Hunters of Earth (2013)

In Doctor Who’s 50^th Year, it was always going to be interesting to see how it would be celebrated. We are obviously/hopefully going to some epic on TV and so the audio side has to do something that feels just as epic. What has been decided is an eleven part series which tells a story from EVERY Doctor from the first up to the eleventh. This is a Big Finish production for Audiogo and you can either by this from the Audiogo or Big Finish website. I purchased the whole series from Big Finish for £40 which I must say is incredible value which works out at just under £4 per story. The first story is read by Carole Ann Ford and is set before An Unearthly Child, the story sees the youngsters in the surrounding area acting a bit unruly. There is a wonderful sense of gluminess which is how I imagine that period of time, the whole vibe of the story from start to finish was comforting and helped create a wonderful atmosphere.

The story is set when the Doctor and Susan have been on earth for just a couple of months so there is no sign of Barbara or Ian which considering there are scenes set at Coal Hill School is a shame because it would have been nice if there were just a mention such as ‘Teacher A was talking to Mr Chesterton’ or something along those lines but it’s a minor quibble.  What the story does do is put fear into the centre of the story which is something that doesn’t get used often as a plot device. Fear of the unknown is something that occurs in real life so its good when its put into a story.

Carole Ann Ford was really good in this. I felt that she gave a softer style in terms of how she was telling the story. Considering this was set before the TV adventures when the character of Susan was more child than adult and I thought that this story suited that era. Her impression of the Doctor is the only that lets it down. Her co-star was very good as well. Tam Williams played the character Cedric at the perfect level which complimented Susan. Together the characters had some good scenes and helped make this feel just like a companion chronicle.

Hunters of Earth is an enjoyable adventure. It was 85 minutes long but didn’t feel that long. As a standalone adventure it managed to have a different vibe to it even though it is identical to the companion chronicles that Big Finish also do.  I thought that the story was nice and straightforward which managed to have a nice plot to it and the final bit which reminds the listener that this is the first in a series of stories that have a theme. What that theme is I have no idea but I cant wait to find out. But the way that the premonition that Susan has and the way its introduced into the story was something that made me wish I had part two in my possession (which now I do).

Rating - 8/10

Birthright (1999)

The fourth Benny play is the second in the Time Ring trilogy and usually the middle part of a trilogy is designed purely to be a holding pattern until we get to the payoff of the final installement. This marks another appearance from the Doctor Who world where the Doctor himself makes an appearance. Mr Colin Baker plays Mikhail Vladamir Popov and this story is set in the early 20^th century. I must say that despite this being made at the end of the last century, my mind cant help but feel that this story has a Jago and Litefoot feel to it. The story sees Jason and Bernice finding themselves in two different places. Benny is in 1909 London where is in the same time as John Lafayette and Jason is in the future on Antykhon.

The story spends a long time keeping Benny and Jason apart but the story spend a large portion of the story flipping the action between the two but what was quite good was how despite being in two different scenarios they did have something in common, both wanted the second time ring which was in the possession of Lafayette. I really couldn’t be interested less in Lafayette. I thought he worked well in Walking to Babylon but didn’t work as well in this. I found the Benny stuff to be slightly more enjoyable than Jason’s. The spring heeled Jack plot was quite fun and it helped move the story along until the Jason plot strand got more interesting. It was like a Jack the Ripper murder spree and wouldn’t have been out of place in a Jago and Litefoot story. There was a nice moment which would have worked well on TV but because of how grim it would have looked. The idea of a larder full of humans is not a nice thing.

Colin Baker’s accent struggles at times to not go into pantomime mode. It’s always good to hear Colin Baker and putting his accent to one side I thought that Baker’s performance was perfectly fine. The plot revelation that Popov’s daughter had been murdered helped me believe in his character and made his importance in the story that much more important though it was slightly odd when he seemed to disappear from the story for a while. It was good that Stephen Fewell got a nice slice of the action even if it wasn’t in the part of the story that came out better on audio. I am starting to like the character of Kane more and more.

There is another story where there is no definitive ending for Benny and Jason though we know that there will be a resolution to this trilogy so it’s not so much of an issue for me. Birthright did what it needed to do and did it well. Birthright is an enjoyable adventure that continues the journey of this opening series well. As a middle story it serves its purpose rather well and for me it was Baker’s inclusion that helped elevate this above mediocre. It still seems odd put a 26^th Century character in a early 20^th Century setting but its to Lisa Bowerman’s credit that she makes it work and it helps provide a nice feel to these stories.

Rating – 7/10

The Masters of Luxor (2012)

I find myself a little confused with First/Second Doctor Lost Stories. This is due to the fact that as the Doctors themselves are no longer with us it just becomes a special Companion Chronicle. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because whether its William Russell, Carole Ann Ford or Frazer Hines then it becomes a joy and not a chore to listen to. The idea from this story came from Anthony Coburn who wrote the first ever Doctor Who story back in 1963. Sadly he passed away in 1977 so it falls to Nigel Robinson to adapt his story for Big Finish. The story was supposed to form the second story after An Unearthly Child but got replaced with The Daleks. The first thing I liked was the opening episode, I thought that it moved quickly despite nothing happening apart from the setting the scene for the rest of the story. The TARDIS losing power that occurred in the first episode isn’t something that is new to the world of Doctor Who as it’s just a different way of preventing the regulars from leaving as soon as they arrive (which they hadn’t intended on doing in the first place).

It’s quite a while before we encounter any alien life, this is quite unusual but it’s something that I liked because I always enjoy scenes with just the TARDIS crew. The TARDIS crew think that they haven’t been picked on deliberately but decide to wait for their captures to make themselves known. There is a wonderful scene in episode two when they decide whether to press a button to summon their host/captors. It’s a nice scene which shows how they have gelled since they were first thrown together though there was a moment where Barbara is the one that seems to not be wowed by what she sees. Similar to the Keys of Marinus. It’s quite good that they decided to desist from using this as a plot thing because anyone who had seen that story (like myself) would have got bored with it.

Darivatrons are the robots that we first meet. They ask the Doctor if the masters are happy with their meal. It was unusual that the Darivatron don’t consider the TARDIS crew the enemy or intruders. I thought that the idea of the Darivatrons was well realised and they were very well used throughout this story. The Perfect One has been created by the Darivatrons. He was created to destroy the Masters and he is the one that has taken the power from the TARDIS. I liked how he was seemingly given everything except for life and at the end of Part 2 we learnt that he basically wanted one of the TARDIS crew to sacrifice their life for him. He has been taking people’s lives and this is when I found this character to be quite creepy because he wasn’t shouting or being very aggressive yet he still managed to maintain a hold over the regulars.

The performances of both William Russell and Carole Ann Ford were very strong from start to finish. The way that they took over from each other without disrupting the flow of the storytelling was impressive. I have always been a fan of William Russell’s reading from his companion chronicle adventures. As the other cast member, Joseph Kloska provided the rest of the voices well and was very good as The Perfect One. I don’t know why they did get more people involved because the more I think about it the more it feels like a Companion Chronicle has found its way into the Lost Story series.

Quite an abrupt ending I felt. I know that during that era of the show they weren’t known for their clean cut ending but I just felt that this story would have been better suited to a proper ‘off into the sunset’ ending. That’s more a bit of nit picking on my part. It’s always difficult to maintain the flow and feeling over the course of six episodes. I think there were moments in Farewell Great Macedon where my mind did wander however it was more frequent in this story. I don’t think that its Nigel Robinson’s fault because he was doing the best that he could but I think that this story would have benefited from being a four parter because I thought that there were scenes which could have been lost and it wouldn’t have had a negative impact on this story. As it is I thought that it was ok and it started great but went off the boil slightly after episode three.

Rating – 7/10

The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance (2010)

The second story from the first Doctor Lost Stories Box set is a lot shorter than Farewell Great Macedon. Also written by Maris Farhi, this story is a simple tale of love and how it can literally end your life. It was the first to be written by Maris as a sort of introductory story which is why it runs in at 35 minutes as opposed to the 2 and half hours of the previous story. The story sees Barbara become friends with a guy called Rythym except that Rythym has fallen in love with Barbara. The story also sees the Doctor waiting for a new component to be built.

It’s always interesting how people use Barbara as the one who has the love interests. That might have something to do that Jacqueline Hill was so good at developing relationship unintentionally. Even though she is not in this it’s easy to believe that Jacqueline would have done another great job. There is a wonderful scene when Barbara is about to leave the TARDIS to spend the rest of her life with Rythym. In a moment reminiscent of An Unearthly Child when the Doctor sets of controls of the TARDIS and dematerliases.

Like the previous story there are wonderful performances from William Russell and Carole Ann Ford. Though there was slightly more of the old Susan in this story than in the Farewell which was a slight worry but overall the pair did a great job. John Dorney has a smaller role in this than as Alexander. However it was still a nice performance. The new voice in this is Helen Goldwyn whose performance is quite good. It sounds weird and wonderful and helps create the impression that this is an alien world with weird seas and suns. All in all, the performances are what help make this story more than a bland story.

There is something quite lovely about The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance. It’s not the most action packed story however as its so well told by William Russell and Carole Ann Ford the whole thing is something that still makes it enjoyable. Both of these stories have been worth the money. Admittedly they are dangerously close to been called Companion Chronicles because they are stories that weren’t actually lost because it got cancelled due to lack of studio time or something else but just never got commissioned as a TV story. That said I Nigel Robinson has done a good job adapting these stories for audio and Lisa Bowerman directed these stories brilliantly. A good job all round.

Farewell, Great Macedon (2010)

Due to the success of the Sixth Doctor Lost stories, we now get some of the first Doctor Lost Stories. The thing about those adventures is that the two characters the stories were written for are still alive and its easier to tweak it to make it feel like a story from that time. The difference with this one is that as both William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill are no longer with us it essentially becomes a Companion Chronicle story. This story is a six part adventure written by Moris Farhi which was commissioned by then script editor David Whittaker to form part of the first season in 1964 though it didn’t get made.

The story is about how the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive in Babylon where they meet Alexander the Great. However there is an attempt on Alexander’s life as well as the three people that would become king and the Doctor and his companions are framed for their murders. With the three successors dead it at this point when the Doctor and his friends get put on trial with the Doctor forced to walk over fire and Ian choosing to wrestle. The story works along the knowledge that is pointed out that Alexander does die and when that moment comes there is a desperate debate about whether the Doctor should try and put this off. Alexander suffers a slow death with the instinct desire for no one to save his life. Given the friendship that Alexander had worked up with the Doctor and his friends it was a difficult thing and well played by William Russell, Carole Ann Ford and John Dorney. It’s quite a familiar thing that the Doctor and his companions strike up a nice relationship with whoever they meet and that is the case in this.

I must say that all three actors did a superb job. Especially John Dorney who was just splendid as Alexander. The character of Alexander was likeable and was a character that you bought to life superbly by Dorney. Dorney’s best scenes came towards the end when his death was at the centre of the story. Carole Ann Ford and William Russell were also superb in this story and bought a lot of enthusiasm to the story. I have heard Russell read Target Novels that have been turned into audios and his companion chronicles. He is a great reader and has a voice that I could listen to for hours. Likewise with Carole Ann Ford who I think gives a great performance and at times seems to be putting in a better performance than Russell. Both Russell and Ford do a great job in pretending to be William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill. It’s never going to be an exact impersonation but they still do a good job.

The thing that strikes me about this is how much like a first Doctor story that it feels like. You could believe that it’s a story that has been wiped and only exists on audio that was made in 1964 as opposed to being made by Big Finish in 2010. Over the course of the three and a half hours the story moves at the sort of pace that the Hartnell era did in the early years. It’s not entirely perfect. The first 10 minutes were painfully slow and I wasn’t quite sure that this story was going to work. There was a lengthy scene which was introduced all the characters and I just kept hoping that the story would get going soon.

Farewell Great Macedon is a good story and it’s a shame that it never got made because I think it would be rated higher than other historical stories such as Marco Polo and The Aztecs. I think at times the episodes were slightly too long with no episode shorter than 30 minutes. There are some wonderful scenes between all three actors and even if this wasn’t released with the other story then it would still be worth the £20 that I paid. I think that this is one of the best Lost Stories that Big Finish have produced.

Emperor of Eternity (2010)

The latest Emperor of Eternity is written by Nigel Robinson who previously wrote the Fourth Doctor story Stealers from Saiph. This is the second story to feature two companions though this story is Victoria’s story rather than hers and Jamie’s. It seems like Frazer Hines’ involvement in this story was just because he was around for the Sixth Doctor stories. The story took me a while to get into because I could quite work out what exactly it was suppose to be. I think because we have just come off an adventure where there were two companions it felt to me like it was trying to be something big.

The setting was quite a different one. We have had pure historical stories in the past such as The Transit of Venus but with this was perhaps more heavily involved with historical events that the Transit story. This story is set in 210BC China where the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie meet Qin Shi Huang who was the first emperor of China. The TARDIS collided with a meteor though we don’t actually get to hear that. We soon learn that people want to kill the emperor. The Emperor is after the Ninth Wonder which will guarantee immortality which will meet that the gods won’t punish him for what he’s done in this life. A lot is made of the monk, this is partly down to Jamie. His primitive mind jumps to the wrong conclusions. At one point I thought he might have been an alien or even the Meddling Monk. Its then a bit of a surprise then when it turns out that the monk is the real emperor and he wanted to see what people thought of him. It did annoy me slightly when at the end he decided that he didn’t want immortality. What was the point of the story? It was a bit of a weird end and after all the work that had been done to set up the story I thought the conclusion was weak.

The visual images that are used in this story are quite dark in tone. The opening bit where all the villagers have been killed because they saw the meteorite which was deflected by the TARDIS was quite a sad moment. It was made even sadder when Victoria felt responsible for their deaths. Debroah Watling does a reasonably good job however the main problem that there is in this story is there are way too many characters. This isn’t helped by Watling not really doing much to make the characters sound different. That said I think the excessive number of characters was more down to Nigel Robinson than Debroah Watling. Frazer Hines’s performance does deserve a mention. Even though most of his work was in the first episode his contribution was needed and it meant that there was one voice that Watling didn’t have to do. On a production note, I felt that the tracks were way too long. They were normally about 10 minutes long whereas a normal track length would be 3 or 4 minutes long. If I fell asleep during a story then I know I could start at the beginning of a track and only have to listen through a short period before getting back to where I was. A slightly positive point is that I thought the music was really good and at time was almost on par with TV Who.

Whilst this story did take a bit longer to get going than most Companion Chronicles, I did feel this was a better offering than Stealers from Saiph. The use of Frazer Hines was an added bonus and even though the story could have done with fewer characters it was still a fine adventure. Not the best Second Doctor story but worthy of a listen especially if you’re a fan of Chinese history or of historical Doctor Who stories.

Stealers from Saiph (2009)

The Stealers from Saiph is the final stories from this extended series and like The Mahogany Murderers before this story has something that is a first in this range. This is the first story to just feature one actor throughout this story. Mary Tamm returns to the role of Romana after playing her during the Key to Time series in 1978 and 1979. She returned in the Gallifrey series but as she puts it in the CD Extras segment it’s the first time she’s played the original Romana for 30 years. I liked Mary Tamm’s version of Romana because there was something stylish and likeable about her despite the way she thought she was better than the Doctor and perhaps people that they encountered. This story also is the first story from Nigel Robinson. Robinson previously wrote for the Target Novelisation’s, writing up The Sensorites (1987), The Time Meddler (1988), The Underwater Menace (1988) & The Edge of Destruction (1988).

The setting is quite a good one because it wasn’t one that had been done before. It also something that suited the first Romana’s character. The story sees a Parasite that has crash landed on Earth and is using the inhabitants to get their ship back up to full strength and use the Mediterranean. The plot does have a slight comparison to The Time Warrior where Linx uses scientists to help repair the damage to his ship. Having said that I did quite like the story and thought that there was something about it that I quite enjoyed. There was the impression that all this takes place over a wide area which is something that gives it a sense of scale and a greater sense of the danger that faces the people of that area.

My only complaint about this story was that it did take quite a long time for story to get going but once it did I found myself enjoying it. Mary Tamm did a good job doing the different accents and did well distinguishing her character from the Doctor’s. It would also have been nice if they did a special voice for the parasite to try and make it sound more dangerous and menacing. What we got was just Mary Tamm talking in a slightly sinister voice but ultimately they did nothing to make it sound alien.

Nigel Robinson has written what was in reality quite a simple story. It was a brave attempt to rely on just one person to do other voices as with another actor the main star has someone to act against and I think it was a test to Tamm’s acting to see whether she could pull it off. As it were she does but it still would have been nicer to have another voice to go along with. Lisa Bowerman did a good job as director, she didn’t rush the story along and allowed it to simmer and once it got up to speed she kept it at the race pace and it never felt rushed. It got to the stage where I kept thinking “Oh theres more”. A lot gets done in this release.

Overall this is an enjoyable story. Its not one of the best from this series but considering some of the gems that there have been like Home Truths, The Mahogany Murderers & The Transit of Venus, I don’t think that The Stealers from Saiph is a bad release. Certainly one that should be listened to just to hear Mary Tamm. Hopefully she will do another one quite soon because I would like to hear more from the first Romana.