Night of the Stormcrow (2012)

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a subscriber bonus. In recent years we have had Daleks, Krotons and a return to the Web Planet. There has also been a return of Susan and a multi doctor and companion story. This year as it is the year that Tom Baker made his debut in the range that he would be the one that is used in the freebie. The story sees the Doctor and Leela arrive at an observatory where they are attack by something that can take over the minds of people. I love the remote setting of the story as I think that it cranks up the drama. As it is written by Marc Platt the one thing that you aren’t going to get is a straightforward adventure but sometimes that isn’t a bad thing.

I like how this has only come about because of people messing around with forces they don’t understand. It’s the classic thing in sci-fi where it eventually comes to bite the behind of the person or people that have been doing the messing.  The story starts off rather well with some wonderful scene setting as some rather nice music from Jamie Robertson. However as the story progresses it loses some of that magic. It picks up for the cliffhanger which I rather liked but then just carried on into the second episode. I was kind of hoping that the Stormcrow would be something more than what we got.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are very good as you would expect if you had listened to the series earlier in the year but I was more interested in the supporting cast because it was the second story of the year for Chase Masterson who plays Peggy Brooks in this but I cant make my mind up about whether I liked Peggy more or Vienna. I think that Vienna probably edges it just because there were things in this story that made Peggy quite interesting. Going back to Tom Baker its fair to say that he has got a hold of the Fourth Doctor in the Big Finish universe as he manages to play it effortlessly here and Louise Jameson really has had a fantastic year which was ended well with a nicely written role in this story.

It’s always hard to knock something that is given to us for free as it’s a bit like biting the hand that feeds you. So its with a heavy heart that I say that I didn’t really like Night of the Stormcrow. It’s not terrible because all the characters that were in the story were well written for it was just the actual story that I struggled with and in the end I just didn’t enjoy it as I had done with previous subscriber specials. There are many reasons to listen to it as it has Tom Baker and Louise Jameson and it’s a Marc Platt story but I just think that The Wrath of the Iceni remains the best Fourth Doctor story of 2012.