The Havoc of Empires (2015)

After being very impressed with Prisoner of the Lake, I pressed play on my generic MP3 device with higher expectations than before. Having got use to the fact that not every word that Tim Treloar says is going to sound as close to the way that Jon Pertwee spoke others words might do.

This story was written by Andy Lane who is another safe pair of hands and wrote the pilot for the Jago and Litefoot series and like Justin Richards is someone who can be trusted to write a story that feels like the era it’s supposed to be. The set up for the story is that the Doctor is taking Jo and Mike Yates to see a cricket match but obviously with this being a Doctor Who story it wasn’t going to happen like that and that is when the story gets going. There is a wedding going on between rival races and a whodunit. There are moments in this story which reminded me of Frontier in Space which is another example of how efforts have been made to invoke Jon Pertwee stories. I suppose if your relatively new to Doctor Who and haven’t seen many or any Pertwee this wouldn’t be a big thing but for people like me it was a nice bit of nostalgia.

What tickles me is how Mike Yates seems to have become a companion in the proper sense of the word. To the best of my knowledge Mike has never even set foot inside the TARDIS so to have an alien adventure seems like a bigger deal than the story gave it credit for. I quite like how Mike deals with what he is thrown into. By the end of this story I found myself hoping that there will be more stories involving Jo and Mike because one of the successes of this boxset has been the relationship between Jo and Mike which never went anywhere on TV. Like the previous story, Tim Treloar was very impressive in this story. The gamble has paid off for Big Finish because I could listen to this story and just enjoy the story instead of being so impressed with Treloar’s performance.

Due to the fact that Prisoners of the Lake is such a good story, I thought that this one wasn’t as good. That’s not that its bad or anywhere near that but I think that there was something about the previous story that got me more. I hope that sales of this lead to a lot more adventures. I know that its called Volume One but if sales were very disappointing then its unlikely that more would follow however I cant see that happening. There is a great deal to like as a boxset and different things in each story. The performances from Katy Manning and Richard Franklin are highly enjoyable but its worth the £25 for CD or the £20 for download purely for listening to Tim Treloar doing his performance of Jon Pertwee. The idea of recasting the lead role is always going to be controversial and some people may not listen because of this but quite frankly they aren’t being silly because everyone knows that Treloar isn’t really the Doctor but he helps plug the hole in a story that requires him to be in the story without having the Doctor either missing or Katy Manning pretending to be Jon Pertwee. A wonderful boxset.

Prisoners of the Lake (2015)

The Third Doctor Adventures is a boxset which on the face of it has one main selling feature. Tim Treloar would be playing the Doctor. Not just pretending to be him but actually be him. We all know that Frazer Hines can do a great Patrick Troughton impression but we all know that its just an impression and Treloar’s task isn’t just to be the lead in this boxset but also make the listener believe that this is the third Doctor. The idea of recasting the Doctors is something that is somewhat of a controversial finish but if you want the likes of Katy Manning or Frazer Hines or William Russell having full cast adventures then Big Finish need to take the bull by the horns and look for someone that people can accept as being a version of that Doctor. No one is ever going to replace William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton or Jon Pertwee but if you can get the right person then I think that goes someway to please everyone.

Before I get to the meat of this review which is the story itself, let’s talk about Treloar in particular and I have to applaud him for his performance. When I first heard him talk as the narrator I thought that this wasn’t a good impression but then I realised he was just narrating and when he starts as the Doctor then I realised how good he was. It wasn’t that he sounds like Jon Pertwee but the way that he spoke and the delivery of the lines made it seem like it was the Third Doctor. From that point on I was totally sold on this release and could stop worrying about Treloar and just enjoy the story. Katy Manning was really good as Jo and when Jo and the Doctor were talking I could believe that it was as good as on TV and that is also another reason why Treloar was good. Richard Franklin was also good as Yates but he was sort of pushed to the side as the story and Treloar took centre stage.

The thing about this story which was written by Justin Richards is that it felt very familiar. At several points I thought that this story owed a debt to Doctor Who and the Silurians because this story involves the Doctor encountering a new race and the possibility of it being blown up which would annoy the Doctor. There is a bit where the Doctor is going underwater in a diving bell which is similar to The Sea Devils and then then there is a stone spaceship which is similar to The Daemons. It’s like Justin Richards is writing a greatest hits of the Pertwee era which isn’t a bad thing and whilst I listened to this story and thought of which stories were being referenced I just found myself completely immersed in the story. I like how it has a base under siege

It was well told and Justin Richards is one of my favourite writers largely because of his work on the Jago and Litefoot series and he doesn’t disappoint with this story that had an awful lot riding on it. You couldn’t do a story that really tested the audience in terms of intelligence so I think that they chose wisely with this story because it allows the listener to get use to Treloar as the lead. Nicholas Briggs also deserves some credit because he is a reliable director and knows how to keep things moving along at just the right pace and he works his magic in this story.

This story is pretty much a nuts and bolts story because it does everything that you would expect from a traditional Doctor Who story and allows the listener to enjoy listening to what is going on. Anyone who is a fan of the Pertwee era should give this a listen because its really a good story with a good plot, great performances and more importantly, it feels like a story from that period of time and that is something that the Companion Chronicles or The Lost Stories could never achieve no matter who the writer was. I go into the second story with a lot more optimism than I had when I started this story and that’s because I didn’t know what to expect from this series and now I do. Well done to everyone involve.

 

The Last Adventure: The Brink of Death (2015)

To quote a previous Doctor, it’s the end but the moment has been prepared for. Just moments before I pressed play on my generic MP3 player, there was a fear that this story would disappoint me and not live up to what I would expected but I can end all the tension by saying that this story doesn’t disappoint. This might be a weird sentence but it’s difficult to know what to make of Michael Grade now. On the one hand, he is an arsehole of biblical proportions who has about as much of idea about running TV as I do about how to perform brain surgery. On the other hand had he not taken the decision he did about Doctor Who then Colin Baker wouldn’t have refused to do the regeneration scene and 28 years later wouldn’t be getting the story that he deserves.

It is also the shortest of the four stories. I have since discovered since listening to the last story that Big Finish actually uploaded a proper version of the audiobook where there are five separated tracks (including the Behind the Scenes).

The Brink of Death is chronologically speaking the final Sixth Doctor story. Thankfully not literally the final story. The pre-title scene is a good one because the story picks up at the end of an adventure but ends with Mel being made to think that the Valeyard is the Doctor. The Doctor is effectively dead before his time thanks to the Valeyard. I quite like how this story does manages to be an suitable sequel for the character because it was very much left in the end after the Trial season had ended.

I think that there is a possibility that Liz White could make a return as Genesta. She is quite a likeable character and seems to bond well with Colin Baker. In the absence of Mel, the Doctor manages to get through the story well enough. I cant see how it would work but there are enough clever bods at Big Finish to work this out. I would imagine that it could come out in 2016 or 2017. Keep your eyes out for it.

The final ten minutes are the most interesting of the entire story. It’s like the story has been keeping things going until it gets to the stage where they can do the regeneration. If I had one critiscm of this story is that the final meeting between the Doctor and the Valeyard is perhaps a bit of a disappointment but that is because it has to do what it does in the face of the expectations that have been created by fans like myself. To be honest, I don’t mind that this encounter doesn’t quite hit the mark because this story and the whole boxset has been a delight that the occasional miss isn’t that bad.

The final three minutes are basically set right before the events of Time and the Rani. The explanation behind what causes the Doctor to collapse is given in this story and it’s the focus beams of radiation from Lakertya. It’s a shame that Mel misses the nice little speech that the Doctor gives before Sylvester McCoy makes his cameo. It’s a rather downbeat way to end but I cant imagine that it was going to be a barrel of laughs. I think that most people would be buying this boxset because of the final few minutes because they want to see how the handover would be done. It was similar to how I felt about the third episode of Star Wars and seeing how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader but this story was far more rewarding.

There is one gaping hole in this entire release and that hole is Maggie Stables shaped. It’s a given that if she were still here she would have featured in it. Evelyn was the first companion newly created companion by Big Finish and the character of Evelyn is partly behind the renovation of the Sixth Doctor. It’s nice that she gets a mention in one scene towards the end. Bonnie Langford is ok in this story but I don’t think that she is as involved in the story as perhaps she could have been. Out of all the companions that the Doctor has had in this boxset, I think that Constance comes out of it better, followed by Flip, followed by Jago and Litefoot and then Mel is in last place. All of them have been a good part of the boxset and despite not being the best, its not hard to argue that the Mel in this story is much much less annoying that the Mel on TV during this period of the show.

The Brink of Death has one job to do and it does it rather well. I think that despite it being the shortest, it does manage to make it seem more epic than the other stories. Colin Baker might have been reluctant to do this series at first but he grabs the bull by the horns and has a wonderful time and gives a great performance in the four very different stories and with very different companions. The Last Adventure is vital listening to anyone who is a fan of the Sixth Doctor and one of the strongest boxsets that Big Finish have produced in recent years.

The Last Adventure: Stage Fright (2015)

The third part of this boxset sees Henry Gordon Jago and Professor Litefoot reunite with the Sixth Doctor. The trio previously appeared in two special releases where the Doctor took Jago and Litefoot to the New World and to Venus back in 2012. It also sees Flip Jackson make her first appearance since seemingly falling to her death in Scavenger in 2014.

Flip’s first encounter with Jago and Litefoot doesn’t start well with Flip sounding like a Chav when she lambasts Jago for calling her lad and she responds with ‘Oi Whiskers, d’you wanna wear that pie?’ The confusing a woman for a lad is very similar to Strax confusing Clara for a lad in The Snowmen (2012 Christmas Special). It’s not a particularly strong joke so its reuse isn’t the wisest decision. Another thing that doesn’t do Flip any favours is when she admits she likes the character of Jar Jar Binks from the god awful Star Wars film. Thankfully things get better for her as she becomes more involved in the story and her initial reluctance to grace the stage disappears at the right time and she ends up saving the Doctor.

Jago’s Theatre is being used by some called Yardvale. Even if you couldn’t tell that it was the Valeyard by the fact that Jayston’s voice is quite recognisable then the name he uses should start alarm bells ringing. It’s the sort of trick that the Master would use and the thing about the character of the Valeyard is that he isn’t really too dissimilar to the Master. Michael Jayston is enjoying himself and is smack bang in the centre of this story and thrives in the story. We know that the Valeyard is the dark side of the Doctor between his penultimate and last regeneration although in Trial it was between his 12^th and 13^th regenerations but now that has changed, this aspect of the character has to change as well.

The Yardvale is doing a play where scenes are copied from previous regenerations of the Doctor. I love this idea and felt that it just added to the tension of what was going on. I like the game that we seem to have to play to figure out which regeneration is being played out. As I get closer to the end of the boxset, its clear that things are building up to something. The encounter between the Doctor and the Valeyard didn’t disappoint and was the first time in this boxset that we had had quite a big scene between the two and both Michael Jayston and Colin Baker stepped up and gave a good account for themselves.

Even though the Yardvale part of the story was dealt with the ending of this story was more of a cliffhanger to the final story. There is a rather downbeat feel at the end of this story with the Doctor and Flip off in the TARDIS and Jago and Litefoot continues their business. Like The Red House, this story isn’t as good as End of the Line but was still enjoyable. Having Flip back was welcome as her character is well written and well performed by Lisa Greenwood. It was also having Jago and Litefoot back on good form after a less than stellar series nine in their own series.

The Last Adventure: The Red House (2015)

The second part of the story is simply where the Doctor and Charley land on a planet of werewolves which is a wonderful idea and the twist of them turning into humans when sunlight hits them is a nice one.

This story sees Charley Pollard reunite with the Sixth Doctor although this takes place during the original 2008/2009 series where the Sixth Doctor is trying to figure Charley out and Charley is trying to keep what she knows secret but letting bits and bobs out every so often. After enjoying the new combination of the Doctor and Constance, it was nice to back to a relatively recent combination of the Doctor and Charley. The frustration with the 2008/2009 series was that it was inevitable that it would at some point come to an end and that the sixth Doctor wouldn’t remember travelling with Charley. So this story gives us another opportunity to team these two up and not really worry about how things are going to get tied up at the end. Whilst listening to this story it does feel like it could have been pulled out of that period in the main range because both Colin Baker and India Fisher (winner of Best Companion at the Tomstardis Awards) act like this was recorded in 2009 not 2015.

This story does have a different feel to it compared to End of the Line because this one isn’t anywhere near as atmospheric but that’s ok because the story itself is good enough that I could live without it. Alan Barnes created Charley Pollard back in 2001 so its nice that he was given the chance to write her story for this adventure. The thing about Alan Barnes stories is that sometimes they are easy to follow and sometimes they are very difficult to follow and in the case of Brotherhood of the Daleks, they are neigh-on-impossible to follow. Thankfully I can report that this story falls in the first category.

Charley is the subject of an experiment which seems in keeping with what happened to Peri in Vengeance on Varos and yet she is saved by the Porter who says that her death would have drastic effects on the timeline. It’s weird but wonderful that the Valeyard is taking this much interest in the Doctor’s wellbeing. It’s clear that he is up to something but that will become clear in one of the two final stories but here and now it just adds to the story and I think that was a nice aspect of the story.

The Porter is of course Michael Jayston as the Valeyard and thankfully the charade of this mystery isn’t kept going for very long and it’s great that the Jayston is in this story much more than he was in the previous story. He tells Charley quite a lot about what is going on and how the Doctor is about to make a huge mistake. Quite frankly Jayston could have been talking about the weather and he would make it sound exciting and so the explanation for what was going on was always going to be good because Jayston would make it sound good. #

I don’t think that this story is quite as good as End of the Line. There are things to enjoy and I was far from bored during the course of this release although my frustrations about how the audiobook download for this boxset has been releaed. That said the story itself was another wonderful addition to this boxset  and the next story sees the reunion of the Sixth Doctor with Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago. Corks!

The Last Adventure: The End of the Line (2015)

The Last Adventure is the special release which gives Colin Baker the send off that he deserves. The unceremonious way in which he was dumped is not the way that any actor in the role should be treated. If anyone was going to give him the send off that he deserves then Big Finish was going to be the one to do it. There was a slight problem before I even started to press play on my generic MP3 player. The audiobook version of the download is in one block which is four hours and eight minutes which is a long track and with my mp3 player it cant do what an ipod can do and pick up where you left off if you want to play a different track so I have to remember where I was before I can even start. They did this stunt with the latest New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield and its one that I hope they stop soon.

Anyway back to the first part of this series which is called The End of the Line and is the debut of Constance Clarke who is going to make her debut in the main range in September but this its hard to imagine that her debut would have been better in that story. I have to say that this was a truly superb start to the boxset because its atmospheric and also all the performances are perfect. I like how the Master is bought into this story but writers Simon Barnard & Paul Morris have come up with a genius way of getting around the fact that Anthony Ainley isn’t alive and that is by saying that Keith Potter is an avatar that the Master has created because his plan is so dangerous.

I also loved the fact that the Master went with such as normal name as Keith Potter because it’s not the sort of name that he would have gone for because he normally would have gone for something that had a tie in with Master so it was a surprise really. The appearance of the Valeyard at the end of the piece ended it on a really strong note and it immediately increased the tension. Even though he has a little speech, Michael Jayston came close to stealing the show. That is how good he is. I was slightly distracted by Anthony Howell because I am so use to hearing him in The Avengers and he uses exactly the same voice but does actually give a different performance as Tim Hope.

Colin Baker seems to be in a new stride. It almost becomes boring to write that he doesn’t give a terrible performance. However he seems to be better than normal and I think that he is just enjoying himself and it almost sounds like he is stress free (despite whats going on). Miranda Raison is perfect casting as Constance. I love how it seems like it feels they have been together for years even though this is their first outing. Its difficult to pin down exactly what it is about the character that I like but there is something and both Baker and Raison are going to make a good combination in the main range.

The opening story of this boxset had to hit the ground running and it does it very well indeed. By the end of this story I was glad that I had bought it and was looking forward to carrying on with the rest of it. I just wish that they hadn’t put it all in one release.

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

The Cloisters of Terror (2015)

I will make a confession and that is I have listened to this before the previous story Suburban Hell. Due to the fact I have these stories listed on my phone in alphabetical order and not numerical means that occasionally this sort of thing happens. Anytime that Jonathan Morris’ name appears on a Big Finish release then its cause for excitement because he has such a strong track record. This story features the return of Rowena Cooper who plays Emily Shaw or Dame Emily Shaw. Shaw is the daughter of Liz Shaw and was last heard in The Last Post. If you haven’t heard that release then I strongly recommend that you should because it’s one of the strongest companion chronicle stories in the range.

The story takes the Doctor and Leela to Oxford where they encounter three ghostly nuns. This bit alone is enough to lure me in and the ideas in general are really good. The idea that the nuns are trying to stop things from going a bit boom boom by kidnapping people every so often is one that works in the confines of this story but its not one that would work in a four parter. The music helps create a nice impression and credit should go to Jamie Robertson.

The performances are all really good. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson now come across like they have been doing this for a long time not just three or four years. It’s even more impressive when you take into consideration that they weren’t the best of friends on TV. Rowena Cooper’s previous performance in The Last Post was lovely and whilst this performance was good it wasn’t on the same level as that one. Hopefully this wont be the last time that we hear from Dame Shaw because I think that it’s the sort of character that could appear in a story every so often. Richenda Carey makes her third Big Finish/Doctor Who appearance and this time she plays Sister Frances Beckett. I thought that Beckett was a strong and enjoyable character. Jane Slavin makes her seventh appearance opposite Tom Baker and her fourth of 2015 following the Novel Adaptions. She was quite good as an Ancient Nun. The character was quite good but all the performances were good so Slavin’s performance sort of gets lost in the shuffle.

I thought that the first half was stronger than the second. There were aspects of the second part that I liked so its an enjoyable release from Jonathan Morris and Nicholas Briggs. The thing is that I keep in my mind that the Cybermen are coming in this series and just want it to get closer as quickly as possible. The Cloisters of Terror is a good story and one that I recommend to people if they want to have chills and suspense.

Return to Telos (2015)

When it was announced that the Fourth Doctor would be encountering the Cybermen again, I was really excited because the Doctor only had one adventure with the silver monsters and its always good when these two elements encounter each other. The Fate of Krelos was a good opening story because it was wonderfully atmospheric and yet totally engaging. An argument could be made that Krelos was a case of style over substance whereas this story is one of substance over style. All the good work that Nicholas Briggs had achieved in Krelos was undone quite spectacularly in this story. Nicholas Briggs is one of the best writers in Big Finish and when he gets to write a story I find myself totally engaged with what he has written and when he gets to direct as well then its like poetry. If you haven’t listen to 2006’s The Nowhere Place then I highly recommend that you do. When The Fate of Krelos finished I thought that this adventure would be wonderful and so it’s with a heavy heart that I say that Return to Telos is a huge disappointment.

There were things that I liked about this story. I thought that it was a nice touch that they used the Cybermen from Tomb of the Cybermen in this story. The Cybermen from this period of time are the best designed in terms of style and voice and I thought that it worked well. I also liked that they went to the trouble of getting Bernard Holley to reprise the role of Hayden. If I didn’t know better I would swear that it was from that story.  Michael Cochrane is always fun to listen to because he is one of the best actors to be in Doctor Who and even when he stars in things such as Brotherhood of the Daleks he is still entertaining. Any chance of getting Frazer Hines to do a Patrick Troughton is one that should be taken and I loved at one point Hines would be doing Troughton and then Jamie. It would be great to think that he did it all in one take.

What disappointments me about this story is that I don’t quite understand why it was decided to include Jamie and Hayden. If they had been taken out then the business with the Fourth Doctor and Leela would have worked much better. I think like most people that there was going to be something more epic about this encounter bearing in mind that it’s the final story of the season but instead it just feels like a normal release.

There is also the small matter of the different console rooms which seems like it could be quite a big plot point but it doesn’t live up to expectations and that is ultimately how I will remember this story in years to come. Maybe I am being too harsh but I cant help but note the disappointment that I felt when the end music played. Like I said earlier, if they took out Jamie and Hayden then this review would go differently however it is what it is and sadly this story does nothing to the Cybermen’s menace or enjoyment.

The Evil One (2014)

The Evil One is my favourite story from this series so far. That’s destroyed any tension that you might have expected but I enjoyed this story a lot. I thought that it was going to be tough to beat ‘The Crooked Man’ because I thought that it was such a great story but then I hadn’t realised that this story was coming. Nicholas Briggs has a great track record when it comes to him as a writer and he doesn’t disappoint here. He writes the story with a straight forward idea and when I say straight forward I don’t mean it as a fault but more of high praise because it means that the story of Leela’s father can be what drives the early part of this adventure. The story sees the Doctor and Leela land on a luxury space cruiser which is lacking in people. What they encounter when they leave the TARDIS is a very eerie atmosphere that would seem out of place on classic Who.

Louise Jameson takes the ball in this story and runs with it giving a great performance from start to finish. For some reason I quite like Evil Leela and easily steals the show often out performing Tom Baker who isn’t poor in this by any means. In fact on this occasion, Baker plays it brilliantly allowing Jameson to take centre stage. Geoffrey Beevers is always guaranteed to give a superb performance. If you haven’t listened to ‘Mastermind’ then you should do because that is Beevers at his best and he gives another stunning performance though I would have liked to have heard more from him but that’s my only critiscm of the story.

When the Doctor is fighting for his life after he is struck with the janis thorn this leads to a thrilling finale where the Doctor is trying to hide from Evil Leela. The final part of this story is a lovely and heart warming scene which shows how far the Doctor and Leela have come since their TV days and credit should go to Tom Baker, Louise Jameson and Nicholas Briggs.

I am going to reiterate that I love this story. I loved every single second of it and this series is proving to be a cracking one. Everything worked brilliantly and I thought that ‘Night of 1000 Stars’ from the Jago and Litefoot series was going to by my story of the month but I have might have to reconsider on the evidence of this story. Top Quality.

Dark Eyes 2 (2014)

Dark Eyes 2 is the sequel to the award winning special that was released in 2012.It’s been a while since the first Dark Eyes release and I decided to not listen to that again before embarking on this release. I don’t think that it made any difference really because I knew who Liv Chenka was and also knew who Molly was an her relationship with the Doctor so any other bits of information would either be repeated in this series or not really be relevant. The last time that we heard from the eighth Doctor it was in the excellent ‘Night of the Doctor’ which did the great job of listing all of the Big Finish companions on TV (or the BBC website at least) for the first time. Nicholas Briggs wrote the entire first series of Dark Eyes but this time he has allowed others to write for him and this means that we get different types of stories.

When you look at the cast list of this release it seems like they have plucked all the good things from the special releases they did in 2012, its essentially a greatest hits for the Doctor but apart from Molly, the hits are from the McCoy era. Firstly is the return of Liv Chenka.Liv Chenka previously appeared in ‘Robophobia’ back in 2011.Nicola Walker is a big name actress and from the very beginning until the end was brilliant and its surprising that when I was listening to ‘Robophobia’, I couldn’t have imagined that she would be the character that she would turn out to be in this series.
At the start, Chenka is working for the Daleks. Working might be too strong a word but in the eyes of other people of Nixyce VII, she is and is seen as a traitor (hence the title). The thing that strikes me about Chenka’s role is that its very similar (every so slightly) to that of Susan Mendes in the ‘Dalek Empire’ series. It’s not a mirror opposite but I only came to that conclusion after she’s a tiny bit defiant to a Dalek. Despite a brief line at the very beginning its 10 minutes before the Doctor appears again. Pretty soon he has been turned into a roboman which even though its implied on the cover, I didn’t think would happen. It’s 30 minutes before the Doctor and Liv are reunited and its not a normal welcome as it was the seventh Doctor. It’s always good to see how a different Doctor interacts with a past character/companion and it works just as good as the sixth Doctor and Charley.
Despite only having of an hour and six minutes running time (the longest of the four), the first part of this story moves along at quite a quick pace. I never felt like the story was waiting for something big to happen and that was the result with the rest of the release as the whole thing moved at either a good casual pace or breakneck speed. A no time during the entire four hours and thirteen minutes did I find myself bored or disinterested. I might have been confused but it doesn’t take much to confuse these days.

It’s quite interesting that they don’t bring Molly back until the second episode. The White Room has an interesting opening two or three minutes. What starts off as interesting soon turns to puzzlement about ten minutes later when I am a little confused as to what is going on but that confusing state doesn’t last for long as there are more references to the white room. There’s something that doesn’t quite sit right with me about the character of Molly and I thought that Liv worked better with the Doctor than Molly. Though in the third part they do work quite well together.

The next familiar thing to pop up are the Viyrans who appeared between 2008-2009 largely in the Sixth Doctor and Charley stories. I have always liked the Viyrans and was delighted that they were bought back and genuinely didn’t know that they were going to be in this.

I felt like as the story progressed the tension and drama was really being cranked up to 11 and the end of the ‘episode’ is the best ending that we had until this point as Alex McQueen makes a brilliant return. He was easily one of the best things about UNIT: Dominion and it was one of the main reasons why I pre-ordered Dark Eyes 2. The final episode is where the Master and the Doctor finally get to meet and their first scene is one of the highlights of the entire story. I must admit that being a bit thick, I didn’t realise that it was McQueen at first until the very last moment of Time’s Horizons. Alex McQueen is chewing up the furniture and if I did have a critiscm of this series it would be that he didn’t feature more in it. When you’ve got a great piece of casting such as McQueen playing the Master in the way that he does, I would want more of him.

Paul McGann is simply superb from start to finish. He really has found a new lease of life since he left the main range and went off on his own. Since the Lucie Miller/To The Death epic end to series four of the Eighth Doctor adventures, McGann’s Doctor has taken on a new slant and very much like Eccleston’s Doctor. McGann hasn’t won the Best Doctor category at the Toms Tardis Awards since 2011 but I suspect that he could (and perhaps should win it this year).

The final scene between the Doctor, Liv and Molly is a nice lovely scene and felt like the best way that these three should depart. It would have ruined the whole thing if it had just been a quick goodbye but they gave some time to it and it then led into the Doctor’s final scene where he interacts briefly with a soldier before leaving almost immediately. The appearance of Frank Skinner is a total surprise (shows I didn’t pay too much attention to the cast list on the Big Finish website). At first I thought it was him and then doubted myself but its unmistakably him and its just a nice surprise to end the release.

I think that this is a stronger series than the first and that’s due to the fact that we have had different writers but also the fact that we know there will be a Dark Eyes 3 (out in November 2014) and a Dark Eyes 4 which means that we will be getting more Eighth Doctor adventures pretty soon. I have liked how varied the entire series has been and how they took a gamble structuring the series like they did but I have to say that it’s a gamble that paid off big time and easily my favourite release of 2014 so far.

The Light at the End (2013)

This has to be the most anticipated stories that Big Finish have ever produced and this is their tribute to the show’s 50^th anniversary. It’s so anticipated that Big Finish released it a month early and it’s the first time ever that the five surviving classic Doctors are in the same story. It’s not the first multi-Doctor story of course as we had the less than successful ‘Zagreus’ back in 2003 and we had recently the Four Doctors a couple of years ago which was much better. This has a lot of expectations and they were raised further for me when all the reaction on twitter was positive. Would the following near two hour spectacular live up to those expectations? Nicholas Briggs has taken on the responsibility and is a very brave man indeed. The very beginning was quite intriguing as it seemed to be the sort of thing that would have come from the TV series. The theme tune was fantastic and I hope that they use it for more stories cause its brilliant. It seems like a scene that doesn’t have much in the way of drama but it’s obvious that it’s got some relevance to the story. The decision to bring the Master back for this special was a superb choice and the get Geoffrey Beevers to play the Master again was even better. Having being a fan of ‘Mastermind’, I was really happy with the choice.

The first Doctor we get is Paul McGann’s Doctor and what was brilliant about it was that India Fisher returns as Charley and this is their first scene since the 2007 story ‘The Girl Who Never Was’ and it seemed like we had gone back in time. Despite the long time since they were together, I was surprised at how it was just a couple of weeks. Just the way that McGann says “Run for it Charley” had me feeling like I was listening to Storm Warning again. The scene where all the familiar voices was one of those rare moments where I was giggling like a 5 year old. This opening 15 minutes alone was worth the money. The next great moment comes when Charley meets the Fourth Doctor and Leela and eight minutes later the fourth and eighth meet. It was a great moment. We don’t get an introductory scene with the Fourth Doctor and Leela which was noticeable at the time and I suppose it would have been nice to have a scene between them before Charley gate-crashes the TARDIS. Sixey and Peri haven’t had many adventures together recently out of the Lost Stories series and so this felt more like the main range and that was what helped feel like we were going back in time. Forty minutes into the story and the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa enter the story. It’s not been long since I listened to and enjoyed ‘Fanfare for the Common Men’. Not quite sure whether the events in this story take place before or after Fanfare but in a way that’s irrelevant.  A few minutes later and Sylvester McCoy becomes the last Doctor to arrive in the story with Ace. Even after 80 minutes we still get surprises when Straxus returns. Straxus has previous appeared in several Eighth Doctor adventures and most recently in the Dark Eyes series as played by Toby Jones. I think that the character is quite an interesting one.

In ‘Zagreus’, they stuck Jon Pertwee into the story with inaudible dialogue and they have learnt from their mistakes by getting the companions who have done the voices in the Companion Chronicles to do their impressions once again and it works much better. If only the companion chronicles were around in 2003. A massive round of applause should go to Jamie Robertson who has given this story the sort of music that would make Murray Gold look over his shoulder. Robertson has a fantastic track record with all his stories and he has stepped up his game for this story.

Tom Baker was on fine form. When he found out the name of The Vess he simply replied “Nobody’s perfect”. Tom Baker’s humour is often knocked as being over the top but was perfectly pitched here.  When the eighth Doctor says that the TARDIS console room design was one that he inherited, Baker quips “Who from? Jules Verne?”. I like how Paul McGann and Tom Baker become a nice double act. The Doctor’s best companion is himself. What a weird thought! The Sixth and Seventh Doctors become a double act briefly and I thought the interaction with Peri and Ace was fun to listen to. I thought Ace’s Joseph gag aimed at the sixth Doctor was funny even if it might not be original. Sylvester McCoy has had a good run of stories over the last two or three years and he continues that good run here. Colin Baker’s Doctor has undergone a renaissance since his first Big Finish story back in 1999 and this is the perfect way to show this. Peter Davison has been consistently good over the years even if his stories haven’t quite been as good. Davison shows what a great actor he is here by keeping at the same level as the other four Doctors and none of the leading actors let the side down.

Louise Jameson can’t put a foot wrong in my opinion. After just listening to her in the final Gallifrey series, even Stephen Fry would struggle to find words to describe how great she is. Sarah Sutton, Nicola Bryant and Sophie Aldred were all really good and were given enough to do which makes a change from the 1983 anniversary special. Even though they didn’t have massive parts to play I thought that it was nice how Frazer Hines, Anneke Wills, Jean Marsh, Wendy Padbury, Peter Purves (and others that I probably missed) got to be involved in an imaginative way. Geoffrey Beevers has the perfect voice for the Master and is my favourite actor to play the role after Roger Delgado. Every scene that Beevers was in was superbly played and very creepy. Beevers can make his voice sound quite terrifying at times.

The scene where all the Doctors are talking to each other (with companion chronicle impressions) is a superb moment and the final 20 minutes were just as good as the previous 97. The final big scene was a great way to end the story and the Master was defeated in a creative way. When the Doctor’s forget what they have just been through I was really sad because it would have been great if they could remember what they have all been through but it was inevitable that they would have to forget. They all go off into the sunset and off on their own adventures that we will hopefully get to listen to in the future.

After 15 minutes I decided that this was story of the year and it never gave me any reason after that to dispute this. Everyone involved in this story should be thoroughly proud of themselves. It’s not very often that I say this but the TV series will have to do a lot to beat this. At just under two hours it was possible that it would either become to complicated or just go off the rails somehow but I’m pleased and relieved to say that this didn’t happen. Nicholas Briggs can be relied upon to deliver a solid story and he has managed to write a strong story that utilises everyone. Everyone was on fine form and this is how multi-Doctor stories should be done in the future. This is the perfect 50^th anniversary present.

Benjamin and Baxter (2013)

Anyone who has been a big fan of the Jago and Litefoot will have been looking forward to this release since it was announced. This is basically one of those sort of interviews that you would see on Sky Arts where actors talk about their life stories. Nicholas Briggs sits down with Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter and they discuss how they met and how their lives ended up with them reuniting some decades later for Big Finish after only appearing in two episodes together.

The interview starts off with a nice introduction with Benjamin and Baxter showing how much fun they have together and its impossible to not find them complete charming. We also know what sort of interviewer Nicholas Briggs would be and its a good one. He allows Benjamin and Baxter to say what they wanted and asks interesting and direct questions. After the introductory section the dynamic duo are split up and we get a lovely opportunity to hear both actors without letting the humour get in the way. The first to be interviewed solo was Christopher Benjamin. Benjamin's story is lovely to listen to and he talks about it with the sort of style hat most interviewers would dream of. He talks about growing p during the Second World War and the early stages of his careers in the latter stages of the 1940s. He is quite frank when he talking, at one point he considers himself a poor father for being on tour so much. His whole story is very interesting and its a shame when his section was over.  When we get to Trevor Baxter's part I think this release goes from being good to excellent. I thought that not only did Trevor Baxter tell his story very well but his life story has been crammed full with a rich tapestry of theatre work. I knew nothing of his life (or Christopher's). We get a nice bit of plolitical discussion from Baxter which does come as a bit of a shock but its a nice moment as its clear that Baxter knows what he's talking about and hasn't got his ideas from a group of idiots in a pub. Baxtern then talks about how there are things in his life that he is disappointed about but he doesnt grumble and instead seems to have enjoyed his life and thatnrefreshing to hear someone talk about their life and not have any bitterness. Like Benjamin's story, I was sad when it ended as he could have carried on talking and I wouldn't have minded.

When they are reunited we get them talking about their time returning to the roles of Jago and Litefoot and whilst they enjoy doing the stories they could tell you one story from the other which normally would be a big snub but to be fair Baxter is 80 and Benjamin is 78 and so they can be forgiven for not being hot on what the have done. We get a nice bit of a wish list from Benjamin about looking into Jago's life before he met Litefoot. 

Nicholas Briggs is fantastic in this story and does a great job as the interviewer. He shows interest in their stories and asks interesting questions whilst allowing Baxter and Benjamin to answer the questions in full. He doesn't inteript them and instead of being Jeremy Paxman he is more like Michael Parkinson and that's a great thing. Benjamin and Baxter is one of my favourite releases of the year. I was hoping that this release was going to be a good release and that it would keep my interest and not only did it do that but I found myself totally engaged in their stories and wanting to spend more time in their company. I genuinely can't find any fault in this release and that's a rare thing in any release these days. Benjamin, Baxter and Briggs are a credit to Big Finish and I loved this release.

The Final Phase (2013)

The final story of the series is the final story from Mary Tamm who died shortly after this story was recorded. It was the story I was putting off listening to because I knew of this fact. It had been a while since I heard 'The Dalek Contract' and I was wondering whether I should listen to that again. On this occasion I decided against it and just ploughed back into this story. It's a decision that I would soon regret. This is mainly because I sort of lost track of what was going on and it was only the performances that really kept me interested.

One thing I like about this story is David Warner. As Cuthbert he is a wonderful character and its a great performance from him and the great thing about Warner is that no matter what role you give him, he will always deliver. Toby Hadoke's performance is also quite good and there is a wonderful sense of vulnerability. Tom Baker is on his usual lively self with particularly strong moments. Also Mary Tamm is on great form and even when you take out the fact that this is her last story, you are still left with a Romana performance which is way better than what we got on TV. Her only encounter with the Daleks has gone well.

Despite the story being largely grim, there are some funny moments in a very serous story. The bit where Tom Baker doing a Dalek impression is great and seems very much in keeping with the Fourth Doctor. Another funny moment is when K9 has stealth mode and Romana asks why he hasn't used it before and K9 responds that no-one has ever asked him.

The cliffhanger was relatively ok. I say ok because it does that thing that seems to happen quite a lot in these stories and that's one of the regulars appears to be dead and we clearly know that this isn't the case. It was a while before Tom Baker made a return and I had forgotten about him because the action was moving along at such a pace that when he did return it was a moment where I couldn't believe that I had forgotten about him.

I thought the final scene was good even though obviously in an ideal world we would have had a nice tidy end scene but obviously heindsight is a wonderful thing. What we have got is a nice scene which seemed to solidify the Doctor's relationship with Romana as they both seemed to realise they don't mind each other without actually realising it. As much as I want to say that I enjoyed this I must say that there was small sense of disappointment. It's not a terrible story by any stretch of the imagination but I think that when you compare it to other Dalek stories then the best that you can say is that its perfectly fine.

The Dalek Contract (2013)

The Dalek Contract is the penultimate story in what I think has been a consistently strong series. The final two part story from the previous series involved the Master and that seemed to go down well so it was obvious that they were going to do the same sort of thing in this series. I like the stuttering Daleks. I found it hard to get to grips with at first but then I started to enjoy it.

I love how irritating Romana finds the Doctor, she takes every opportunity to berate him for his latest brainwave. Mary Tamm is great in this episode and she seems to be a more tolerable version of what she was like the first time that we saw her in ‘The Ribos Operation’. Tom Baker is also on good form in this and the partnership has worked well throughout this series. It’s a shame that we wont get more from this duo but at least we have what we have. I like the moment when I realised that the first Romana never met the Daleks. It was this little nugget that made the story even more enjoyable because we got to see how she would react to the Daleks.

The Daleks return but what is strange is that they have seemingly entered into a partnership with Cuthbert. They use the word ‘arrested’ in the cliffhanger which the Doctor finds odd. It’s always good when they do something different  with the Daleks instead of the standard invasion (which isn’t a bad thing but its always nice to spice things up a bit). Another thing that they do in this story that I was impressed with was what they did with K9. I am not a K9 fan but I thought that he was well used and was important to the pacing of the story.

Also David Warner returns as Cuthbert after appearing in the War Against the Laan/The Sands of Life two-parter at the beginning of the series. Quite frankly I could easily enjoy a series full of Warner as he is great in whatever story he is in. A bonus of Cuthbert coming back is that Toby Hadoke makes a return as well and I like the character in this episode.

As this is the first two episodes out of four (?), Nicholas Briggs can take his time in telling the story and what Briggs does well is to make it seem like he isn’t filling it with padding. Briggs remains to be one the best writers for Big Finish and if I trust anyone to pull of a series finale well then its him. The cliffhanger is a rather good with the Doctor uttering the words “I Surrender”.  It’s clearly part of the Doctor’s plan but I thought it was still a good way to end the release. After being disappointed by ‘Prisoners of Fate’ I needed a strong story to get me back into a good mood and this story did that. A good story with some good characters and the final release of the series looks like it will be a cracker.

Rating - 8.07/10

War Against The Laan (2013)

The conclusion to The Sands of Time. I found that it was enjoyable and it was clear that it was going to be in this story that it would be judged. The story sees the Doctor and Romana try to stop ruthless businessman Cuthbert. Cuthbert wants revenge on the Laan and this looks like it’s going to a new space-war. The Romana connection with the Laan was something that I liked about the previous stories and thought that it was used even better in this story. We all know that timelords can communicate using their minds and it means that Romana gets something to do with is a bit different from her normal adventures.

I liked the scene where the Doctor tries to talk convince Moorkurk to stop Cuthbert’s plans when she refuses there is a nice speech where the Doctor thought that she wanted to do good not just protect her image. It’s a lovely moment. Even at the end when in any other story Cuthbert would be thrown in prison, Briggs continues with maintaining that Moorkurk would be finished politically if she were to get rid of him.

Whilst I liked the Laan, I must admit that I cant see there being much push for a return. They seem quite a likeable creature but there’s nothing more to them than their rather destructive way of giving birth. It wasn’t the Laan that made this story what it was, it was the conflict between Cuthbert and Moorburk. It all comes down to the fact that the Laan have got the wrong planet. Whilst at first it might seem like a slightly flimsy cop-out, I actually thought that it worked and was a perfectly fine plot point. I thought that it was a bit silly but I liked the story so much at that point and liked the characters so much that I forgave the story for doing that and liked the reaction of both the Laan and Cuthbert.

Having just seen David Warner in ‘Cold War’ opposite Matt Smith’s Doctor, it was fun to hear Warner who continues to entertain and make a really loathsome character just that little bit likeable in a way that only David Warner could pull off. Hayley Atwell is good as the Earth president. I think of Vera Fusek’s President in ‘Frontier in Space’ and think that female Earth president do tend to get hampered by people around her and Atwell does a good job in being someone who wants to do good but has had to (politically speaking) get into bed with people she would rather not have done so with. As for the central performances, both Tom Baker and Mary Tamm give good performances and it seems like Tom Baker is enjoying himself whilst Mary Tamm thrives with having more to do. Her final series is shaping up to be a fitting tribute to her.

It’s a perfectly fine Nicholas Briggs’ script and whilst it’s not a classic from Briggs, it certainly tells a very good story and whilst it’s not up there with The Nowhere Place but there it was certainly a lot to like in this story and as a two parter it has a lot of good dialogue and great characters and after I had finished I thought it continues the good run of fourth doctor adventures.

The Seeds of War (2013)

The final story of this Mel trilogy is an unusual one as it features an alien that hasn’t featured yet and when it does it will be in a fourth Doctor adventure. The Doctor and Mel go to Kalsos where they are supposed to be enjoying a meal but things don’t go to plan and soon the Doctor and Mel are in a battle to help humans survive after a war that they have just won. The story grabs you from the very beginning and never gets boring. It’s written by Matt Fitton and Nicholas Briggs and their storytelling styles are running through this story like a stick of Blackpool rock. The story is interesting and have very well written characters. All of the characters are either weary or determined.

The main grab of this story is the Eminence which is mentioned in the early part of the story and the Doctor recognises it but us the listener doesn’t know who or what the Eminence is. I had forgotten what the big deal was and even once I did I still found the creature to be highly enjoyable. The voice was great and well done by David Sibly. Sibley appeared in the Pirate planet and had a voice that was born for radio. The rest of the performances were all subtle but they worked well when they were together. As for the central performances, I thought that Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford were brilliant in this story. Baker always gives a good performance but he is given some good stuff to do and when that happens it means Colin shows us what he could have been like on TV had he been given the chance. Bonnie Langford has also shown what she could have done with Mel had she been allowed to more than scream. She becomes involved in things and also contributes to the story and hopefully causes people (critics) to re-evaluate her and Mel.

I enjoyed this story. It was good for the first three episodes but really comes into its own in the last part and it cemented my opinion that the seeds of war was the best story of the year in the main range. The previous stories were good in their different ways but they didn’t grab me in the way that this story did. It had a great sub story that was supporting the eminence story. I really am looking forward to this second story.

As a series, it’s a fair to say that the first set of stories for Mel in six years has been mixed. If I’m honest they have had their moments as I said before but only one story has really stood out for me and that was this one. One thing I can say for sure is that the stories had the feel and vibe of the era. Bake and Langford worked well together and they should that they have a great working relationship. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for more Bonnie stories cause she is very good and the rebirth of Mel looks good.

The Sands of Life (2013)

Following the success of ‘The Auntie Matter’, I had high hopes for The Sands of Life which was written and directed by Nicholas Briggs. The story also see John Leeson return as K9 and the is set on Earth where an election for the earth presidency has just been decided just before the Earth get visitors. The idea that the Laan (the creatures) are using the Earth as some sort of birthing pool which has the potential to pretty much destroy the planet is an interesting one and the story does a good job in grabbing your attention from the get go. As it’s a three part story it means that the story has to be structured different and there is a different vibe from the previous story. Even the introduction of K9 cant ruin the story. In the Gallifrey series, K9 has become tolerable and also at times become useful, however in this story he does suffer from the problems he had on TV and spends the first part of the story stuck in the TARDIS.

The central performances are really good with Mary Tamm taking the lead in many ways in this story. The voices are going through her and that means she doesn’t fade in the sidelines. Mary Tamm gives another lovely performance which makes it even more sad that we wont be getting many more from her.  Tom Baker has well and truly settled down into doing these releases. I thought it was another performance that was more suited to his Doctor in that era. I like John Leeson but don’t really like K9 but it was nice to have Leeson in the story even if it was for a relatively short period. The supporting cast is another strong group of people. David Warner is always welcome in a Big Finish play and he puts in another solid performance as Cuthbert who is clearly a slippery character. Not quite sure where Cuthbert is suppose to be from as his accent does change from time to time.  He can get away with it because David Warner and the character is rather well created.  Hayley Atwell is another good piece of casting. Having appeared in Big Finish plays before having played Asha in ‘Blood of the Daleks’ back in 2006 before starring in the Captain America movie. Here she plays President Moorkurk who from the first scene is under attack, be it from the Laan or Cuthbert. As the story progresses, I suspect that the President will start to have a more important role in the story. Toby Hadoke is another fine piece of casting as Mr Dorrick. Having become a fan of his through his ‘Moths ate my Doctor Who scarf’ play a couple of years ago, I thought that Hadoke’s character was another well created character.

I knew that this story was the first of two parts and so was expecting it to take its time in telling the story. As a story, I can’t really comment until I have heard the next story but as half of a story I thought that it was still a really good adventure. Not surprising really considering its written by Nicholas Briggs who I think is the Terrance Dicks of audio. He has one of the best track records in the Big Finish group of plays and it was another strong story from him. He knows how to write good characters and more importantly knows how to tell a good story which doesn’t get too bogged down in complicated science stuff. This second series continues to impress.

Dark Eyes (2012)

The Doctor is reborn…well that’s what it seems like. There is a new look to the Eighth Doctor which has remained the same since Paul McGann debuted for Big Finish in January 2001. It was clear that this special release wasn’t going to be a happy laugh a minute affair. Out of the special releases that I was aware of, this was the one that I had some high expectations of. This was partly due to the extraordinary way that the last Eighth Doctor adventure ended and it’s been an awful long time since then and now we get the next chapter. Now over four episodes we get what is an effective conclusion to this part of the eighth Doctor era.

The story takes place after the events of To The Death. Where Lucie Miller and Tamsin Drew were killed by the Daleks as well has his great grandson and the Doctor is a broken man at the very beginning where he is trying to take the TARDIS to the brink before he is stopped. Having a downbeat and suicidal Doctor is not something that we are really use to. But the Doctor is stopped by Straxus who was previously played by Nikolas Grace in Sisters of the Flame and Vengeance of Morbius. Straxus gives the Doctor hope by sending him to the Western Front in World War One. Now I would think its fair to say that there are better places to find hope than in a war zone.  Here he meets Molly O’Sullivan and they spend the story trying to fight Daleks.

The Daleks plan is quite a good one and I love it when there is a massive sense of scale and especially when its different to trying to invade a planet. The point of trying to wipe out timelords seems to lend itself towards the Time-war era of the Doctor which is good because the closer we get to that then the closer I feel like there isn’t such a big hole between the eighth and ninth Doctors. Molly is effectively a weapon that is being used to try and wipe out the Timelords designed by Kotris. Strange things happen throughout. Basically the Doctor blacks out and when he wakes up he is in a different situation that anyone else wouldn’t have been able to get out of and Molly is always with him. Thankfully this is explained in a satisfactory way and not rushed at the end. I think that the big plot point that Kotris is actually Straxus’s future regeneration might bother some people and they might have seen it coming. But I thought that it done better than in Trial of a Timelord.

Paul McGann is very good in this and its clear that he has got some new energy in this story. How much of its down to the fact he gets a new costume is unclear but I must say on that point I think that it’s a rather good outfit. I will miss the TV movie version but its always good to have a change every once and a half decades or so. He is still getting over the recent deaths and yet there are more in this story that he has to come to terms with but McGann’s Doctor does it in a way that is better than the way any other Doctor would do it. That’s the genius of McGann’s Doctor.

Ruth Bradley plays Molly O’Sullivan who is a VAD. Did you know what a VAD was? I didn’t. Apparently it stands for Voluntary Aid Detachment. She is introduced to us in an unusual way as she is writing a letter but we get a clear idea of who she is and what she does. The letter thing is maintained throughout the four episodes. The big mystery with Molly is just how can she recognise the TARDIS and be able to fly it like she’s been doing it forever whilst maintaining that she doesn’t know whats going on. The character’s journey was very interesting and it makes the listener connect with her. I liked how when she had the chance to either stay with the Doctor or leave, she decided on the latter which was the right thing for the character to do. She was feisty and funny in equal measure and it wasn’t going to be easy to replace Sheridan Smith but Ruth Bradley has done a good job.

The biggest name in this story is that of Toby Jones who appeared in the 2010 episode Amy’s Choice. Here he plays Kotris (a.k.a X) who is a Timelord and pops up every so often for a blink and you’ll miss it scene. Whoever decided to ask Toby Jones to play a part in this deserves a massive round of applause because it was a fantastic piece of casting. Everytime that I could hear his voice then I would be totally enjoying the scene. Jones is one of those actors who is brilliant in whatever he is in even if the tv programme or film is poo.

At the end of the day, Dark Eyes is an enjoyable adventure that had a lot to live up to after To The Death and whilst I don’t think it quite pulls it off, there is plenty to like about this adventure. Hopefully it won’t be so long between adventures for the eighth Doctor because this moody and slightly downbeat Doctor is quite fun in a weird kind of way.

UNIT: Dominion (2012)

One of the most anticipated releases of 2012 if not for many years. It’s a four hour epic with each episode is around an hour long. This story was written by Nicholas Briggs & Jason Arnopp and it’s the latest story in the UNIT series which originally ran for four stories in 2004 and 2005. Big Finish are doing several ‘special releases’ and this was one of two that I have been looking forward to for months (other being Dark Eyes). After having a series of somewhat Doctor lite stories recently it was delightful knowing that we were going to get significantly more of the Seventh Doctor. The benefit of having each episode an hour long is that it means that the story can have time to grow and we can really get involved in the story. That’s on the basis that the story is interesting and worth listening to and that’s the case with Dominion. This story sees the return of Klein who became a scientific advisor to UNIT at the end of The Architects of History back in 2010. In that story Klein has had certain aspects of her memory wiped. The Doctor is currently travelling with Raine and Ace is on Gallifrey and so we get about a dozen words out of Sophie Aldred which is probably the best thing to do.

One thing that UNIT: Dominion plays on is the authouritive figure that is fame hungry and wanting to take all the limelight when things are important and Colonel Lafayette (Julian Dutton) is the one given the task of playing it here. Dutton plays it brilliantly as every time he speaks you know he doesn’t know what he’s doing as is going to meet a sticky ending and that is exactly what happens when he addresses the Skyheads. It’s sort of what happens to the US president in Sound of Drums (2007). There are several superb creations that in the run up we were given teasers to were absolutely outstanding on audio. The Mindleeches sounded absolutely creepy  and when they first encounter the UNIT soldiers it’s because of Private Phillips that they come across as a truly terrifying monster. The Skyheads were visually well realised and also worked quite well on audio.

Alex McQueen plays ‘The Other Doctor’. Best known for appearing in shows like The Inbetweeners, The Thick of It and Holby City (also he appeared in Paradise 5). His very first seen is something that wouldn’t be out of place in a Little Britain sketch. This style continues throughout. It’s clear that he is up to something and that is what I liked about the character early on. As the story progresses I start to like this other Doctor even though it’s clear he is up to something. As the story moves along it becomes clear that the Other Doctor is in fact The Master. The cliffhangers for parts one and two were relatively good but part three was by far the best because the other Doctor’s true identity was revealed. I don’t know whether other people saw this coming but I certainly didn’t. I was pleasantly surprised and didn’t see it coming at all. McQueen was brilliant from start to finish and whoever it was that decided to ask him to star in this deserves a pat on the back because it was brilliant casting. McQueen played it with the right mix of menace and campness that the character should be played with. Sylvester McCoy is on his usual standard form in this and after missing him so much during the mini-series earlier this year it was good that he is quite involved in the story and doesn’t just turn up in the final quarter. It’s also good to have Beth Chalmers back in the Doctor Who universe as I quite liked the character during the Seventh Doctor batch of Lost Stories. Here she seems to be slightly better written for which would make sense as the Lost Stories wouldn’t have been originally written for Raine. Here Chalmers is given the chance to play the role of companion and thrives. However the big USP of this was the return of Elizabeth Klein who appeared in the 2001 story Colditz before return for a series of stories in 2010. Tracey Childs is a superb actress and one of the things that I liked about her 2010 run was how she managed to fool people in thinking that Klein was a good character before remembering she that was a Nazi. Childs plays the role brilliantly and it’s because of her that the character has become so popular and will hopefully return in future stories.

This story has superb and strong central performances but there are also very strong supporting performances. In no particular order let’s start with Julian Dutton who played Colonel Lafayette. I really liked the character and thought that he was played well. His demise was inevitable and it could be argued it could be predictable but I don’t mind as I thought it was enjoyable. Next is Sam Clemens as Major Wyland Jones. Wyland-Jones is the Colonel’s replacement and within about 20 seconds we are meant to realise that the colonel was actually far easier to get on with than the Major.  Bradley Gardner plays Sergeant Pete Wilson is intended to be the likeable and the character that the listener is supposed to connect with. When he shoots Klein in part four I thought that it only worked because he was so well liked and such a nice person. Had it been someone else then it wouldn’t have worked but Gardner does a good job with it.

There was a moment when it seemed that Klein had been killed and I was shocked because I thought that it was a shame but then it turns out that she is only wounded. I’m glad that they didn’t kill her because it would have ruined the story for me as I think that there is potential for future stories for the character and actually at the end the Doctor gives Klein a space time telegraph which he gave the Brigadier in the 1970’s. This means that future Klein stories are inevitable rather than possible.

The story is a very good one and there was a very real possibility that it was going to drag and run out of steam quite quickly but I honestly can’t say that at any point during the four hours of drama I never once got bored, never once got confused and never once stopped caring about the characters. It’s a credit to Jason Arnopp and Nicholas Briggs to pull this feat off. I had very high expectations of UNIT: Dominion and thought that they were met very quickly. UNIT: Dominion is a currently priced at £30 (£25 for download) and its incredible value for money. At around 238 minutes it works out as around 12.5pence per minute. If you want value for money and want an epic story to go with it then UNIT: Dominion is as good a place to start. Definelty one of the best releases of 2012.

 

Rating - 9/10