The Night of 1000 Stars (2014)

After enjoying the previous story, I started to listen to The Night of 1000 Stars. The only thing that I knew about this adventure was that Louise Jameson was returning as Leela and the author was James Goss who is making his debut in this range. This is an unusual adventure because it just features Jago, Litefoot, Leela and Ellie. This story forces this foursome to look at themselves in a way that they would rather not and as the story progresses we learn about a different aspect of their lives which caused them to feel remorse. The use of Remorse as a threat to our favourite characters is a brilliant idea and it’s used very well and is one of the main reasons why I rate this story so highly. It’s a simple idea but it allows us to learn new things about characters that we have known for years and that’s a hard thing to pull off.

It’s a brave thing to do to just do this sort of story as it doesn’t feature any supporting characters, doesn’t feature other locations and doesn’t have any breaks in the story (like things happening the next day or in another part of the country).  The introduction of Leela in the story was a brilliant idea and Louise Jameson continues to show how the character has developed under Big Finish. The performances of Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter were superb as usual but we got something in this story that I wasn’t expecting and that is Jago and Litefoot at each other’s throat. I was thinking that this can’t be right and I wanted it to stop, that was the point that I realised that the story was working and Benjamin and Baxter should be praised for still pulling out superb performance after all these releases. I moaned about the lack of Ellie in the previous story and that was because I think that Lisa Bowerman is just as an important part of the series as Jago and Litefoot are. Here we get a lot of Ellie and it shows how good Lisa Bowerman is as Ellie because Ellie has been through a lot during the previous six series and her loses have been just as great as Jago and Litefoot have had.

There’s a lovely moment when there is a mystery and to which of the four is remorse and it reminded me of the movie ‘Devil’ where they have a lift and one of them is the devil. This is done a lot better because I didn’t see the revelation about Leela coming. I thought at the beginning that it was a surprise that she was back and that it wasn’t given the sort of time that I would have expected but James Goss has done a good thing of distracting us from this point and never allows us to think about it until he’s ready for us to. We are reminded about the current predicament of Jago and Litefoot which I liked because I was worried that they had forgotten about the fact they were suppose to be on the run but it isn’t just a blink and you’ll miss it mention but does get mentioned much more than I was expecting.

I was really impressed with this story and I would go so far to say that this is one of if not the best Jago and Litefoot story that there has ever been and credit should go to everyone involved for still been able to impress me to this degree. If the last two stories in the series are better than this one then I am in for a treat. I think that this story isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea and that’s because this isn’t your usual Jago and Litefoot adventure and when people don’t get what they usually want then they will be harsher to it. This wont happen here because I loved this story.

Renaissance (2013)

The penultimate adventure in this series starts off with quite the serious monologue. Then we move to Romana having a wonderful discussion/argument with herself where at least twice she does a quite spot on K9 impression. There is an initial mystery as to who the strange woman is and I must admit that I didn’t see the answer coming. A second Romana is the sort of thing that would be normal for this series. There is a nice speech that Romana III gives Romana II after she has a go about intercepting a transmit is very similar to a speech that was given to Tom Baker’s Doctor in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. The new Romana offers the current Romana the chance of rebuilding Gallifrey centuries earlier than it should have been. It does mean that Romana 2 has to enter into an alliance with a future incarnation which is breaking the laws of time which is what the Doctor Who world likes to do.

Whereas in the previous story the threat came from the Daleks, in this story the threat seems to come from a future version of her. Initially I thought that whilst there was a sense of mistrust of her motives and even by the end I wanst 100% trusting of her.  I thought that she was really good as Romana 3 and the evil streak that comes with her character is fun to watch and made the final part of the story more fun than it would have been.

There is another instance where a familiar speech is used here and it’s the Master speech that he gives in ‘Logopolis’. In fact there are at least two that are either word for word or similar which I thought it was a nice touch. I like the mistrust between Leela and Romana 3. When Romana 3 suggests that they go for a walk then I am thinking ‘Don’t’. Leela notices things that others don’t and you would have thought that by now people would have trusted from the very beginning but still they wait until the very end before Romana 2 starts to listen to what she’s saying. It’s a little bit annoying that even now they do this but that’s the way things are.

The fact that Romana 2 wants to get rid of Romana 3 discretely is something that seems quite like the sort of thing that would go on in Gallifrey. I think the reason she would want to do this is because she suspects the Romana 3 would do the same to her. There is an awful lot of talking and for a large part of this there isn’t much in the way of action. In fact at times it doesn’t seem like much in the way of action. The best scene is where the Ambassador is leaving and both Romana’s are allowing him to fly to his death much to the dismay of Leela. I know that Romana 2 is against it but she doesn’t try to hard to stop them. It’s at this point that I feel that the story really gets going which comes with just 25 minutes to go. She was put on trial and the punishment was executed quite quickly and it seems Narvin is working for Romana 3. Considering how Romana 2 was going to do this to 3, its hard to drum up any sympathy towards 2.

Then there is the question as to who the mystery figure was. There were many possible theories that were running through my head such as the watcher or a female version of the Valeyard. It was annoying that it never really got answered in this story because it would have been a nice way to end the story. I thought that once this story got going then it really became a very good story. It’s got a great cliffhanger which sets up the final story perfectly. I thought that despite the slow start, the characters were all really good an in particular  who I get the sense that we will see the best of her in the next story. Even Sean Carlsen as Narvin was on good form which I don’t normally comment on. The main thing about this release is that it does feel like its just a holding pattern until the final part. There is a lot to like about this but I think that it will be overshadowed by the came before it and what will come next.

On a side note I think that the idea of Leela and Romana 2 going on their own travels leaves the possibility of a female Jago and Litefoot.

The Scorchies (2013)

It’s very rare that I can know what I’m going to think of a story after just 10 seconds but The Scorchies is one of those stories. The story sees the for mentioned Scorchies attempting to take over the world and they also want to kill the Doctor. The story has been written by Toms Tardis Award winner James Goss and if you can’t tell from the cover that this isn’t going to be a typical companion chronicle then you are in for a surprise. First thing that strikes me when I was listening to it is trying to figure out who came up with this idea.  

The idea of a TV programme going to planets and hypnotising the audience is one that is barmy and brilliant in equal measure. The idea itself doesn’t sound like it could be menacing but when you chuck in the mice voices and other child-like voices it becomes a lot more sinister. The Scorchies are given some substance to them when we learn that the Doctor recognises them from other planets. As plots go, it relatively straight forward and I felt at times to be in the background because the wacky voices and songs took centre stage and are the things that I remember best about this release.

The songs that are used in this story are brilliant. I could listen to them again and again, they were fun and entertaining. Some of the lyrics that stood out for me include
‘Jo is making a thing! , It’s got lights that and go bing’ and ‘We killed him dead, oh yes stone dead, yes we killed that pesky Doctor dead’.

In the interview section at the end Richard Fox & Lauren Yason say that the Muppets was mentioned when they were working on this story and that is something which is obvious from the cover. Fox & Yason both deserve high praise for the lyrics that have been written in that Muppets style. They have worked on too many productions to mention but their consistently high quality is something that is credit to Big Finish. On the performance side of things Katy Manning is clearly having fun and gives a superb performance as a result. She is always someone that knows how to use her voice well and doesn’t just provide the voice for Jo and her impression of the Doctor but she also provides some of the other voices and they aren’t obvious at first. Melvyn Hayes is great as well and he seems to having just as much fun as Katy. Hayes is perhaps best known for him career in comedy and so seemed a perfect choice for what must have looked like a bonkers script.

James Goss has turned out to be a really creative writer. I wasn’t so wild about his first Companion Chronicle but found The Last Post (winner of multiple Toms Tardis Awards) to be a cracking story and he manages to continue the trend in the right direction. Ken Bentley has done well managing to make some very wild elements and get it working in the way that the writer must have hoped for. As you might have guessed, I loved ‘The Scorchies’ and think that its possibly going to be one of my favourite companion chronicles of 2013. I know that it won’t be to everyone taste but I think that once you look past the fact you’re not going to get The Time Museum or The Last Post then your free to submerge yourself in a nostalgia themed coated adventure that is great from start to finish.

The Last Post (2012)

The Last Post is the last story to feature Caroline John as Liz Shaw. I remarked when I was reviewing ‘Binary’ that when this story came around it would have a different feel to it. This is the second story to be written by James Goss who previously wrote ‘The Time Museum’ which I wasn’t a big fan of. This story also sees Liz’s family introduced as the other person playing her mom.  The story is quite similar to ‘The Three Companions’ as the majority of this story takes place in letters and phone calls, this is quite different to how other stories in the series are structured and it was done rather well.

The story sees people who are going to die and they receive a letter that tells them of this. Now I like this idea but what makes it work even better is that it ties in several deaths that we encounter in the stories on TV that feature Liz. That’s quite a clever thing that James Goss has done and it doesn’t feel like its indulgent but just a nice thing to do.  It’s a wonderful way of making this feel like it takes place in the period that its suppose to be. It’s not something that I think has been pulled off in a Liz story. The early part of the story starts off with a mystery as to who or what is sending the letters and also perhaps just as importantly why. This is a mystery that is part of what I liked about this story. When we discovered what was causing this it occurred at just the right time and more importantly it made sense and suited the style of the story.

Despite the Liz Shaw stories not always being as strong as they could be, Caroline John always played the role with such grace and love that you would almost forgive the story not being up to scratch because it enabled us to hear Caroline. The fact that we have a family introduced into this story means that it gives Caroline John a chance to play a different side to Liz as we have never met anyone from her personal life except for a friend in ‘The Blue Tooth’ way back in 2007. The desperation in her voice when she knows her mother has had a letter was one of the many highlights of this story. Rowena Cooper is brilliant as Dame Emily Shaw.  She is a very charismatic person and its nice that she has achieved as much as her daughter and you can see where she gets here intelligence from. The cliffhanger that involves her is one of the best cliffhangers that I have heard for quite sometime, its quite difficult to achieve this in a companion chronicle but Goss has pulled it off.

It was planned that we would have many more adventures with Liz’s mom but sadly this wont happen which is one of those things that we will wonder ‘what if’. It’s quite nice that the last Liz Shaw story was the best. It was nice to listen to and I’m surprised that whilst I was listening to it I wasn’t thinking that it was to be the last one. I was instead thinking what a wonderful companion chronicle it was. I think it’s the best one of the year just beating ‘The Rings of Ikiria’, I don’t think its because of it being Caroline John’s last story but just because it’s a solid story from beginning to end…and also it’s the best Liz Shaw story ever.

The Time Museum (2012)

The Time Museum is the first story from the Seventh Series which is a remarkable achievement and by my reckoning it’s the 61^st Companion Chronicle (including DWM specials and The Three Companions) so all was in place to enjoy the fifth Ian Chesterton story in this range. It’s also the first story from James Goss who has a Doctor Who link in that he worked on the Official Doctor Who website. The story starts off in The Chesterton Experience which seems to be some sort of museum. I like how there is a mystery as to why Ian is there and how he got there. The mystery continues throughout the story with references to the very early days of Doctor Who. We had mentions to AN UNEARTHLY CHILD and THE KEYS OF MARINUS. After a while I was expecting a big threat to come into the story but it didn’t seem to come. Every time there was a scene change I was expecting it to move onto the big baddie but it didn’t come for a long time.

As the story progresses its clear that this is just a checklist of stories from Ian’s time in the TARDIS it goes through the stories in a different order from what they were transmitted. It’s also clear that there isn’t really a big threat despite there being in introduction of a being that feeds on memories which to me seemed somewhat interesting but they were never given a satisfactory crack of the whip. It just seemed (to me anyway) that they were the B-Plot and the A-Plot was the trekking through Ian’s past. I did like the slight nod towards the target novelisation of the Daleks and also the nod to Enlightenment where we hear the Eternals mentioned. Also the Sontarans and Rutans got mentioned and I thought that was clever scheduling as I had just finished listening to THE FIRST SONTARAN which saw the Rutans return against the Sontarans. After a long time of running we get to the nub of the story where we learn that Ian was a lure for the Doctor. Again I would like to have heard more about this but by this point I had sort of lost interest in the story as it was clear what sort of story we were getting.

William Russell is on his usual fantastic form but I found Philip Pope’s performance to be very good. His opening scene remains one of my favourites because it seems like Pendown is about to burst with excitement at meeting Ian. Throughout the story he continues to impress me and worked very well with Russell. The two seemed to get on very well with each other which is always a good sign that they like the story. However after listening to this story I must say that I was a little bit disappointed with this story. It’s not terrible story by any means as there were bits in it that I found quite interesting but it falls short of what I would expect from an Ian Chesterton story. I think that THE TRANSIT OF VENUS is the benchmark for an Ian story.

Rating: 6/10