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.

Persuasion (2013)

Persuasion is the first story in the Seventh Doctor series. It’s also the first time that we have a Klein story in the main range since 2010 and its been just under a year since UNIT: Dominion. There was always going to be a question as to whether you needed to have listened to UNIT: Dominion before listening to this adventure and to be honest I’m not sure that you really do. At the end of ‘The Architects of History’, Klein was left at UNIT as a scientific advisor and she has no memory of her past.

The story starts off with an interesting pre-title scene where we are about to encounter the end of the world. I always think that pre-title scenes should always have something to do with that episode and the problem (and the only real problem I can see) is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the episode. Each time I was curious to know how it fitted in to the main story as it didn’t seem to have any relation to the main plot. It seems like it was being saved until the second half of the story and it was a great idea because I personally wanted to hear more of the Doctor and Klein before the rest of the story and Jonathan Barnes pitched it perfectly.

The story also introduces Christian Edwards as Will Arrowsmith. I instantly liked the character as the character seems to have stumbled out of a 1920’s BBC period drama. The fact that he wants to record everything on a Dictaphone is something that I thought was a nice character trait and his involvement in the story was one of the high points. It’s always good to have Tracey Childs in a Big Finish play. The character of Klein is a great one and Childs plays its superbly. She isn’t your typical Doctor Who companion in that she demands to know things and doesn’t like being left in the dark.

Sylvester McCoy puts in a superb performance in this adventure. I would say over the last couple of years McCoy’s Doctor has been getting better and better with the last series being a particular highlight.  Whether it is The Magic Mousetrap, Enemy of the Daleks, Protect and Survive, UNIT: Dominion or Robophobia, it’s clear that McCoy is enjoying the sort of good form that Colin Baker’s Doctor was going through a couple of years ago.

Miranda Raison returns to the Doctor Who world after appearing in Toms Tardis Award winning ‘The Wreck of the Titan’. I thought that she was better cast in this adventure than in Titan. One of the best things about those pre-title scenes is that Raison delivered the dialogue brilliantly.

I really enjoyed this adventure. I thought that the characters were spot on and they weren’t wasted or asked to do stupid thing. There was a nice plot between the Doctor and Klein and also the second plot was a nice  supporting plot which was resolved in a great final episode. I am looking forward to the two remaining stories of the series. Possibly early contender for story of the year.

1001 Nights (2012)

Toms Tardis Award Winner - Best Main Range Cover Design

1001 Nights is the last story from the main range release of 2012. The four single episodes is something that Big Finish have done for the last couple of year with Company of Friends (2009), The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories (2010) and Recorded Time and Other Stories (2011). From the cover (designed by Alex Mallinson), the story has an Arabian nights feel to it and it aso have a different feel to previous stories whereas the stories had all been self-contained with not real link, this has a story and short stories in the middle. Also unlike previous stories there is no specific story title with an author attributed to it. No such thing happens here. The story sees the Doctor and Nyssa trying to find a beacon to stop a threat from arriving. Instead of letting the Doctor and Nyssa find it, the Sultan wants Nyssa to tell him stories. The title comes up quite quickly as we are told that someone had to tell 1001 stories to keep someone alive, so Nyssa has to do the same to get the Doctor out.

The first story sees the Doctor and Nyssa arrive where someone is being kept prisoner. He appears to be the only prisoner and there is only one guard. There is a force field protecting the prisoner and at first he seems to be someone quite dangerous but that is short lived when the prisoner says that the jailer is the dangerous one. The prisoner is a Myaxa and is being tortured to confess for something he doesn’t know what he’s done. In a clever twist, the prisoner and the jailer are the same person. The story has a fairly snappy end to it with both the prisoner and jailer being zapped but it doesn’t end glumly. There was a nice ending where the Myaxa (now as one) is left in the force field until its turned off. I quite enjoyed this story, it was short but had a steady and rapid build up to a nice and satisfying conclusion.

The second story is set in Norwood in the 19^th Century where Nyssa is being possessed. It’s basically The Excorist but in the Doctor Who world without any of the gore and horror. It turns out that the thing that is possessing Nyssa is a Crypto Conscious Virus called The interplanterian (not sure of spelling). We didn’t get the power of Christ compels you but we did get the power of Gallifrey compels you’. The word that the Doctor used to get the virus out of Nyssa was Tremas which was a nice link for Nyssa. I thought that when Nyssa and the Doctor left then that would be it but there was a nice twist where it continued  as the interplaneterian has moved to someone else and he is defeated by some special tea. The story itself was rather good and I enjoyed.

The third story sees the Doctor and Nyssa arrive at a coastal town where they go to a pub where they seemed to be obsessed with telling stories. It seems that the locals of the pub are quiet what they seem. We learn there is a planet of tales and a planet of jokes. The mere idea is wonderful. The locals are all after the Doctor’s tales and we think that he had been drugged and they seem to be wanting to download his tales. The story ends with the locals memories got wiped. I liked this one because it was not what I was expecting. I thought that out of the three so far this was the one that I enjoyed the most. There was a nice wide range of characters that were nice to listen to.

The main story has seen the Doctor trapped with the old man and as the story progressed we learn that the Doctor is being used so that they can take the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Sultan (Siddig) turns out to be a Shanakey. He traps the real Sultan in his ship and makes him think he is in a cell. The fourth episode is where the main story takes centre stage where we learn whats really going on and the reason why Nyssa has been telling the stories. I liked the scene where the Sultan smells the air for the first time and he delivers a lovely speech, then there is the moment where he discovers that he has been held captive for a century. I thought it was a shame when he departed from the story and thought it would have been nice if at the end we find out that he was back in his rightful place.

I like it when the story seems to go up a gear in the final part where the Sultan pretends to be the Doctor, makes Nyssa forgets the Doctor and go travelling in the Doctor. I like how Nyssa manages to twig what is going on and then takes the TARDIS back. When Nyssa finds the Doctor we discover that the Doctor has been left for just over 3 years of 1001 nights. The ending of the story is rather good because the Doctor takes the Shanakey somewhere that will look after him and probably use him as a lab rat.

I always like the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa stories as Nyssa is one of my favourite companions and I always think that this partnership works well. Peter Davison doesn’t really get much to do until the final episode but when he does eventually get something to do he does it well. Sarah Sutton puts in a fantastic performance from start to finish. It’s always good when Sarah Sutton is the only companion because it means that she gets to show why the character is so good. The big name of the supporting cast was Alexander Siddig who won the Toms Tardis Award for Best Supporting Guest in 2010 for his role as The Captain in The Wreck of the Titan. Here he plays Sultan who is a very unlikeable character and Siddig plays the role wonderfully. I personally think that this was a better character than the captain but it shows what a good actor the Siddig is. The rest of the characters were all very good and there wasn’t a dud performance in any of them.

I thought that this was a lovely story. After the very tense and dramatic stories that we have had in the latter part of 2012 it was nice that we had a story that was very light in terms of dramatic weight but still felt like it was a proper Doctor Who story and it was the perfect way for the main range to end 2012 with. Out of all the stories with single episodes, this has to be the best because it seemed to work better, the main story along with the short stories all worked well together to make the whole release enjoyable.