Luna Romana (2014)

Luna Romana is the final part of a special trilogy to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Doctor Who. It’s also the first story of 2014 and what Luna Romana needs to do is to end the trilogy on a satisfying note so there is no pressure on Matt FItton.

This story features two Romana’s. The only problem is that this story was due to feature Mary Tamm however due to her sad passing away this meant that some quick thinking had to be undertook by the Big Finish team. Do they abandon their ideas or do they do what they have been doing with the Doctors for the last seven years and just get someone to pretend to be the character. Cleverly they chose the latter and I have to say that this was a great idea because they chose wisely about who they would get to play the first Romana. Julie Landau has a difficult job to do and try to be Mary Tamm which was always going to be a tall order and at first I just didn’t think it was going to work and the rest of the story was just going to be awful to listen to but after a while I forgot about this and got use to Landau being Romana and I thought that she could have been a good Romana on TV.

Terry Molloy has been really good in these stories and in fact I think he saved the best until last because the version of Stoyn that we here is very unhinged and became a great interest in the story. As the story progressed I thought that Terry Molloy should be given more non-Davros roles to play because he is a really underrated actor. Lalla Ward is always fun to listen to and she does a great job and has some great lines.

The main problem with this story is that it’s way too long. It’s 120 minutes which is double the length of a normal Companion Chronicle story. This means that there is an awful lot of time to fill. The first episode just didn’t grab me really and I couldn’t understand what purpose it had to the story. After that though the story did pick up and that’s when I felt like I was enjoying the story. I still think that the running time undermined all the good work that Matt Fitton had done.

I think that the way that Stoyn meets his end is rather sad. I cant help but feel sad for the character because of the way that he has been treated in the trilogy. The Doctor has been quite unpleasant to Stoyn and if it were the Master then it wouldn’t have been problem but because Stoyn isn’t the Master it just leaves a slight sour taste in the mouth.

Luna Romana isn’t my favourite story of this trilogy but I still think that there is a lot of like about this story and that is primarily the cast who all work well together and whilst the plot is good its slightly ruined by excessive running time. I want to end on a positive note and I will by saying that the brief clip of Mary Tamm at the beginning of the story was a nice touch and I thought that even though she wasn’t actually involved in the story