White Ghosts (2014)

The second story in this third series is an Alan Barnes story which in the past has tended to mean that its going to be something that requires the listener to pay close (very close) attention and if you don’t do that then you might lose something. I always think about Brotherhood of the Daleks which is the most baffling story that Big Finish has ever produced.

At the end of the previous story there was a bit of a row between the Doctor and Leela due to her actions and there is still a bit of a frosty atmosphere but the Doctor seems to be less bothered than Lela. The Doctor has forgiven Leela for what she did and it’s nice that they have settled the fallout from that story and the Doctor is happy to place the blame for her behaviour at the Timelords which might be a bit of a cop-out but I think that it was a nice quick way of getting over it and in a satisfactory manner.
 
Virginia Hey is the big name in this. I say big name but I must admit that I don’t know who she is. A little look on Wikipedia sheds some light and shows that she was in Farscape, Mussolini: The Untold Story and also most impressively was in a Bond film (The Living Daylights). I thought that her performance was perfectly fine, its not the greatest performance ever but I thought it was played perfectly for what the story was and Virginia Hey has done well.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are really good in this and it feels like the relationship has developed far more in the short time that these two have been together than they ever did when they were on TV. That might have more to do with the fact that they didn’t get on so well when they were on TV and now they are much better with each other. Also Leela has been written for in a better way so that the Doctor treats Leela differently and this has meant that we got what we did in the previous story and this continues here.

Even though the second half is longer than the first I must admit that the whole thing flew by and that was surprising. The first episode moved along at quite a good pace and the story was perfectly fine. I think the fact that that the story has a shorter running time than a monthly range adventure meant that Alan Barnes doesn’t have the time to tell a more complex story which is probably a good thing but that might be slightly unfair as Barnes has written standard stories in the past.

I think that this series is different to the first Leela series and that’s a good thing. The big selling point in the trailer for the first series was to suggest that it was going to feel like Saturday tea-time in 1977 and there were aspects of this story which felt like I had an idea of what this was like some six years before I was even born.