sontaran stories that we have had this is definelty the stronger of the two. I felt that whilst HEROES OF SONTAR was a enjoyable story it was in many respects a light hearted story whereas this was a more traditional Sontaran story.

Highly enjoyable.

The Oseidon Adventure (2012)

It’s fair to say that The Trail of the White Worm was a set up episode but as set-up episodes go it was pretty darn good. That episode was all about the Master but in this final story of the series we see the return of the Kraal who last appeared in the 1975 adventure ‘The Android Invasion’. The revelation was somewhat ruined by the fact that they appear on the cover. This story has a lot to live up to as it’s the end of a very strong series but sadly for me it doesn’t hit the mark and falls somewhat short.

Quite quickly the Master seems to be losing his influence whereas in Spindleton’s fortunes seem to change once the Kraals appear. Spindleton has some hopes of what he gets out of this venture and it isn’t global domination but just to have Britain all to himself before it stopped being the empire leader that it was.  I thought that there were several interesting scenes that were dotted throughout this story. The first was where Leela wants to put the Master inside the TARDIS might seem a bit stupid given the past (and future these two have) but it is done with honourable intentions.

We have a Doctor that has been copied which is similar to what happened in ‘The Android Invasion’ where Sarah Jane Smith was the one being copied. However he’s not the only one that gets copied as we also get a false Master. I had a  horrible fear that this was going to descend into try to figure out who was who and this would get in the way of the story but thankfully this confusion was kept to a minimum.

The worst thing about this story was the terrible cliff-hanger is the wrong word. It’s like it was put in there by mistake as there is no real build up and no real sense of drama and at the return of episode two really confirmed this for me. I can’t help think that the story would have been better served by either coming up with a stronger cliff-hanger or not having one at all because I think that this was very weak way to end the episode.

There was a nice amount of humour in this story and most of it was from Tom Baker. There was a nice running gag about the Brigadier. In my review of TOTWW, I commented that knowing we weren’t going to get Nicholas Courtney in this story was a sad thought and whilst that’s still the case I liked how in the brief moment where they mentioned him they said that the Brigadier was in Canada. Makes a change from Peru or on the moon I suppose. On the subject of Tom Baker, I thought that like every story in this series he puts in a solid performance. The story allows for some of his Doctor’s humour to shine but I like the partnership between him and Louise Jameson as it seemed very real in this story and Louise Jameson put in a solid performance and has had a very good year as Leela. I thought that supporting cast was very good. I enjoyed Geoffrey Beevers in both these episodes. I thought that in this one there were several lines that he delivered where he seemed to be having a whale of a time being the Master again. Whilst I don’t think that the Master was as effective in this story as he was in the last one, I still think the Beevers is a brilliant Master. I thought that Michael Cochrane was better in this story as Spindleton’s motives were laid out which showed why we should be bothered about his character.

Ultimately this is not as good as I thought it should be and as good as the series demands its should be. It’s not the worst story of the series but it’s a far cry from The Wrath of the Iceni. This entire series had a lot of expectations from me and my main worry was having listened to the Tom Baker stories that he had done for AudioGo and not being impressed with them at all, I was worried that this was going to be the case in this series however pretty quickly it wasn’t the case. Even the weakest stories haven’t been as bad as those stories and it’s a testimant to Big Finish that have found six scripts that have managed to recreate the Fourth Doctor that we all want and more importantly give Tom Baker the scripts that he ideally wants to help show a modern audience what the Fourth Doctor is like.

The Rings of Ikiria (2012)

It’s been a few years since we last had a Mike Yates story. In fact it was back in 2009 when we were treated to the enjoyable story ‘The Magicians Oath’. The story is the final one of the sixth season and it’s also the second to be written by Richard Dinnick in the space of a couple of months (not that I’m complaining – it’s just a fact). The story sees Mike encounter Ikiria who seems to have turned everyone into mindless zombies with the Ikiria having not the most honourable of intentions.

The story starts off which quite a sad state of Mike’s affairs. He’s living in quite an empty apartment which is the opposite of how I imagined he would have lived (I’m thinking there would be Jo Grant shrine).  It’s always interesting how Mike Yates is portrayed in these stories because as we all know he turns on the Doctor and so its fun to try and think of Yates as a good person even though due to Richard Franklin’s performance we can imagine that. However despite the grim introduction there isn’t time to wallow in this depressing revelation before the story main story gets going. Now before the theme tune starts we get a bit of the action which appears to indicate that Mike is shot by the Brigadier. This is quite a big thing and it’s the bait that’s on the hook which reeled me through this story. It’s clear that Mike doesn’t get killed because we know the future so the writer distracts us to a certain extent by drawing our attention to the alien threat of this story. The wonderfully named Ikiria. The Ikiria is giving out rings like their sweets which seem to brainwash the person who is wearing it and this soon turns the story into Mike vs. everyone else and that includes UNIT. The Brigadier is one of those people and at the point we get to in the story where the Brig shoots Mike we find out something that I didn’t see coming. The Brig was pretending to be possessed by the Ikiria and had deliberately missed Mike when he shot him. The second half was really entertaining and I was impressed with how it all came together.

Richard Franklin has a wonderful voice which is used to maximum effect in this story. His style of telling the story is very gentle and always seems to have the same warm tone to it. I wish we could have more Mike Yates stories or just more stories with Richard Franklin in it because I genuinely believe one of the reasons I like this story so much is because of Franklin. Felicity Duncan plays Ikiria and I thought that this was an effective character. Ikiria doesn’t go over board and isn’t pushed into the spotlight of the story but does enough to come across as an effective and believable threat which I found to be quite good thing.

Out of the two Dinnick stories we have had I am really hard pressed to say which one I enjoyed the most because they both have good qualities. This had a good story and The Wanderer had William Russell but on reflection I would have to say that I enjoyed this just that little bit more. The story has a feel of being a UNIT story with there been the idea that there are people who can’t be trusted and feeling like being an outsider. I think that the Rings of Ikiria is a nice way to end the sixth season of the companion chronicles, I would also go so far to say that it’s the strongest third Doctor story that we have had for some time.

Rating – 8/10

Power Play (2012)

The latest Lost Story has quite a big selling point. It sees the return of Debroah Watling as Victoria Waterfield. The character which was last ‘seen’ on TV in Fury from the Deep pops up occasionally in the Companion Chronicle series but this is the first time she has played the character is a full cast adventure since 1968. The story was written by Gary Hopkins however when it was originally written for TV it was to be called Meltdown and it was changed because at the time of promoting this story the terrible events of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Planet in Japan was happening and it was thought to be in bad taste. I understand the decision to change the title and actually prefer Power Play because Meltdown sounds a bit bland.

The main thing about this story is that when listening to it you just want that scene where the Doctor and Victoria meet for the first time. Like when Sarah Jane meets the Tenth Doctor, there is a big emotional reunion and everyone’s happy. However in Power Play what we get is a first encounter which defies logic. Victoria has been hypnotised so when she hears the name of the Doctor she doesn’t recognise it. I thought that this was very clever of Hopkins.  When you have something big like the reunion of an old companion its easy to base the story on that and kind of use everything else as a B plot. In many previous releases we have had this happen and when  the novelty has worn of we are left with a very lacklustre play. Thankfully Hopkins has kept his eye on the ball and manages to keep the rest of the plot strands going so when the eventual proper meeting of the Doctor and Victoria happens we can get that out of the way and enjoy this adventure.

It’s good to have Debroah Watling back as I think that even though the character of Victoria isn’t a particularly well thought out one, she always comes across as a very likeable and warm person who like many of her co-stars from that era, always talk about that period of the show with the warmth that later companions don’t. I think that Hopkins has written the character of Victoria very well and she is a lot stronger than at any time during her TV tenure. I don’t know whether it was deliberate but Watling sounds different to how she sounds when she is doing a companion chronicle. Anyway that is irrelevant because she works well with the script and with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. Nicola Bryant is in an unusual position because she has to take a back seat in most of this story but she does very well with what she is given to do and I thought it was a very subtle performance. Colin Baker’s was his usual brilliance and seemed to be enjoying himself having two companions from different periods of the show.

Of the supporting cast I found Miles Jupp’s performance to be very good. He’s been on several BBC comedies and does very well as the baddie in this story. It’s a bit of a ropey start but very quickly becomes a believable baddie and one that I actually quite liked. The idea of being a sort of planet assassin is quite a bold one but one that sadly isn’t given enough time to develop due to the number of characters and the story having to move along but Jupp is good in this. Another good piece of casting was David Warwick who was last seen in Doctor Who being a policeman in Army of Ghosts back in 2006, I thought that I recognised his voice but wasn’t sure until the end that it was him. As Dysart he was another good character that I enjoyed from start to finish.

The end of the story saw the inevitable scene where the Doctor asks Victoria to come back on board with him and Peri but quite rightly she says no. I think that its nice when the old companion is given this choice as it reaffirms their decision and brings a bit of closure to the companion. They came back but that’s that and I thought it was played brilliantly by Colin Baker and Debroah Watling. I liked the nod to the Terrible Zodin at the end. I was hoping for a moment that this would lead us into another Lost Story but I think those hopes are destined to be dashed.

The problem that I have with Power Play is that it seems to lose a bit of steam in the last episode. I cant figure out why but it seems to spend a lot of time building things up in the first three quarters of the story so that when we have to have the pay-off in part four it doesn’t quite have the same level of pace or drama that I would have expected. It’s not terrible by any means but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel slightly short changed in part four.  As it is I think that it’s a far better story than Guardians of Prophecy and even when you take away the Victoria element from the story what we are left with is a sound adventure that would have worked back in the 1980’s and works very well as a proper Big Finish main range adventure. Very enjoyable stuff.

Rating 7/10