Live 34 (2005)

Live 34 is the most unique play that has been done in Doctor Who. This story is the first contribution from James Parsons and Andrew Stirling-Brown. It sees the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex try and infiltrate a Colony and investigate the dealings of their leader, Premier Jaeger. This story is quite unique because it is told in the form of a genuine radio broadcast. For the only time in the shows history there is no theme tune. All you get is static with a few snippets of sound including the Seventh Doctor theme.

What is stranger is that we don’t hear from Ace until Part 2 and we don’t hear from Hex until Part 3. The first we hear from the Doctor is that he is somehow a leader of the FDP (Freedom and Democracy Party). Its not exactly original but it suits the way that the Seventh Doctor has been played over the last few years. We learn very quickly that Premier Jaeger is someone with a dodgy attitude. The fact that he has delayed elections for five years shows that he is someone who is afraid of people telling him what they think of him. The Doctor increasingly becomes a target for Pro-Jaeger supporters. At one point we are led to believe that he is dead, though that is just a lie because it was just to make Jaeger think he is dead. The companions are given perhaps the best material that they have ever had. Hex’s story in this is that he is a paramedic which is near what he was like back in The Harvest in 2004. He teams up with Charlotte Singh and the two seem to have a nice chemistry. This is part of the Live With series and as this segment reaches it’s climax we discover that one of the people they visit Gina. Hex investigates the hole that is in her living room and when they go down that it contains bones and it turns out that it is a mass grave. Soon after the transmission is cut. Ace’s story is perhaps the most intriguing. In this story she gets the title The Rebel Queen which is quite apt. Her story is told in Wareing’s World. The build up to her first involvement in the story is a slow burner. The reporter is led through a series of mysterious requests but soon encounters The Rebel Queen. When the interview between Wareing and Ace gets started we learn what the planet was like to begin with and it sounds a really nice place. What we also learn is that Ace bombed some buildings which is a truly shocking thing for a companion of someone like the Doctor to do. Even though the buildings were thought to be empty and in a state of disrepair it still seems like a totally strange thing to do. The revelation at the end of part four is totally amazing. We learn that Premier Jaeger is not in fact the real Jaeger. The story was that the real Jaeger contracted a minor disease and that fearing he would be unelectable got someone who looked like him and after some changes to his appearance, this guy would become the face of Premier Jaeger but the real one would work away from the public eye. Soon the fake Jaeger slowly became corrupt and put his friends in positions of power and fearing that with limiting resources and power failures he would soon be out of office and so forced terrorist attacks to delay elections. It was a brilliant build up and the execution of the story was superb.

Sylvester McCoy puts in his best performance to date. His plays the role of Resident Doctor with the realism of a politician. You can sense that he is working hard trying to defend the actions of the FDP whilst condoning the actions of the bombing. There is a question as to whether the Doctor knows that Ace did the bombings but that is never made clear. The announcement that the Doctor is dead comes as a surprise because we all know that the star of the show never dies (well not until the TV Movie) but you know he is up to something and then comes the big reveal which he revels in. Sophie Aldred performs well as the Rebel Queen. Her story had more of a story and she played the role very well. Her acting in episode four had me feeling a little uncomfortable because you could imagine what she went through at the hands of the security forces. Philip Olivier is very good as Hex. This is perhaps his best story since he joined the series. The problem with the Hex character is that unless he has something relevant to his talents then he is just someone who hangs around the Doctor and Ace. His story was the best of the three and that was because of the revelation that the house he is visiting is a mass grave. Olivier shows what he can really do when he is given the right script.

William Hoyland was the star of the show as Premier Jaeger. He was you typical Politian. He pretended that he was for the people but you knew pretty early on that something was up. The truth was denied pretty well and you knew that this Politian exists in the real world and not just in Colony 34. Andrew Collins was also very good as Drew Shahan. Collins has regularly appeared on Doctor Who Confidential and so you knew he was a fan and he plays the DJ very well and gives the perfect employee role when he has to apologise for the comments made in the programs. Zehra Naqvi puts in a great performance as Charlotte Singh. She plays the sort of journalists who work on a local newspaper or on local tv. She is trying to come across as someone who is going places but is struggling with small stories. The character gets her dues though in part four when the truth is made public.

Duncan Wiseby is also very good as Ryan Wareing and his programme was very tense and was enjoyable throughout. Wiseby does the same style of wannabe bigshot journalist that Naqvi puts in but seems to do a better job at it. Joy Elias-Rilwan is good as Lula who we learn has an emotional edge. With the loss of her brother. Her character is the deputy to Ace and then it turns out that she betrayed Ace. She is a character seems to be a likeable one but then turns out to be one that the listener dislikes and Elias-Rilwan plays well. Ann Bryson is the last of the guest stars as Gina Grewal. She is a nice character that serves her purpose and Grewal does well to create the impression she is a lonely old lady who just listens to the radio for entertainment.

Andrew Stirling-Brown and James Parsons have written a truly superb story that has all the elements that are needed for a totally original story. All the characters are well copied from real life and you feel like you are listening to real politicians and real protestors. Gary Russell does a superb job as director and perhaps does his best work for quite sometime. He manages to keep the intrigue going and by using some good music he creates an impression that Colony 34 is a truly depressing place and after the Doctor and co have done their thing the Colony will be a better place.

Overall there is nothing more than fantastic that can be said about this story. I honestly can’t think of a single thing that is wrong with this story and that’s rare in Doctor Who. I would love for Big Finish to do something like this in the future. Good stuff from everyone involved.

Time Reef (2008)

Time Reef is the concluding part in the Thomas Brewster story arc. This story has the responsibility of tying up the story strands in a satisfactory way and that responsibility falls upon the mighty pen of Ghostlight writer Marc Platt. Marc Platt has really clocked up his Doctor Who stories recently. In the last 16 months he has released six audio plays (including this one). Valhalla was a seventh Doctor story which was a mixed play and wasn’t brilliant partly because it didn’t seem to have much of a fast enough pace to it which was a shame really. The Skull of Sobek was too complicated and was the weaker of the Eighth Doctor’s second series. I think the plot to it was quite clever it was just in the execution of the story. The next contribution was Mother Russia was a Companion Chronicles story which was a lot better and highly enjoyable. It wasn’t because it had Peter Purves as Steven Taylor but because the story was relatively simple and it was well directed. His third contribution to the Companion Chronicles series was The Doll of Death and that was another complex story that worked quite well but didn’t quite have the effect that Mother Russia had.

For the plot that Platt put into this story it was just the right length, I think four parts would have resulted in a lot more padding which would have given Platt an opportunity to include some scientific mumbo-jumbo that would have ruined it. The first half of Part One was absolutely fantastic, the dramatic scenes in the TARDIS and the relationship between the Doctor and Brewster were enjoyable. Any scene that is set inside the TARDIS is also a great one for me because not enough stories have long enough or enough scenes set there. I would love it for them to do just one story purely set inside the TARDIS. Peter Davison was great as a frustrated Doctor, it sort of mirrored his relationship with Adric which obviously ended in tragedy and that left the Doctor feeling sad. You do think that the reason that the reason the Doctor was like this to Brewster was because of his fear of Brewster turning into another Adric. I found the moment when the inhabitants thought that Brewster was the Doctor and the Davison was ‘the blonde one’ was very funny though slightly predictable.

John Picard was very good in this story, he has played Thomas Brewster well and it was good thinking of casting Picard in the role. Despite starring in the Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks he showed that he can diversify into Science Fiction. There was always the fear that because he is in a popular show like Hollyoaks that he may not take the role of Brewster seriously but that isn’t the case. He has always put his best effort into the stories that he has appeared in. The idea of him stealing the TARDIS and having adventures whilst the Doctor and Nyssa were taking part in the events of The Boy That Time Forgot was something that helped create this whole scenario and make it something different. Other characters in this story were all very well written and none were what you could class as wasteful. Nicholas Farrell was very good as Gammades as was Beth Chalmers who played the very seductive sounding Vuyoki. The scenes that she had with Brewster were very enjoyable and you feel that the slightly primitive Brewster would be embarrassed by such as character. Sean Connolly was also a good actor in this story as Lucor.

The Cliffhanger in this story was the best so far this year in all Doctor Who stories. In the past few stories the cliffhangers have been disappointing and have been anti-climatic before the next episode began. I don’t know why but they just didn’t really grab me and I thought that it was a real shame. The second cliffhanger was the best because it had the music and it had the actors sounding really tense. After two mediocre Marc Platt stories it was back to business for him and shows what a great author he has been to the Big Finish series. He has the tendency like Alan Barnes to write complex stories which can at times be a bit of hit and miss. Barnaby Edwards did a really good job in directing this three part story and that was because he managed to maintain interest and the pace was always consistent. Edwards is perhaps one of the best directors that Big Finish have and you know that when his name appears in the credits then you know that at least if the story is poor then its not because of the direction (well not in this case anyway!).

Now when it comes to the single stories its safe to say that they have been poor in recent months and whenever I have heard that they are doing a ‘three plus one’ release I always prepare myself for the worst because the single part stories really let a release down. In fact out of all the single parters that they have done only Urban Myths which was in Exotron (release 95) was the best one but Perfect World is now the best. This story wasn’t written by Marc Platt, it was written by James Swallow who wrote The Haunting of Thomas Brewster was the right choice to write Brewster’s exit. The idea that a simple sentence changed the whole into a nice Bunny Rabbit happy hippy world was something that could have lasted two or three episodes but worked for this 25 minute story.

This story was a fitting end to the Brewster story arc. The Brewster character was sent off in a dignified way which leaves the listener thinking of Brewster in the future in a positive way. This single story shows that Big Finish seem to be getting to grips with what sort of stories can be told in 25 minutes. The November release Forty Five will compose of 25 minute single stories so I am more confident of this release than I was before I heard Time Reef. Though after a half dozen releases and only two of them being any good it not the best record to have but it can only improve.

The Ultimate Adventure (2008)

Now the stage plays were something of a known unknown to quote a certain US Defence Secretary. I had heard there were some but nothing beyond that. The only questions that were in my mind were 1) Would a stage play work on radio and 2) Why did it take so long for someone to come up with the idea? The first release is The Ultimate Adventure and is quite unique for several reasons. First of all is that it has Colin Baker as the Doctor, now Baker starred in the stage version back in 1989 after he took over from Jon Pertwee. Secondly we have David Banks who played the Cyber Leader in a few of the classic stories but most notably we have both Dalek and Cybermen in the same adventure. It was like Army of Ghosts & Doomsday only 17 years earlier.

This play was written by former Script Editor Terrance Dicks who worked on the classic series from 1968 until 1974 and contributed as a writer afterwards and also worked on the majority of the Target Novels. I really didn’t know what to expect, I knew that it wasn’t going to be quite like a regular release. I downloaded The Ultimate Adventure from the Big Finish website and listened to it and as I did notice quite early on is how unlike normal plays it sounded like and by that I mean how it just didn’t have the same feel as The Reaping or Catch 1782 for example. The scene where the Doctor and Jason meet Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street was quite possibly the strangest scene that I have ever heard from Big Finish.

Character wise it was all well constructed Colin Baker put in a solid performance as the Doctor. Despite it not being amongst his finest work, he doesn’t take things to seriously and treats it as a jolly adventure told in a different way. It’s a shame he doesn’t sing in this story as he can hold a tune which he showed in Doctor Who and the Pirates (release 43) back in 2003. Nadine Cox who did the voice of Margaret Thatcher did an OK job but I have heard better. I don’t know whether she is a proper impersonator but if not then I suppose she did an ok job considering. Noel Sullivan who I just discovered was in the pop band Hear’Say was good as Frenchman Jason. It was a slightly stereotypical accent from Sullivan but in the end it didn’t really matter as it wasn’t a story to be compared to a proper main range play. He played the character very well as fitted into the one-off companion role very well. Claire Huckle was also good as Crystal it was a good character which bordered on the annoying at times but managed to hold back. David Banks was very good as Karl, he played the Cyber-Leader in the 1980’s and so it was refreshing to see him play something else, quite like Terry Molloy not playing Davros in Kingdom of Silver. It was also nice that he played the same role he did on stage as it was a nice bit of continuity. The role of Karl was a nice strong one that wouldn’t be out of place in a Bond film. Other characters and actors that were very good in the role included Bryan Pilkington who played the Nightclub MC and Derek Carlyle who played the Envoy and also Zog. Also but by no means least there is of course Nicholas Briggs who did the voices of both the Cybermen and The Daleks (it’s a law which was passed in the House of Commons).

What I quite liked the most was the relationship between the Daleks and the Cybermen. What I was disappointed with in the 2006 two-parter TV series Army of Ghosts/Doomsday was how the Daleks and Cybermen didn’t try and forge an alliance but instead went against each other. It was a wasted opportunity that could have made those two episodes the benchmark for future series finale’s. In this story they were allies but there was still that underlying tension that you often feel when you hear of two rival political parties working together, you know that it’ll end in disaster which is really what you would want instead of them blowing the hell out of each other within seconds of meeting each other. The first act ends with a rather limp and weak ending but that’s not really a problem because its not a normal Doctor Who story and the normal rules of cliffhangers goes out of the TARDIS window in these sort of stories. Act 2 has a faster pace and that where the story really comes into its own. The moment where the Doctor reveals the conversation that he had with the Emperor Dalek to the Cybermen and the mercenaries was totally unexpected and yet turn the whole dynamic of the story. For those who saw the stage play it perhaps wasn’t such a surprise but for those like me who didn’t know anything about it then it was a nice twist.

The songs in this story were good, considering that with it being a musical stage play it was important for the songs to be enjoyable and they were on the whole. The first song was perhaps the best, it had a cheesy 80’s tune but it was still the best out of the three. The one with Crystal and Jason was also nice and it helped to create a positive view for a Crystal/Jason relationship. I think the tone that this play set was helped by with the songs. Overall, this was an enjoyable story and whilst it is not up to the same standard that the regular releases are it is still worth listening if you are ever feeling down and need pepping up.

Terrance Dicks wrote the original stage play and also wrote the audio version and that’s why it works so well. Even though Dicks has a limited contribution rate to the Big Finish series he manages to keep the story ticking over with enough going and seems to fit the action around the songs. Jason Haigh-Ellery did perhaps his best turn as Director for this story. He really kept the who thing interesting and it never became dull of lacklustre.

This is a gem of a story. Not to be taken seriously what it does do is give Doctor Who fans who want something a bit different from your run of the mill adventure that we all know and love and give us something that we could stick on the MP3 player on a Sunday afternoon and get lost in a battle with Daleks and Cybermen.

Top stuff.

Kingdom of Silver (2008)

There have been a large number of companionless stories as of late. There was Valhalla and then there was The Death Collectors and then there was Frozen Time and now there is this story. You may notice a pattern emerging and that is all the stories being mentioned are Seventh Doctor stories and this is largely because he works just as well with companions as he does without. Kingdom of Silver is a story is different because it features a familiar monster. In this story the Doctor travels to Tasak. The story is quite a good one as it tells of a civilisation that is progressing and using technology that is really evil. It turns out that the technology comes from Cybermen who have been in hibernation and have been woken up. It is a story that works well in a three part situation and I like three part stories because it means that you don’t have padding on the story which can at times be frustrating. Cybermen are the shows second most popular monster and perhaps they should be ahead of the Daleks because essentially the Cybermen are human but with just robotic parts instead of human parts like a heart and lungs etc. Whenever they appear in Big Finish plays they are always well used. The 2002 story Spare Parts in one of the best stories that they have ever done and whenever they appear they are always well used. The use of the Cybermen in this story was just right and they were used in a simple yet effective way. In many respects that is what makes this story work really well. Kingdom of Silver wasn’t complicated as I feared you knew what was happening and it was a simple solution to the conclusion of the story.

Slyvester McCoy was very good in this story. He seems to work better when he hasn’t got any companions. He does work well with Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier but I think when the Doctor hasn’t got a companion to worry about then he hasn’t got any complications or any emotional drama to have to deal with on top of what is going on. What has worked really well in this story, Valhalla, Frozen Time and The Death Collectors is how he quickly creates chemistry with his temporary companion in those stories. The biggest name apart from McCoy was Terry Molloy who most fans of classic who will know as the third actor to play Davros from 1983-1988. He is credited with giving Davros the maniacal aspect to his character that is clearly been carried over with Julian Bleech in 2008. He has appeared in several stories for Big Finish over the years but this is the only time that I recall he gets to play a character that isn’t Davros. In this story Malloy plays Magus Riga who I imagine is some sort of old professor who is coming to the end of his life. Neil Roberts plays Temeter in this story and is one of the most vital parts of this story. In this story it was Temeter who was reluctant to believe the Doctor but soon came on side but it was his relationship with Sara that was somewhat predictable but added something to the story. Another important member of the story is Sara as played by Kate Terrance and she forms a great relationship with Temeter which will be important in a certain spin-off which is being planned for late 2009. Other characters work really well in the story including James George as Merel, Bunny Reed as Ardith, Holly King as Etin and of course Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Cybermen.

This story isn’t flawless. The cliffhangers in this story were really quite weak. The cliffhanger should really give you an incentive to carry on listening like you would get when watching the TV series. Of course we are going to carry on listening because we have it all in one package but imagine if we had to wait a week there would be no real incentive to tune in. Having said that it was the only real niggling thing about this story which is quite surprising. With single part stories in the past they have tended to be pointless. This is due to my opinion that 25 minute single part stories just don’t work cause you cant tell a story in such a short amount of time. The only exception to the rule is Urban Myths which was entertaining. Keepsake was actually quite good. The thing that I noticed straight away from that it didn’t really have anything to do with Kingdom of Silver except that it featured Temeter and Sara. Listening to the extras it was a prologue for the second series of the Cyberman spin-off. The story was well constructed and well acted. It looks like the second series is going to be very good if they are going to keep Temeter and Sara as they are because there is so much potential for they characters and it’ll be great to hear them again.

James Swallow has written several stories over the last few years including Singularity (2005) and the Companion Chronicles story Old Soldiers. Those stories were not what I would class as top stories but that is not to say that they are poor. With this story Swallow has produced his best script that had all the drama and enjoyment that you would expect from a Cybermen story. Ken Bentley & Nicholas Briggs took turns in directing these two plays and to be honest their just as good as the other. I suspect that Briggs directed Keepsake because of the ties with his spin-off series and so he knows what he wants from it. Overall this was a good release with a good plot and cast, it was nice to see a ‘three plus one’ release that worked together and does show to me that this works however this is only the second one since they did these that this has happened. What I think they should do is to make the single part story slightly longer, maybe 30 minutes or even 35 minutes.

The Doomwood Curse (2008)

Following on from the superb The Condemned, what we have in The Doomwood Curse is a story that is not as dark or serious as The Condemned but is bizarre. This story is written by Jacqueline Rayner who has written in the past one of the episodes in 100 (2007), Doctor Who and the Pirates (2003) and The Marian Conspiracy (2000). The big thing about this story is the inclusion of Dick Turpin. When I heard that they were going to use this character I thought ‘Oh Dear!’. You could tell that the tense atmosphere and drama that had been developed in the previous Sixth Doctor/Charley story was not going to be present in this story. Also included in this story were the Grel’s. Now I couldn’t quite place where I had heard of them but they had been use in the Bernice Summerfield story The Grel Escape (written by Jacqueline Rayner). I liked the idea that due to the Grel’s actions in the library that all the events in the Eighteenth Century were not what would be expected. I also quite liked the idea that the Grels are obsessed with changing bad facts to good facts. My issue with this story is that it just isn’t as good as The Condemned and whilst it would be difficult to replicate that enjoyment for two stories running the dip was quite surprising which isn’t really Jacqueline Rayner’s fault but in terms of the producers. The unusual story is intriguing to begin with but by part 3 it was just getting tiresome and perhaps should have been saved for a different combination or later in the Doctor/Charley storyline. This Charley issue is something that should take priority in the storytelling and they should find stories that are more suitable to this plot.

Colin Baker is good in this story. He is playing the not really figuring out Charley role quite well. Despite knowing that there is something not quite right with Charley he still strives to try and rescue her after she departs with Turpin. Baker is arguably the strongest Doctor out of the four and that is because despite what he is given, he is able to get something out of it. India Fisher puts in another good performance as Charley. She seems to revel in her new un-Charley like role with Turpin. It’s not very often that she gets to play anything other than a posh 1930’s adventuress.

Nicky Henson was very good as Turpin. Despite my reservations at the inclusion of the character, Henson put a lot of performance into the role and made it bearable. Nicky Henson can always be relied upon to put in a good performance and he managed to make me like Turpin which wasn’t easy. Hayley Atwell plays Eleanor very well. Atwell previously appeared in the BBC7 play Blood of the Daleks and she puts in another great performance. I now I am using the term great performance a lot but there’s nothing wrong with any of them. Trevor Cooper plays Sir Ralph which is an enjoyable and reliable performance. It certainly is below Nicky Henson in terms of hamming it up but still what Cooper gave wasn’t a poor performance and the character of Sir Ralph played its part in the course of the story. Geraldine Newman is a name that sounds familiar but doesn’t ring any bells. Anyway in this story she plays Lady Sybil in the sort of way that one would expect to hear a lady don’t you know! Daisy Douglas plays Susan and Suzie Chard plays Molly. Both I believe are making their first appearance in the Doctor Who world but hopefully it wont be their last because they contributed to the story and helped add some nice slant to the whole story.

Jacqueline Rayner has become one of the most interesting writers for the range. Whilst this story was certainly better than I thought it didn’t grab me in the way that I would have liked. There were some interesting elements in this story that made it a good story, not great but good. Barnaby Edwards did very well as the Director, he directs this with the sort of carefully crafted form of directing that I have come to enjoy and appreciate. I think that this quirky type of story would have probably being a massive failure if it had fallen into any other directors lap but with Edwards what we have is a well directed and well paced story.

Fact: Whilst this isn’t the best story of year neither is it the worst. There are some nice elements and I think that in this case its not the writers fault but the listeners fault for this one not quite hitting the back of the net. Hopefully with the next Sixth Doctor/Charley story we will go back to more serious stories. As a one off, this isn’t that bad.

The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008)

Never has a title in Doctor Who history been so unusual in my opinion. It was obvious that there was going to be a wasp in it because it featured in the trailer at the end of Voyage of the Damned but I wanted to know where the Unicorn was going to feature in it. With the recent release of Black Orchid which was a purely historical it was nice to see a Modern Doctor Who story that is as close to that story as has ever been attempted. I know there are people saying well what about Tooth and Claw, Shakespeare Code or even The Unquiet Dead? Well I wouldn’t consider them a proper historical because they always had a tendency to lean towards alien elements and sci-fi elements whereas TUATW didn’t. There were some memorable scenes, the first was when the Doctor had been poisoned and the Doctor was trying to tell Agatha and Donna what he wanted. Very well done.

The first thing that struck me about this episode was how beautiful it looked, one thing that the BBC can claim is that it makes historical programmes better than anyone on the planet. The costumes, the settings and also the cars all added to the magic of this episode. When I was watching this episode with my parents we were wondering who had dunit as that was really what the episode was about aside from what the giant wasp was doing and where it had come from. My money was on the vicar cause it seemed the most unlikely yet it was the most obvious. The actors in this all worked their socks off especially Fenella Woolgar who played Agatha Christie. She played the character well and it was nice to that she was played as someone who wasn’t a smartarse and knew it all but had to be prompted to come up with the answer. The star really of the episode was Felicity Kendall who everyone in the UK knows starred in the 1970’s BBC Comedy ‘The Good Life’. She was very good in this story and her story about becoming pregnant and not being able to keep the baby added a lot of plot to a story that up until that point was severely lacking. My favourite piece of casting however has to go to Christopher Benjamin who played Colonel Hugh. It took me a while (a long while) to figure out where I had seen him before, well he appeared in the 1970 story ‘Inferno’ as Sir Keith Gold and in the 1976 story ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ as Henry Gordon Jago. He also appears in the latest Paul McGann adventure ‘Grand Theft Cosmos’. His character was well played and I though his character bought great entertainment to the episode.

I do have a few problems with it. For one, why oh why oh why does Russell T Davies insist on having a gay person or couple in every couple of episodes. If there not snogging each others faces off it Torchwood then theres the slighting hint in Doctor Who. I am waiting for one of those kids in the Sarah Jane Adventures to come out of the closet. Its ok in Torchwood but not in Doctor Who, I’m sorry. Another problem I have with the story is the Unicorn bit. Now I may be stupid but I was kinda hoping for something a bit better that someone called themselves The Unicorn. What sort of thief calls them self after a made up animal?. I was hoping for a proper Unicorn and the fact I didn’t get one added to the disappointment. Another negative point is the revelation scene where Agatha and The Doctor go through every single bloody character in a stupid exaggerated manner and then Donna saying ‘So he killed him’.

This story was a very strange story with some good points, lovely scenery and some well acted and directed scenes. I think that Graeme Harper is one of the best directors in the new who series. Gareth Thomas wrote a really entertaining script with The Shakespeare Code but unfortunately falls ever so slightly short with this story. The main problem is that the Vespiform are a stupid creation. They serve no purpose and it might as well have been a giant slug for all the impact it had. They might as well have called it ‘The Cockey Thief and the Giant Slug’. That was harsh for which I apologise but the more I think about it the more I get annoyed with what a waste this episode was.

This story was the weakest so far.

The Doctor's Daughter (2008)

Well it wasn’t quite the episode I thought it would be but then again if every episode was how I imagined it would be then life would be boring. The second story to come from Stephen Greenhorn (he also wrote 2007’s The Lazarus Experiment) was another good episode.

The main question I had before this episode started was how were they going to explain the fact that the Doctor has a daughter but he says he is the last of the Timelord’s? The answer was quite simple really and everything in the story worked out quite well (except for one bit but more of that later), the idea that the two armies can be created by sticking your arm in a machine and that the two armies were created in seven days was well thought out and added to the sadness and scale of the situation. The General played the evil general very well and was a good for someone for the Doctor to vent his frusttation and anger at. The Hath were very well thought out but I would have liked for them to have some form of proper vocal cords.

Of all the cast, it was Georgia Moffat who stole the show. I was a bit unsure of her because I thought that they had only really cast her because her dad is Peter Davison. But pretty soon those fears went away and you could see that even at the beginning there was a bond forming between her and the Doctor. Catherine Tate was the best that I have seen her in this series, she actually helped solve the situation and came up with some funny jokes at the Doctors expense. Freema Agyeman was put in a really difficult position where she had to interact with an alien that couldn’t talk but she was able to work with it.

The story was very good and the moment when Jennie got shot was a truly sad moment and it was surprising to see the Doctor with a gun in his hand and not knowing whether he would shoot or not. The fact that Jennie came back to life and went off in her spaceship shows that there is a good chance she will be making a return to the show in future episodes. Well acted and well directed this is another fine episode from this series.