The Lamentation Cypher (2014)

If there is one thing that has been constant in the Big Finish forums is the desire to have a Charlotte Pollard series and so their cries have been heard and here we have a boxset of adventures featuring Charley who appeared alongside the eighth Doctor from 2001 to 2007 and then with the Sixth Doctor in a series of superb stories from 2007 to 2009. Charley is a fantastic character and was the second companion created by Big Finish and is arguably their most successful companion. After 13 years she is still as popular as she was when we first heard her on board the R101 and I was worried that these stories weren’t going to live up to expectations that have been growing since word was first mentioned about a possible series. I was slightly worried because I didn’t know what format the series would take as the last time we heard from Charley she was working with the Viyrans.

It’s hard not to make comparisons between Charley and Bernice Summerfield. Ok they have different social backgrounds and jobs but there is something there and this story even starts off with Charley writing in her diary which is something that Bernice did in her early stories (only listened to the first series). Then the narration continues in the story which is something that I think works in this story. One of things that I do like about this story is the relationship between Charley and the Viyrans.

Things seem to start off rather weird when after speaking to Robert Buchan (played by James Joyce) starts saying random words in his speech and I can’t help but think of an episode of House where a guy suffers a bang on the head and then starts to speak gibberish. This is a relatively short but very dramatic moment which seems like it’s going to take up the entire story but appears to be over in less than ten minutes. There are more strange things that happen which then lead to Charley trying to escape.

They try to do something different with the Viyrans. The title ‘Lamentation Cypher’ doesn’t get mentioned until the half hour mark and its dropped into a scene which is where the story starts to take shape. I think that the Viyrans are a great creation and so its great that they feature so prominently in the spin-off series. There is a Viyran that doesn’t speak like the rest of them (voice effect). This seems to create a bit of tension and drama between the Viyrans. There was a nice mystery as to what the Lamentation Cypher was and its not what I was expecting. Another thing I wasn’t expecting was that the Viyrans can effectively stage a coup when the leader becomes unstable. By the end of the story it seems that the course of the series is quite clear. Whether this is going to change in future stories remains to be seen but it was definitely an exciting ending.

Michael Maloney seems to be the Nicholas Briggs of this series as seems to have voiced all the Viyrans and there are several scenes where several Viyrans talking to each other in the same way as when several Daleks talk to each other. Speaking of Mr Briggs, there is a fun cameo from him which sounds like he was playing a train spotter. He does get a more substantial role playing Robert’s dad and sounds like a cheeky cockney that wouldn’t be out of place in Eastenders.

Considering that apart from a brief appearance in ‘Light at the End’ back at the tail end of 2013, it’s been five years since she played Charley last, India Fisher hasn’t missed a step as Charley. If you didn’t know better you would have said that it was less than a year since she appeared in ‘Blue Forgotten Planet’. She has some good scenes with Maloney’s Viyrans and this is something that is going to play well during the course of the series. James Joyce is a character that seemed perfectly fine in the first half of the story but once he had been cured he then seemed to become a more interesting character and that might be because he had some scenes with Nicholas Briggs’ Bert Buchan.

I would be lying if I said that I was bowled over by the release because I just wasn’t. The reason is because I still haven’t got use to what the series is about. What I can see is potential and think that this is going to be a spin-off that is going to be another success story for Big Finish and I look forward to listening to the rest of the series.

Last of the Colophon (2014)

I knew that this was going to be a story that wasn’t going to be as good as ‘The Evil One’. That’s purely because I thought that it would be the best story of the series and if this did manage to beat that then it would have to be a cracker. This story was written by Jonathan Morris who won several Tomstardis Awards in 2013.The story sees the Doctor and Leela arrive on the planet Colophos which on first inspection seems to be. The story is playing with the idea of the Invisible Man and seems like the sort of story that would have featured during the Philip Hinchcliffe era. The involvement of Morax is one that develops over the story when Morax is covered in bandages and at the right point the truth is revealed.

Gareth Thomas returns to the Doctor Who world as Morax and Thomas is brilliant in every single story he appears in and this is no different. Jane Goddard also returns as Nurse Torvik and she is also one fine form. The other supporting characters were all standard but I didn’t find them as interesting as Morax or Torvik. As far as the central performances are concerned, I thought that Louise Jameson was on her usual fine form but after the peak of the previous story, here she seems to return to her usual self which isn’t a bad thing. Tom Baker seems to just stroll through this and there did seem a moment when one of Tom Baker’s famous suggestions seems to have made it in when he’s talking about a signal to show someone its him and how its repeated seems to be his idea. I may be wrong but that is what it seems like to me.

The main problem with this story is that as much as I wanted to love this story, it just didn’t quite connect with me. It’s not a terrible story by any means but compared to other Morris scripts, its not one of his best. I think that this is a story that other people will like because the setting and what it deals with isn’t something that I am wild about and those tend to be the ones that people rave about. I suppose only time will tell but I think that ‘The Evil One’ remains the best story of the series.

Moonflesh (2014)

Moonflesh is the first time that we have had the combination of the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa in a series since the Stockbridge trilogy of stories at the end of 2009 (even though of course they appeared in Fanfare for the Common Men). Since then we have had plenty of Nyssa/Tegan/Turlough adventures so its nice that they have decided to freshen it up by doing something different with the Fifth Doctor. I have always been a huge fan of Nyssa and she is one of only two people to win the Best Companion award at the Tomstardis Awards (winning it in 2007 and 2012). As the current holder of the Best Doctor category, Peter Davison has had a good run of stories in recent years and the run continues in this story.

What does strike me about the early stages of this story is that it seems like its going be a base under siege type story and the story does a good job of building the tension up nice and slowly and by the halfway stage I thought that this would have worked very well during the Davison era on TV.

From start to finish, I couldn’t help think that Francesca Hunt was doing an impression of Sandi Toskvig. I thought that the characters in this story were very good because Hunt did very well as Hannah Bartholomew and I thought that the character was a very strong one and it could easily have been Leela in this story. I also quite liked Phoebe Whitlock played by Rosanna Miles and thought that whilst she might not have been quite a strong as Hannah, she was still an interesting character and I wasn’t bored when she was in the scene. Phoebe really stepped up as a character when became ‘possesed’ and it was almost like an initiation into the story before she becomes accepted as a solid character.

The most famous name in this story is that of Hugh Fraser who played Hasting in the David Suchet series of Poirot stories. Here he plays Edwin Tremayne and he’s a perfectly fine character in this. Tim Bentinck is the face on the cover that I recognise from his handful of appearances in the great BBC comedy ‘The Thick of It’. Also according to Wikipedia (the fountain of truth and knowledge), he is actually Timothy Charles Robert Noel Bentinck, 12^th Earl of Portland, 8^th Count Bentinck. As Nathaniel Whitlock, Bentinck does come across as someone with more money than brains. For me the most interesting person in this entire story was Silver Crow (played brilliantly by John Banks). He just pips Hannah to most interesting character in the story. Silver Crow is a Sioux Indian and is very likeable and I couldn’t help but think of Latoni in ‘Black Orchid’ but Silver Crow is more talkative.

Mark Morris has written a great group of character who are never boring and never become annoying and that’s a rare thing in a story. I cant deny that I found his ghost dance slightly amusing but credit should go to John Banks for making it seem perfectly natural and not a comedy routine. In fact Morris does enough in the early stages of the story to stop it from becoming a comedy. The direction of the story was well handled by Ken Bentley and whilst I didn’t always understand what was going on I will say that it was an enjoyable adventure from the beginning and I look forward to the next two stories in this series.

The Evil One (2014)

The Evil One is my favourite story from this series so far. That’s destroyed any tension that you might have expected but I enjoyed this story a lot. I thought that it was going to be tough to beat ‘The Crooked Man’ because I thought that it was such a great story but then I hadn’t realised that this story was coming. Nicholas Briggs has a great track record when it comes to him as a writer and he doesn’t disappoint here. He writes the story with a straight forward idea and when I say straight forward I don’t mean it as a fault but more of high praise because it means that the story of Leela’s father can be what drives the early part of this adventure. The story sees the Doctor and Leela land on a luxury space cruiser which is lacking in people. What they encounter when they leave the TARDIS is a very eerie atmosphere that would seem out of place on classic Who.

Louise Jameson takes the ball in this story and runs with it giving a great performance from start to finish. For some reason I quite like Evil Leela and easily steals the show often out performing Tom Baker who isn’t poor in this by any means. In fact on this occasion, Baker plays it brilliantly allowing Jameson to take centre stage. Geoffrey Beevers is always guaranteed to give a superb performance. If you haven’t listened to ‘Mastermind’ then you should do because that is Beevers at his best and he gives another stunning performance though I would have liked to have heard more from him but that’s my only critiscm of the story.

When the Doctor is fighting for his life after he is struck with the janis thorn this leads to a thrilling finale where the Doctor is trying to hide from Evil Leela. The final part of this story is a lovely and heart warming scene which shows how far the Doctor and Leela have come since their TV days and credit should go to Tom Baker, Louise Jameson and Nicholas Briggs.

I am going to reiterate that I love this story. I loved every single second of it and this series is proving to be a cracking one. Everything worked brilliantly and I thought that ‘Night of 1000 Stars’ from the Jago and Litefoot series was going to by my story of the month but I have might have to reconsider on the evidence of this story. Top Quality.

The War To End All Wars (2014)

The War to End All Wars is the final First Doctor story in the Companion Chronicles range and this sees Steven Taylor tell a story after he has been dethroned. The idea of King Steven is a fun one and one that I wish had been explored in previous companion chronicles. Anyway, the story that Steven tells explains how he has ended up in a cell.

What the story does well is not pretend that war is a fun or glamorous. It tells the horrors of warfare in a way that seems but its not done in a particularly morbid way. Just downbeat enough to get the message across. Another thing that I think is done well is the idea that both sides of the war are given the same sort of treatment so no one really has an advantage which on the one hand is a very fair idea but on the other hand means that no one is likely to win.

I thought that Peter Purves performance was very good and he has consistently good in all his stories since he first appeared in ‘Mother Russia’ back in 2007. His Hartnell impression is always one of the delights and it doesn’t disappoint here. Also Alice Haig was good as Sida although I thought that the character could have done with being a bit more animated but that’s perhaps me being slightly cruel.

I cant say that this is my favourite Simon Guerrier adventure as I maintain that Home Truths is his best but I think that this story has some good plus points, most notably Peter Purves who performs in the story really well and it’s a weary Steven that we get in this adventure. The setting was a good one for this story and Simon Robinson did a great job in creating this world for Peter Purves, Alice Haig and Simon Guerrier to do their stuff.

The Wax Princess (2014)

The final story of this series has a curious title. The Wax Princess is a curious title but that’s been a running theme during this series. I like how this is a relatively straight forward story which has Jack the Ripper in it. The idea that Ripper is creating these waxworks to bring back his love is quite a good one though I am not sure whether I like the implication that the Ripper is a waxwork himself is probably going a bit too far. However despite this, I still thought that the plot was very good and thoroughly entertaining.

Jago and Litefoot are acquitted which came as a massive relief because it means that the series can go back to what it does best and it wont have this thing hanging over them. The end of the story sees the Scorchies appear. The Scorchies appeared in what I considered to be one of the best Companion Chronicles of 2013 (it was runner up to Mastermind at the 2013 Toms Tardis Awards) and for those who hadn’t heard that story would soon find out what they are about because we get a lovely song.

Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin have given some superb performances throughout this series and they are complimented well by Lisa Bowerman as Ellie, Conrad Asquith as Sergeant Quick and I also like Adrian Rawlins performance as Inspector Abberline.

I think that The Wax Princess is one of the strongest finale’s to a series for quite some time. The story was exciting from start to finish and I never found myself bored at any point. There were several times during the course of this story that I felt it seemed very much like a story that we would have heard during the first couple of series. Not surprising really because Justin Richards is one of the best writers that Big Finish has and he has written for the series since the very first one. The eighth series comes out in October 2014 so we won’t have very long to way and on the evidence of this series and what is about to come it seems that the future is bright for our very own dynamic duo.

Murder at Moorsey Manor (2014)

After being wowed by the previous story, I had a renewed enthusiasm about the remainder of this series. This penultimate adventure is a whodunit which isn’t something that I was expecting from this adventure. This release is written by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris who were behind the Sacrifyers series and it’s perhaps easy to tell. Like the first story, there is more than a subtle sprinkling of Holmes and Watson as Jago and Litefoot arrive at Moorsey Manor where everyone has been summoned by Moriaty and are dressed like Sherlock Holmes. The story starts off in a slightly light hearted story but soon turns very dark and I quite like that because it’s something that this range does quite well and after a while people start to be bumped off.

I like the setting because it has a sort of base under siege vibe to it whilst feeling like a murder mystery adventure. The sort of thing Agatha Christie would have written but it’s the setting of what I am imagining to be a lovely house is what sells this story and credit should go to Howard Carter who has done a great job in this and the other two stories to create the perfect atmosphere for the story to do its job.

The performances were all very good with Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter being at the top of their game.  The supporting cast were all very good and they all good in their respected roles and they all sounded like they had just come out of a Miss Marple or a Poirot story.

Being that it’s the penultimate adventure, it ends on a cliffhanger which means that the final adventure is going to be epic and it was one that I didn’t see coming but it was quick and it did the job perfectly and it’s a great ending to the story. I thought that whilst this adventure wasn’t as good as ‘The Night of 1000 stars’, it was still an enjoyable adventure and this series continues to be a highly enjoyable one.