The Exxilons (2015)

The Exxilons is the first part of the fourth season of Fourth Doctor Adventures and its weird that its already the fourth season. It seems like only five minutes ago that everyone was getting excited over Destination: Nerva. The title refers to the Exxilons who appeared in the 1974 adventure Death to the Daleks and I was intrigued to find out just how they would feature in this story. I think whenever you bring something from the classic era back there is always going to be a high chance that it doesn’t work however whilst Big Finish have a good track record in this department, there is always the possibility for it not to work.

The story hits the ground running as within five minutes we have Trexa (Daisy Dunlop) running into the TARDIS after being chased by a Tarl.  Over The course of the story there is a gradual add on to the back story of the Exxilons. The Tarl do sound a little bit like Ogrons which is somewhat unfortunate considering that I have only just finished listening to the Gareth Roberts audio versions.

I have to give credit to Jacqueline King. She previously appeared on TV as Donna Noble’s mom and she gives a very convincing American accent (convincing by my ears). Her performance in this is rather good and was a fine addition to the cast. Hugh Ross returns to the Big Finish world (previously in Nights Black Agents) and has a voice which does sound like Richard Franklin (a bit!). There is something about Gethal that I like from the very beginning. He has a sort of madness which Ross does brilliantly and it builds itself really well during the story.

Leela is known by Ergu as Warrior and the Doctor is known as everywhere man. Tom Baker seems to be having fun in this episode and it reminded me of the early days of the Baker era where he seemed to be having fun and the humour was well placed. Louise Jameson also manages to be really solid in this story. I even found K9 to be less annoying than he normally is. I am not very kind about K9 normally and that’s unfair on John Leeson but credit to Leeson for what he managed to do with K9 in this story.

The Exxilons isn’t the best series opening story that we have had in this range but there is something to enjoy about it and you can always rely on Nicholas Briggs to write a story that works just as hard to create strong and likeable characters and make sure that they complement the plot. Its not the best opening story (The Auntie Matter is) but its still a good offering.

Flywheel Revolution (2015)

The original Short Trips was released in four volumes between November 2010 and August 2011 and each volume consisted of eight stories each featuring one Doctor. Now Big Finish have decided to bring the range back except release it one story at a time and obviously the first one is a First Doctor story written by Dale Smith who is making his Big Finish debut (as far as I am aware).

This story is one that is seen from the perspective of the natives rather than the Doctor or the companions. We are introduced to two robots called Frankie and Toby. They have basically have been left to rot on this planet. It’s hard not to feel sympathetic towards them.

The Doctor is seen as a monster which is quite amusing. The ‘monster’ basically does horrible things on the robots that are on the planet. I suppose from the perspective of the Doctor it might not seem such a bad thing and as a viewer/listener we always see/hear it from the Doctors POV but from the other side it seems so very different. There is the small matter of a wall which is referred to throughout the piece and the way that the wall was removed was quite a creative way and one that I thought worked well in this format.

The best thing about having Peter Purves narrate this story is that not only will we get a well told story but it means we get his very good William Hartnell impression. Purves performs from start to finish in a strong way and he has set the bar quite high in how the narration should be done for these stories. Flywheel Revolution is a welcome return for the range and I like the new 30 minute format because it means that there is going to be time for padding and that the story has to get going from the very beginning. Dale Smith had a tough job and handled it well and hopefully he will get a chance to write a full length and full cast audio because I think that he would do a good job.

Now before I sign off I have to address the pricing structure. For 30 minutes of fine drama all that you have to pay is £2.99. Doctor Who Magazine costs more than that, a bus ticket costs more than that so its fair to say that this is the definition of value for money. I am glad that the range is back and think that this new structure for the range means that it can go on for as long as Big Finish can find creative writers.

Gallifrey: Intervention Earth (2015)

Gallifrey: Intervention Earth (or Gallifrey 7) is a story that didn’t see coming. A quick history in this range. It started in 2004 and the third series ended in 2006, it wouldn’t be released until 2011 with the fourth series and then there were two series in 2013 and it seemed that the range had reached an end. But hang on a minute, it was announced that the series was coming back but instead of Lalla Ward as President Romana it would be Juliet Landau playing Romana as she had played the role in the Companion Chronicle story Luna Romana.

As the spin-off range has undergone a regeneration, it seems that Big Finish have decided to go big by bringing back Omega to the Big Finish world and this is where I think that they have struck gold with Gallifrey 7 and that is by trying to bring Omega back out of the Black hole that he finds himself and as you would expect there are people on Gallifrey trying to help him but in a sort of backstabbing kind of way. I like that Narvin is the one sort of consistency from the previous series and I thought that one of the surprising aspects of this piece is when he ends up back in time and has to interact with a couple of the period and Sean Carlsen is perhaps one of the strongest parts of the story.

This adventure sees Sophie Aldred join the range as Ace without the Doctor which is something that I find slightly odd. It’s not a bad thing but I have become so use to hearing Sophie Aldred alongside Sylvester McCoy that it took a while for it to seem normal. Ace has become an agent for the CIA which is something that I think has been hinted at in various ideas about what happened to Ace after she left the show. Sophie Aldred has managed to give a performance that doesn’t seem that out of place than what she has given in the main range. It surprises me that nearly thirty years after Ace debuted and fifteen years since the first Ace story in a Big Finish play that the character can still seem fresh and just as engaging as ever. I am conflicted about what I think of Juliet Landau. I think that on the one hand I find the performance of Landau to be a good one. It’s a confident performance that oozes confidence and I think that its one of the things that I like about this story. On the other hand I just don’t think that this Romana is up there with the sort that Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward give. First of all Landau isn’t posh enough and I know that its possible for the character to be played differently but on this occasion I think that this problem is what I was wrestling with a some points in the story. Stephen Thorne returns to voice Omega and if I had one issue with this story is that I would have wanted more from Omega because I think that Thorne has such a wonderful voice. Totally didn’t expect Gyles Brandreth to appear as Rexx. I can’t help but think of Brandreth now without thinking of The One Show which he is a regular contributor but in this case he managed to make me think of that show whilst Rexx was interacting with Ace.

The door is left open for a eight outing and we will have to wait until 2016 before we get to find out what happens to Romana but its clear that this series which refuses to die has to potential to live on and on and on. It’s a welcome return and a truly enjoyable adventure. I think that what Scott Handcock and David Llwellyn have done is breathe new life into a series that needed to have some new life injected into it. I look forward to the next part.

Mistfall (2015)

Mistfall is the first story from the main range of 2015 and it’s a sequel to the 1980 adventure Full Circle. The thing about Full Circle is that for years I never rated it that highly and then all of a sudden I started to appreciate it a lot more and so when I heard that this story was being released I was mega excited. I like how it’s another Doctor with the Marsh creatures. I don’t think that people would need to have seen Full Circle but I think that it would help. I cant help but say that whilst listening to this I was remembering certain moments from the TV adventure and that made me enough this release even more.

The story sees the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough make an unexpected return to E-Space. This is possible because of what Adric did in Earthshock where he worked out the coordinates. If I were Adric then I would be annoyed that I went through all that trouble and now back on my home world.

This story features Jemma Redgrave who will soon be reprising the role of Kate Stewart in the upcoming UNIT series for Big Finish. I liked the character of Decider Lana Merrion. Under her leadership they are trying to understand the changes that take place during Mistfall. Merrion is a strong leader who is a leader that does have a conscience and her actions are sort of understandable.

One of the many successes that the story manages to do is give a bit more weight to the Marshmen. They served a purpose in Full Circle and worked well there but in this story there needed to be more and we got that. The idea of their being a talking Marshman is something that makes sense because it would be hard to take them seriously in an audio adventure if all they did was grunt or something like that.

The splitting up of the main characters works well as we have Turlough and Nyssa together. This partnership is not something I remember listening to a lot so it seems quite refreshing to hear them work together. The Doctor and Tegan is something that does seem more familiar but they are well done. They meet the Starliner crew and at least they don’t seem to like they were in Full Circle. I don’t think that any of the regulars don’t pull their weight or are limited in what they should be doing.

If there is one thing I didn’t like it was the appearance of the spiders. I am not the greatest fan of spiders and so when they appeared in the story I didn’t like it. Apart from that the story worked really well for me.

The thing that I wasn’t expecting but was a nice surprise was that there wasn’t a proper wrapped up all nicely at the end type finish. It’s obviously going to be one of those series which link into one another which harks back to that period of the show. Mistfall is a good release and a nice companion piece to Full Circle. It’s written with nice characters and there is enough to keep long term fans happy who have watched Full Circle countless times and yet engage with an audience who haven’t had the pleasure of watching that story. There was a possibility that this story wasn’t going to match what we saw in Full Circle but I am happy to say that my worries were unfounded and this story starts the main range releases in 2015 off to a fine start.

The English Way of Death (2015)

The second of the Gareth Roberts novelisations is one that I haven’t read before. The story sees the Doctor and Romana arrive in 1930’s London where for some reason the Doctor decides that he wants to return some library books. Of course this being a Doctor Who story things don’t go smoothly and its usually a question of how long it would take the Doctor to get into trouble.

Setting this story in the 1930’s means that we are going to get a plethora of posh speaking characters which is quite amusing but after a few minutes, things need to develop and thankfully things do. The threat of this story is a gaseous villain called Zodaal. Despite being a visual idea, its one that works very well and Big Finish have a good track record of making normally visual villains work on audio. Zodaal wants to possess humans just so that they can eat brains. The lengths some people will go to to get a new body. Despite a good start, I have to admit that the story did start to drift away a bit. I don’t know what it was but I thought that The Romance of Crime was the stronger story.

There were some good moments in this story. One of the more memorable ones included K9 being possessed. I know that in the past I have been quite hard on K9 but I cant say that this wasn’t a good use of the character.

Like the previous story, I thought that Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were superb and actually this was a better story for Romana than Romance. There were times that Lalla Ward was talking and I thought that I was listening to a Gallifrey story because she gave that sort of intensity to the performance. Like in the previous story, there was a performance which I thought stood out and that was Terence Hardiman’s performance as Stackhouse. Now I remember him and will always remember him as the titular character in the Demon Headmaster. It’s a performance that is as good as Miranda Raison’s Margo and Xais.

Jamie Robertson deserves some credit for creating a very atmospheric atmosphere and a world that sounds real and somewhere that I would want to spend some time in. Just without the zombie inducing gas. Robertson won a Tomstardis Awards for his work on The Silver Turk which is another historical story so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he was done well creating such a convincing world. I don’t give the covers much time during my reviews but I think that Tom Webster has created another striking cover and its better than the one for Romance which is a cover that I really liked.

John Dorney has done a very good job of adapting these two stories and unlike previous novelisations such as Love and War, I didn’t find myself wishing the end would come and even though I thought the second half of this story wasn’t as strong as the first. It wasn’t terrible by any means. Nicholas Briggs has directed this story with the same usual amount of energy and its when the writing and directing come together that we have something that is enjoyable to listen to.

Whilst it wasn’t the better of the two stories, I thought that this was a good release and at least complimented the previous story well and I thought that it was well worth the £25 that I paid for the downloaded version. There is another Gareth Roberts novelisation coming this year so I hope that it manages to keep up to the standard these two have done.

The Romance of Crime (2015)

The Romance of Crime is a story that many fans have been waiting for since Tom Baker joined Big Finish in 2012. It sees former husband and wife Tom Baker and Lalla Ward reunite for the first time since 1981. I have always been surprised that Lalla Ward wanted to work with Baker because it was clear that they didn’t always get on before they got married. I suppose the passage of time can change people’s opinion. The Romance of Crime is based on the 1995 Virgin Novel of the same name written by new series writer Gareth Roberts. Like previous novel adaptions that Big Finish have done I haven’t read this book so I come to this release cold. The story is set on an asteroid prison in the Uva Beta Uva planetary system on the rock of judgement.

Miranda Raison is about to become a companion for the sixth Doctor but here she plays Zais and Zais has a rather interesting way of killing people. This is by squeezing people’s head until they burst. It’s a horrid idea that is made even more horrific by the sound effects used to realise this. It doesn’t happen once but several times. Miranda Raison does a very good job in this story and the character is one of the strongest ones in recent Big Finish plays.

The cover sort of ruins this and those that had read this book would already know this but the Ogrons make a return. The Ogrons are perhaps most associated with the Daleks but its nice to think that they work for other people/alien races. Zais isn’t the sort to do any of the donkey work so its seems like a logical thing to do to have the Ogrons. If memory serves me correctly, they didn’t do much talking in Day of the Daleks but in this story. I don’t know if I like the idea that they are more chatty than normal because there was something rather simplistic with them not talking but grunting their way through a story.

Despite the good start that the story had I think that it seemed to get a bit bogged down with stuff in the latter stages but to best hones this story was more an exercise about what a Fourth Doctor and Romana 2 story would be like and I have to say that it was a moderate success. I that the performances were all good from the central characters. Tom Baker was his usual self and by that I mean brilliant. His interaction with Lalla Ward was fun to listen to and it seemed like they genuinely got on which is good to know. Lalla Ward hasn’t always been the strongest performer in these stories but she steps up her game in this story and manages to hold her own with Tom. I even found John Leeson to be entertaining to listen to. That’s a bit cruel, I meant to say that I even found K9 entertaining to listen to.

As far as novel adaptions go. This is one of the more enjoyable. This felt more like a Fourth Doctor Adventures story as opposed to a novel adaption. John Dorney did a good job of making this work and I would say that I might try and find the book on ebay or something. I am looking forward to listening to the next Gareth Roberts adaption.