Starlight Robbery (2013)

The second story in this series sees the return of the Sontarans. It’s quite nice considering how long it took for the Sontarans to make an appearance in the Big Finish world that they are now regular visitors to it. The story picks up straight from Persuasion as Garundel is trying to sell the Persuasion machine along with the inventor’s body.  This story was written by Matt Fitton who’s previous seventh Doctor adventure wasn’t a great one if I remember right. I think that after Protect and Survive it was always going to suffer but this time it didn’t have that problem though I did enjoy Persuasion.  The story has a fun opening episode where all the characters are brought together

With Klein and Will mingling in with the crowd it does feel like it’s a newer version of Ace and Hex. It doesn’t quite have the same magic to it but I like Klein and Will and so enjoy the fact that they got to have much of the limelight in the early part of these stories. I thought that Tracey Childs has shown us that there is more to Klein that the Nazi scientist stuff and it’s a good performance from Childs. It’s appearing to be a sound move to bring the character back and she works well with Will Arrowsmith and it’s a good performance from Christian Edwards. I do hope that Edwards is bought back in future stories because I do think that the character of Will is rather good and fun to listen to.

I think that Stuart Milligan stole this story to be honest. He’s been in a number of stories over the last several years and he always puts in a great performance but in this story as Garundel, he is superb. I like the character and how he reminds me of Garron from The Ribos Operation. He isn’t trying to con people but he does have the gift of the gab and he’s great from start to finish. I also thought that Ziv was a great complimentary character to Garudenl. Jo Woodcock did well in being Garron’s number two and also being a romantic interest for Will.

The Sontarans don’t feature as much as I would have expected and normally that would be a big problem for me but due to the fact that I enjoyed this story so much I overlooked this and just went along with it. I think that Dan Starkey is great as the Sontarans and I thought that whilst they were a bit in the background at first they more than made up for it in the final episode and they were well used here and credit to Matt Fitton for making them seem different to what we’ve been used to. I  found Starlight Robbery quite fun. It could so easily have just been a very pedestrian story with the Sontarans being predictable or the story getting bogged down with whether Klein would find out about her past. I did chuckle at the line where WOTAN was mentioned. It seemed like a cheeky reference and I thought that it was the perfect ending to an enjoyable story.