The Shadow Heart (2012)

The Shadow Heart is the final seventh Doctor story of the year and after complaining that there wasn’t much of Sylvester McCoy in the main range, that has more than be sorted out in the bonus releases and this story. As the final story of the multi-Doctor series, there is a certain amount that this story has to achieve. The responsibility falls to Jonathan Morris who has had a cracking year with the what I consider story of the year adventure Protect and Survive and the equally entertaining The Curse of Davros. The thing that I knew about this story was that it would feature a character who would be getting her own series. Vienna Salvatori will be appearing in her own story in 2013 but now she plays someone who is after the Doctor.

Sylvester McCoy has had a really good year. After his relatively light involvement in the main range, he has been great in everything he has been in and it continues in this. As much fun as it is when the Seventh Doctor is with Ace and Hex, he seems to thrive when he is on his own. Two of the three stories that he did in 2011 were brilliant and he is just as good as in those stories. He was superb from start to finish. Chase Masterson plays Vienna and she has some history in the sci-fi genre having played Leeta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1995-1999). She was exactly what this story needed. She sounded like she should have her own TV show and the way that Masterson plays the role in a way that is never dull, never repetitive and something that the Doctor Who world hasn’t had before. I loved the character of Talbar and Horval. It seems like Morris has taken a leaf from Robert Holmes’ book of having an amusing double act in his story. Eve Karpf (Talbar) and Alex Mallinson (Horval) worked brilliantly well together and at first I thought were better than Vienna. As the story settled down and Vienna took her rightful place.

As the story deals with timey-wimey things it only works because Jonathan Morris has done it and he has form with the 2003 story Flip-Flop which had two cds which could be listened to in either order and managed to make sense. I did at times lose what was going on but it wasn’t long before I found a thread in the story again.  I found the idea of Monkey bats and flying snails to be highly amusing and it could only happen in Doctor Who.

I thought it was a rather good story end for this series. It starts off really well and settles down in the middle before picking up again to give a solid end. But for me what makes this story worth listening to are the characters. That is what you get in a Jonathan Morris story, a good plot but very strong characters. As a series, I would say that it’s the second best series behind the Seventh Doctor series. I thought that The Burning Prince was the best story of the series followed by this one. It was an interesting idea to build a series round three different Doctors and it worked rather well. Whether a Vienna story would, only time would tell but on the basis of this story I think there is potential.

Return of the Rocket Men (2012)

Return of the Rocket Men is obviously a sequel to the 2011 story The Rocket Men. When I reviewed that story I was slightly disappointed with it and thought that for some reason it didn’t quite gel. Clearly there was enough for Big Finish to commission a sequel except instead of John Dorney, we get Matt Fitton who has written for the main range and this is his first foray into the Companion Chronicle world. Peter Purves replaces William Russell in this story as it is set during the Steven Taylor/Dodo Chaplet era of the show. The story starts off with a weird scene, Steven Taylor is on his own and is attacked by the Rocket Men. It’s quite an harsh moment when Steven’s shin is broken after he’s been beaten up by Van Kleefe. Especially on his birthday, but no sooner as we’re told about that then we go back to the ‘present’ day and just by the mention of Dodo’s name I am irritated. Thankfully that passes quite quickly.

The story is relatively straight forward and it works from start to finish. After the weird opening scene the story felt like a normal companion chronicle. I thought that the second half continued the good work that the first had done. A problem that I felt with The Rocket Men was that by the half way stage I was still wandering what the actual plot was but there wasn’t the same problem in this as it was clear where the story was going. The cliffhanger worked really well. I liked the speech that Steven gave at the end of the first episode, it was quite moving and it was just a shame that it was wasted for a mission to rescue Dodo. The whole thing about Return of the Rocket Men is that it shows what Steven Taylor was like before we met him in The Chase. It was a brave and almost action hero type character which is complimented by the way that Peter Purves delivers his lines. I am starting to regard Peter Purves’ performances on par with William Russell.  Tim Treloar was very good as Van Cleef. Van Cleef is an effective baddie and Treloar is good to listen to when he is narrating his parts of the story.

I quite liked this story, I thought that it was a fitting sequel to The Rocket Men and at 67 minutes long it moves at a pretty quick pace and I may go back and re-listen to it as a result. I thought that Return of the Rocket Men was an enjoyable adventure and in the extras there is the possibility of there being a third story which I would be looking forward to.

Dark Eyes (2012)

The Doctor is reborn…well that’s what it seems like. There is a new look to the Eighth Doctor which has remained the same since Paul McGann debuted for Big Finish in January 2001. It was clear that this special release wasn’t going to be a happy laugh a minute affair. Out of the special releases that I was aware of, this was the one that I had some high expectations of. This was partly due to the extraordinary way that the last Eighth Doctor adventure ended and it’s been an awful long time since then and now we get the next chapter. Now over four episodes we get what is an effective conclusion to this part of the eighth Doctor era.

The story takes place after the events of To The Death. Where Lucie Miller and Tamsin Drew were killed by the Daleks as well has his great grandson and the Doctor is a broken man at the very beginning where he is trying to take the TARDIS to the brink before he is stopped. Having a downbeat and suicidal Doctor is not something that we are really use to. But the Doctor is stopped by Straxus who was previously played by Nikolas Grace in Sisters of the Flame and Vengeance of Morbius. Straxus gives the Doctor hope by sending him to the Western Front in World War One. Now I would think its fair to say that there are better places to find hope than in a war zone.  Here he meets Molly O’Sullivan and they spend the story trying to fight Daleks.

The Daleks plan is quite a good one and I love it when there is a massive sense of scale and especially when its different to trying to invade a planet. The point of trying to wipe out timelords seems to lend itself towards the Time-war era of the Doctor which is good because the closer we get to that then the closer I feel like there isn’t such a big hole between the eighth and ninth Doctors. Molly is effectively a weapon that is being used to try and wipe out the Timelords designed by Kotris. Strange things happen throughout. Basically the Doctor blacks out and when he wakes up he is in a different situation that anyone else wouldn’t have been able to get out of and Molly is always with him. Thankfully this is explained in a satisfactory way and not rushed at the end. I think that the big plot point that Kotris is actually Straxus’s future regeneration might bother some people and they might have seen it coming. But I thought that it done better than in Trial of a Timelord.

Paul McGann is very good in this and its clear that he has got some new energy in this story. How much of its down to the fact he gets a new costume is unclear but I must say on that point I think that it’s a rather good outfit. I will miss the TV movie version but its always good to have a change every once and a half decades or so. He is still getting over the recent deaths and yet there are more in this story that he has to come to terms with but McGann’s Doctor does it in a way that is better than the way any other Doctor would do it. That’s the genius of McGann’s Doctor.

Ruth Bradley plays Molly O’Sullivan who is a VAD. Did you know what a VAD was? I didn’t. Apparently it stands for Voluntary Aid Detachment. She is introduced to us in an unusual way as she is writing a letter but we get a clear idea of who she is and what she does. The letter thing is maintained throughout the four episodes. The big mystery with Molly is just how can she recognise the TARDIS and be able to fly it like she’s been doing it forever whilst maintaining that she doesn’t know whats going on. The character’s journey was very interesting and it makes the listener connect with her. I liked how when she had the chance to either stay with the Doctor or leave, she decided on the latter which was the right thing for the character to do. She was feisty and funny in equal measure and it wasn’t going to be easy to replace Sheridan Smith but Ruth Bradley has done a good job.

The biggest name in this story is that of Toby Jones who appeared in the 2010 episode Amy’s Choice. Here he plays Kotris (a.k.a X) who is a Timelord and pops up every so often for a blink and you’ll miss it scene. Whoever decided to ask Toby Jones to play a part in this deserves a massive round of applause because it was a fantastic piece of casting. Everytime that I could hear his voice then I would be totally enjoying the scene. Jones is one of those actors who is brilliant in whatever he is in even if the tv programme or film is poo.

At the end of the day, Dark Eyes is an enjoyable adventure that had a lot to live up to after To The Death and whilst I don’t think it quite pulls it off, there is plenty to like about this adventure. Hopefully it won’t be so long between adventures for the eighth Doctor because this moody and slightly downbeat Doctor is quite fun in a weird kind of way.

The Last Post (2012)

The Last Post is the last story to feature Caroline John as Liz Shaw. I remarked when I was reviewing ‘Binary’ that when this story came around it would have a different feel to it. This is the second story to be written by James Goss who previously wrote ‘The Time Museum’ which I wasn’t a big fan of. This story also sees Liz’s family introduced as the other person playing her mom.  The story is quite similar to ‘The Three Companions’ as the majority of this story takes place in letters and phone calls, this is quite different to how other stories in the series are structured and it was done rather well.

The story sees people who are going to die and they receive a letter that tells them of this. Now I like this idea but what makes it work even better is that it ties in several deaths that we encounter in the stories on TV that feature Liz. That’s quite a clever thing that James Goss has done and it doesn’t feel like its indulgent but just a nice thing to do.  It’s a wonderful way of making this feel like it takes place in the period that its suppose to be. It’s not something that I think has been pulled off in a Liz story. The early part of the story starts off with a mystery as to who or what is sending the letters and also perhaps just as importantly why. This is a mystery that is part of what I liked about this story. When we discovered what was causing this it occurred at just the right time and more importantly it made sense and suited the style of the story.

Despite the Liz Shaw stories not always being as strong as they could be, Caroline John always played the role with such grace and love that you would almost forgive the story not being up to scratch because it enabled us to hear Caroline. The fact that we have a family introduced into this story means that it gives Caroline John a chance to play a different side to Liz as we have never met anyone from her personal life except for a friend in ‘The Blue Tooth’ way back in 2007. The desperation in her voice when she knows her mother has had a letter was one of the many highlights of this story. Rowena Cooper is brilliant as Dame Emily Shaw.  She is a very charismatic person and its nice that she has achieved as much as her daughter and you can see where she gets here intelligence from. The cliffhanger that involves her is one of the best cliffhangers that I have heard for quite sometime, its quite difficult to achieve this in a companion chronicle but Goss has pulled it off.

It was planned that we would have many more adventures with Liz’s mom but sadly this wont happen which is one of those things that we will wonder ‘what if’. It’s quite nice that the last Liz Shaw story was the best. It was nice to listen to and I’m surprised that whilst I was listening to it I wasn’t thinking that it was to be the last one. I was instead thinking what a wonderful companion chronicle it was. I think it’s the best one of the year just beating ‘The Rings of Ikiria’, I don’t think its because of it being Caroline John’s last story but just because it’s a solid story from beginning to end…and also it’s the best Liz Shaw story ever.

The Acheron Pulse (2012)

The Acheron Pulse is the middle story of this multi-Doctor series. Now being the middle story of a series is not an enviable position because it has an awkward job to do. It has to tell a good story itself but compliment the previous story and give an good set up for the final story. It’s an almost thankless task and sometimes the writer pulls it off and sometimes they just miss the mark by an inch and in the case of this story it’s the latter. Rick Briggs has written Witch from the Well which I rather liked and so along with my enjoyment of the Burning Prince I had high hopes for this story. It takes place some 30 years after the Fifth Doctor’s adventure.

The story picks up in the middle when the Prince makes a surprising return. I say surprising because at the end of the previous story, he was pushed out of the ship and presumably to his death. Of course this isn’t the case and it leads to a cracking start to the third episode. Unfortunately the problem that I have with this story is that it didn’t grab me in the way that Witch from the Well or The Burning Prince had. The opening episode seems to set the tone and pace of the story which is that nothing really dramatic seems to happen and I notice that the first episode ran at 33 minutes and 28 seconds and that is the shortest episode. I think had five minutes from each episode being cut then it would have made for a snappier story.

Colin Baker is perfectly good but it’s not his best story.  He has some good moments which show why his Doctor is so good in a Big Finish play. Having this Doctor without a companion is just as unusual for number six than five. In fact this is only the third time and the first since I.D back in April 2007.

James Wilby is an effective baddie in The Acheron Pulse as Tenebris. I thought he was a highlight in a story where characters weren’t as strong and they normally would be. The rest of the supporting cast did as good a job as they could and the one thing that you can never accuse a Big Finish play of is having a cast where they don’t give 100%. Jane Slavin (Teesha) and Carol Noakes had some good lines but were overshadowed by Wilby.

The problem that I have with this story is that I tried at least three times to try and get a handle on this story but I just couldn’t and usually if it takes more than three attempts to start from the beginning then I can tell that I’m not going to enjoy this as much as other stories. It’s not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just that compared to Witch from the Well and The Burning Prince I just found it average.

Voyage to Venus (2012)

Voyage to Venus is the first of two special Jago and Litefoot releases. At the end of the fourth and most recent series, the sixth Doctor invites Jago and Litefoot to join him on an adventure.  The thing about this release was that it was released a month early which to my recollection has never happened before, certainly since I have been a subscriber. Anyway the story takes place on Venus which is being run by women who live in a city above the clouds and pretty soon the Doctor, Jago and Litefoot are involved in a war between the original inhabitants and the women.

After being glad that Love and War was made because it was the start point for the Benny/Ace/Seventh Doctor part of his timeline. I’m glad that Jago and Litefoot have finally got to travel in the TARDIS. It’s been something that I have been looking forward to since I first watched The Talons of Weng-Chiang. But Voyage to Venus and the next adventure can’t be just about that and I’m happy to say that it isn’t. The story is pretty straight forward but amusing from start to finish. The reaction of two Victorian gentlemen finding themselves not only in a spaceship that’s bigger on the inside than the outside but on another planet in another time was what you would expect. I found Jago’s reaction to me very amusing though I thought that Jago being referred to as Jago-maam was somewhat tiresome after a while.  The idea that there is a planet run by women and men referred to as mere tools for reproduction aren’t a new idea but it works rather well in this context. The whole feel of this story was that it was more of a Jago and Litefoot story as opposed to a Doctor Who story. The stories that Jonathan Morris has written over the last couple of years have tended to focus more on being entertaining than opposed to be complicated and getting bogged down in paradoxes and stuff like that. He wrote Protect and Survive which I think is one of the best stories since Enemy of the Daleks and whilst Voyage to Venus isn’t on that level or that dark it’s still a good story with strong characters that you can either like of dislike.

Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter have always been a joy to listen to ever since Jago and Litefoot first appeared back in 2009 the fact that they are thrown into a totally unusual setting was always going to be one of the selling points of this story and they both put in brilliant performances. Benjamin in particular was good form as Jago seemed to be finding it harder to deal with that Litefoot. Colin Baker is effectively the guest star of this release which is a weird way of looking at it. The Doctor wasn’t here just to get Jago and Litefoot from A to B but was also there to be the Doctor and it’s another top performance from Colin Baker and its almost the end of another good year for this Doctor. The supporting performances were all very solid and no one really put a foot wrong which is always good.

Voyage to Venus is a wonderful adventure. It was what I hoped it would be and now we can say that Jago and Litefoot have travelled in the TARDIS.  This is the third of the special releases that I have listened to and they have all delivered in different ways. The next story sees Jago and Litefoot travel to the new world and hopefully it will live up to the standard that this story has set. On a side note, you can buy this on CD for £5 and on download for £1. Yes I there isn’t much that you could buy for £1 that makes you feel like you have got your moneys worth and for £1 there isn’t really much that you could grumble at.

Love and War (2012)

Love and War is the second of the special release Bundle and I have just listened to UNIT: Dominion so Love and War always had a tough job to try and top that. This story was what set up the character way back in 1992 and so in its 20^th year, Big Finish have decided that this is the story they would use to celebrate this milestone. This story was originally a novel by Paul Cornell for the Virgin New Adventures range and I must say that despite knowing of the range, I have never read a single book so whilst some people may be able to spot the differences between the audio and novel versions. I can only go on what is presented in this 2 and a half hour story. Adapted by Jacqueline Rayner, the story sees the Doctor and Ace arrive on the planet Heaven. The story starts off with an eight minute prelude which I thought was quite an odd thing to do but it’s an interesting eight minutes. The reason why the Doctor wants to go to Heaven is quite a boring reason but it’s clear that the Doctor is up to something and it’s not long before the adventure kicks into top gear.

There are many things to like about Love and War. The main thing for me is that it’s the prelude to the two main range adventures ‘The Shadow of the Scourge’ (2000) and ‘The Dark Flame’ (2003). It was always interesting to find out just how Bernice ended up joining the Doctor and it’s a relief that this has finally being done and that’s another thing off my wish list of things I would like to hear in Big Finish. Having being quite late to the Bernice stories having only listened to the first series of Big Finish adventures, I found the Bernice that we got in this story to be pretty much the same one as we heard in ‘Oh No It Isn’t’ (1998), it’s quite impressive from both a literary perspective and an acting perspective that there is a nice continuity over nearly a decade and a half. Something that I don’t think has been looked at (not before series two anyway) is what made Bernice the person we hear in these plays and it’s involves Daleks which is a nice way to make the Doctor sympathise with her in a way that is different from the norm. Lisa Bowerman is very good in this play and despite this being a celebration of the character of Bernice Summerfield, she doesn’t take centre stage and Lisa plays the character in just the right way with the right amount of humour and determination that we have come to expect.

The Love aspect of the story centres around Ace. Now I’m not normally a fan of romance in Doctor Who when it involves the regulars because to me it gets in the way of the action and it normally goes into sickly sweet territory and totally ruins and tension or drama that was going on. Certainly there were moments when it looked like it was going to get a bit sickly sweet but credit to Jacqueline Rayner who has written a very solid script and managed to keep the Ace/Jan romance going just right. Sophie Aldred gets to play the angry Ace in possibly some of the most dramatic scenes that Ace has been in for quite some time. Her anger at the monsters and at the Doctor seemed to be in equal measure. It was hinted at early on that Ace would leave the Doctor but it was obvious that this wasn’t going to be the case and that made the ending even more effective. James Redmond played the love interest and to be honest I think at times the sort of lack of anger/fight in the character did become a problem but after the story had finished I thought that it kind of complimented Ace.

Sylvester McCoy was brilliant in this. His Doctor is renowned for being a manipulative Doctor and there are several scenes which are brilliant and wouldn’t have been as effective had it not being Sylvester McCoy in the role. The Doctor has always played his companions as puppets and in several stories in the last couple of years in the main range this has been addressed but in this story it seemed like the Doctor had to take a long hard look at his actions and McCoy is brilliant at being sombre and deep in thought.

If I had to pick a fault it is that I found the monster threat to be a bit underwhelming. They sounded great and certainly grabbed my attention in their scenes but I would be lying if I said that they an effective menace. Also the cliffhanger was a bit of a disappointment because it went from romance to drama with no real sense of a build-up.  Apart from that Love and War is a very enjoyable release. It’s not up there with UNIT: Dominion but there is plenty to enjoy and at £12.99 for a download and £14.99 for a CD it’s certainly value for money and a story that is going to be like a fine wine, it’ll get better with age.

On a final note, my favourite line was from Bernice when she said “This is the last thing a Donought sees” That did make me chuckle.

Rating - 7.5/10