The Defectors (2015)

The Locum Trilogy of stories are building up to the 200^th release in the main range. The initial idea of the trilogy is to put Doctors with companions from earlier in the shows past and that in itself is a nice idea because it’s one that must have been imagined by fans for years and now Big Finish are going through with it. The great thing about this idea is that it gives the older companions the opportunity to feature in a full cast audio which is a bit of a rarity for the likes of Katy Manning or Maureen O’Brien. The first in this series is The Defectors which sees the Seventh Doctor team up with Jo Grant. It’s always interesting to know the logic for going with the combinations that they do but one would suspect that it’s partly down to scheduling but anyway we have the combination that we do and Nicholas Briggs is the one that gets the series underway.

Briggs doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet and the action instantly gets going. There is a lot of confusion in the early stages. Sadly the confusion seems to mask the fact that this story is slightly difficult to follow. It’s one of those stories that doesn’t make any sense to me but didn’t mean that I hated it. It’s a perfectly functional story but I think that it would have made more sense to have a familiar threat to just add that killer punch. One of the few successes of the story is the dynamic between Sylvester McCoy and Katy Manning. I have become so use to hearing Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier bickering with McCoy’s Doctor, that it was a nice refreshing change to have someone else interact with the Doctor.

Something that come to grate on me recently and its not just a Big Finish problem is to do with the character of The Brigadier. The Brigadier is away and out of the picture which is convenient and to be honest this is something that bothers me because everyone knows that Nicholas Courtney has passed away and so if you are going to use the character then either cast someone who sounds like Courtney or don’t have him in it.

Nicholas Briggs is one of the most prolific writers in Big Finish and over the years he has written such classics as The Sword of Orion or The Nowhere Place but I think that on this occasion he has missed the mark and its not the best start to the Locum Trilogy that there could have been. Normally the middle story of the series tends to be the weakest but I think come the end of The Secret History, I don’t think that this story will be the best.

Rating - 6/10