Death's Deal (2013)

We are now at the penultimate part of this series. Whereas in the previous Doctor story we got someone who wasn’t a companion or even anything close but the voice of the Daleks, here we get Catherine Tate who played Donna Noble during the 2008 series. I’m glad they went with Donna because I think that she was the most fun despite her less than successful encounter in the 2006 Christmas Special. Over 13 episodes in 2008 she blossomed into a wonderful character and played brilliantly by Tate. I love the Tennant theme so was glad to hear it. This story has been written by Darren Jones who apart from writing a couple of 11^th Doctor original novels, he has hasn’t written for Big Finish. This is always a good thing as it allows a bit of freshness to come through as I didn’t know what to expect.

I love how Darren Jones has managed to get the character of Donna perfectly right. “Put a sock in it Pocahantas” was an early favourite. Describing the Doctor as “a lanky streak of madness” is typical Noble and it immediately gave me the impression that we were in the Tenth Doctor era. As for the story itself, the Doctor and Donna arrive on the deadliest planet and it isn’t just a gimmick. It is actually a deadly planet and there is nothing good about it. When Tate talks about shipwrecked I cant help but think of ‘The Doctors Wife’ where there is shot of all the crashed ships and its an image that helps create a nice world here.  Another thing that helped create the atmosphere is the music and credit should go to Jamie Robertson who has worked wonders (like he always does) in creating a truly horrible planet.

The question as to how the 11^th Doctor was going to feature in the story was something that I was interested in finding out as it’s always been different in the previous encounters. It was done well but I was also impressed with Tate’s impression of Matt Smith. Duncan Wiseby is a regular visitor to the Big Finish world and can always be relied upon to give us a good performance and he does that here as Krux and Erskine.

I thought that the story was a lot better than the previous story (though that’s not much of a compliment). It wasn’t just Catherine Tate which made it a great release but the actually story itself was very good and got my attention from the very beginning and kept it for the duration.  If I had to make spot a flaw with it and that would be that it could have done with being 10 minute shorter but I hope that Darren Jones is given the opportunity to write for the main range as I think that with a full cast audio he could write a really strong release. Fingers Crossed.