Jago in Love (2012)

Jago and Litefoot return for a fourth series much to the delight of people like myself who think that this spin-off has been one of the most enjoyable that Big Finish have ever done. It’s possibly when the series might struggle because very few series have got this far. Gallifrey and Dalek Empire are quite different from how they began and it was going to be interesting to see how this series would be compared to the first three. Louise Jameson is still in Jago and Litefoot which wasn’t the plan originally and Jago in Love is the sixth story to feature Leela this year but that isn’t a complaint more a statement. The story does a nice thing of replaying a few moments of the previous story because it had been a while since I listened to Chronoclasm and it was good that this was included so that I had a vague idea of where the story was coming from. Sadly my first complaint is that there isn’t enough Colin Baker. I know we will get more in future stories but I’m an impatient soul and would like more please. Well the story sees Jago and Litefoot deal with vampires of a sort but it’s the setting which helped make this more than just a normal vampire story (as if there is such a thing in the Dr Who world!). Moving the story to Brighton helped create a different feel to the story. Much in the way an episode of Eastenders or something that is based in one town changes when they go somewhere different this is what happens in this story.

I also liked how the first half of the story seemed to be told in a flashback. We learn how the three characters go from London to Brighton and we also discover that Jago is as the title suggests in love. Also as the title suggests, the story is led by Christopher Benjamin and he is given the lion shares of the story and also of the dialogue. This means that Trevor Baxter is rather like a spare part and only really comes into the story when he becomes possessed. There was a moment when they talk about his face and the reaction from the people around show that this would have looked great on TV. That’s the thing about Jago in Love is that I think it doesn’t try and big itself up and by that I mean whereas I have always found the opening story of the previous three series to be arguably the best and most enjoyable I don’t think that same about this one. That isn’t to say I don’t like this but I think that they have been clever in not putting all their eggs in one basket, they are simply telling a good story and introducing a few nuggets of a story arc. The story spends a while building up the drama and it’s a while before it really goes bonkers and that’s when the story really shows what it’s made of. I did suspect that there was something odd about Abigail Woburn because… well there wouldn’t be any point in ruining a perfectly good partnership otherwise.

The performances in this are all very good. Christopher Benjamin manages to make his performance seem effortless and it was actually quite nice to see Litefoot genuinely happy for once and Benjamin showed that in this story. Baxter as I have mentioned had less to do but still managed to make it seem like his contribution was just as big as always. Louise Jameson was also side-lined and I think that 2012 is her year and whilst this isn’t possibly as strong as her other stories with the Fourth Doctor, I still think that the Leela we get in for Big Finish is superior to what we had on TV. I also thought that Elizabeth Counsell was very good as the love interest. I believed in her character and found that she was the perfect person to try and ‘ruin’ the relationship between Jago and Litefoot, the sort of person that Henry Gordon Jago would go for. Nigel Fairs is a writer that sometimes I think is ok and sometimes isn’t. I found Time Vampire to be very poor but I have to say that this is his best offering so far. I think that it’s a completely different opening story to what we have had in the past and Fairs’ script has managed to be entertaining and different from what we have had in the past. I wondered at the beginning whether the fourth series would be where the it loses steam and starts to go off the rails but I’m glad to say that the dynamic duo of the Victorian age are as on form as ever. I look forward to the remaining story with the same level of excitement that I had before Jago in Love.

The Three Companions (2009-2010)

The Three Companions is a special Companion Chronicles story that was released in twelve separate parts to accompany the main releases starting with The Magic Mousetrap in April 2009 and finishing with Survival of the Fittest in February 2010. This was quite an unusual thing to do and I made the decision that I would wait until all twelve parts had been released. Written by Marc Platt, this story feature Anneke Wills as Polly, Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier and Jon Pickard as Thomas Brewster. This was probably an advertisement to try and convince people to get buy the Companion Chronicles series but for people like me who already buy them this is just a subscribers special. The story starts with the Polly contacting the Brigadier and they start chatting about how they travelled with the Doctor before realising that it’s not the same Doctor. There was a nice link to a previous companion chronicle in the form of The Doll of Death. Polly starts to tell her story that she had whilst travelling with the second Doctor, Jamie & Ben. Polly’s story was quite interesting. It is cantered around this planet that is destined to be cremated. The story itself is a nice short one that would probably need to something else were it to be included in a full story. Anneke Wills gives a great performance and probably does a better impression of Ben than that of Jamie and the Doctor.

No sooner had Polly’s story finished than the Brigadier’s started. His story sees the Third Doctor and the Brigadier follow a distress call and ended up on what seemed to be the platform at Waterloo Station. One of the funniest lines in these companion chronicles popped up at this point when the Brigadier says “The Tardis made that dreadful sound like an elephant in labour”. It goes a bit weird when someone who looks like Polly pops up in his story as well as the Eiffel Tower and other familiar landmarks. Soon it seems like the whole place is in fact a museum on another planet. There was a similarity to Polly’s story in some sort of bug infestation. The Brigadier’s story was better than Polly’s. There was more of a mystery going on. It turns out that Jerry Lens (the voice of the distress signal) has the Doctor’s TARDIS, he also has taken the TARDIS away from Thomas Brewster. It turns out that the person who ran this world just got bored and left it to fall to pieces. It was an enjoyable story and it felt more action packed than Polly’s story.

The Coffin Loaders got mentioned of CFC5 in Polly’s story and then get mentioned in the Brigadier’s story. They only arrive when a planet is about to end like CFC5. Thomas Brewster talks to a Jerry Lens (or Mr L) and he appears in Polly’s story as well as the Brigadier’s. It’s about an hour (or the end of part six – Coffin Loaders) before Thomas Brewster really comes into this story with the revelation of him having the TARDIS which places his part of the story between The Haunting of Thomas Brewster and Time Reef.

It’s Part Nine (Many Meetings) before things start entering the interesting stage. It’s when Polly, The Brigadier and Thomas Brewster finally all meet. The rain is starting to become more central and as Polly and The Brigadier are talking, Thomas Brewster is telling his story but makes the surprising claim that he is the Doctor. Of course this didn’t fool either Polly or The Brigadier. Brewster told his story in Part Ten about how he was found after he stole the TARDIS and essentially there is a creature that is making it rain and Brewster is being used as a sacrifice.

I do have an issue with listening with this whole release whether you listen to it in one go or as it was released. The theme music ruins the flow of the story. It perhaps would have been better to have the theme tune on a separate track so that if like me you listen to it in one go there is a better flow to it. There was a nice sub-plot that started off quite quickly where it seemed to be raining quite a lot which obviously got explained during Part Ten. There was a nice link at the beginning to The Doll of Death which starred Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Jo contacted the Brigadier.

Anneke Wills and Nicholas Courtney were very good as Polly and The Brigadier. They both put in performances that were just like their companion chronicle stories that they both have done (Old Soldiers for Courtney and Resistance for Wilkes). Despite only appearing in 8 episodes back in 2008, I am glad that they managed to get Jon Pickard back to do some more stories. There is a lot of room for future adventures and this helped to partly fill the gap as to what was going on whilst the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa were in The Boy That Time Forgot. I thought that the best was Russell Floyd who played Gerry Lenz or Garry Lendler depending on how you prefer to think of him. He was a sort of Meddling Monk for the 21st Century. This was a well acted character that hopefully will appear in future Doctor Who adventures.

Unfortunately despite all the good building up the story did start to go downhill a bit towards the final 20 minutes. The story wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination because there was still enough action on the hunters ship to keep me entertained. I just think that too much time was spent building it up and then it felt like it was being rushed. In comparison to other Companion Chronicles this doesn’t quite match up. I liked it how three of the Doctor’s companions got together. It was like a Multi-Doctor story but with companions and this was the only time they were likely to meet up. I think that it has that epic feel to it but isn’t quite as strong as it could have been. Whilst the characters were very strong and well acted it was slightly let down by the ending of the story.

If they ever decided to this again then I think that they should reduce the time (spread it over 6 releases not 12) and personally I would listen to them as they came out instead of all at once. That was a mistake on my part.