Reborn (2011)

Never has a title been more appropriate to a Big Finish release. Reborn is essentially the reboot to the Gallifrey series after a near five years gap. For me it’s not been as long as it has been for other because I came to the party quite late so the wait hasn’t been as long for me. This series came out in March but due to an excessive back log of other Big Finish stories I have only just got to this story now. Anyway this story is a curious one because it doesn’t immediately jump out as a traditional Gallifrey story but the plot is that Romana and the rest have stumbled across an different reality where Mary Tamm is Romana and she married Andred and has a son. Leela’s parallel is also different as she is the one that searched for the Key to Time not Romana and also Lalla Ward’s Romana calls herself Astra in a nod to The Armgeddon Factor. There is a great feeling of nostalga which I wonder whether it would get lost on newer fans.The story is about trying to get out of this version of reality and preventing Antonian from joining them. This is quite a nice simple plot strand and some might be slightly frustrated by this but to be honest I really liked it and found it to be a refreshing change.

It’s brilliant that Mary Tamm is back as she was thoroughly impressive during original stint. Here she gets to play a nice Romana who seems relatively close to the Romana and it still seems odd for her to have been married (to anyone) and have a child. It’s also good to have Conrad Westmaas back in a Big Finish play as to my knowledge this is his first story since the departure of C’Rizz in Absolution towards the end of 2007. The character he plays does come across as a bit of a spoilt brat but due to Westmaas’ performance it isnt an irritaiting character. Well played by him. I also quite liked Sarah Douglas’ performance as Chancellor Dondquest. Not only is it one of the finest names that I can remember being in a Doctor Who played but it’s a nice strong performance from Douglas. Louise Jameson has been the most listened to individual for me in Big Finish. I’ve just finished listening to the third series of Jago and Litefoot and spending the last few months listening to the other Gallifrey stories I think that the character has become stronger than during her TV days. Like Colin Baker’s Doctor, Big Finish have rejuvenated the savage character. It does seem to be a bit of a comedy thing to use by putting Leela in a privileged position in Gallifrey.

Reborn is a story that does two things. It gentily reintroduces everyone to the structure of the Gallifrey and it also tells a very good story. I was thoroughly impressed with the writing in this story and despite it being a bit strange at the beginning it was still a promising start to this fourth series and whilst I don’t think for a second that the stories will be as simple as this one I still have high hopes it was as entertaining.

Rat Trap (2011)

Rat Trap is the final adventure for the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough of 2011 and is written by Tony Lee who is a name that means nothing to me but according to Wikipedia is a New York Times Best-selling writer who has made his name in graphic novels. Anyway, this story has to do a job of providing a satisfying conclusion to this series and in some ways it works and in some ways it doesn’t. The story is set in 1983 in the underground base of a castle. The story takes a little while to get going. It seems like we get a story set under a castle and its not clear really at first what is going on. Ok so rats are going to play an important part in the story but it’s not really until part two that it becomes clear.

Terry Molloy makes his first appearance in a Big Finish play since Kingdom of Silver back in 2008 and to be honest I didn’t twig at first that it was him but it was quite a while before I started thinking that it sounded familiar and it was only listening to the extras that I realised it was him. As Dr Wallace, he is the one responsible for creating smart rats and pays the ultimate price. Then there is his daughter – Sally Lucas – as played by Alison Thea-Skot. She is a character that goes on quite an impressive journey over the course of the four episodes.

Rat Trap is a nuts and bolts Doctor Who story. It’s also fairly unoriginal in that there are a group of scientists that have genetically enginerred something that then turns on their creator. As I say its not original but that’s not to say its not fun. I quite like the idea of rats that could be used as spies and have overpowered humans. It’s quite a scary idea. I do think that it could only have been done on radio because the last time that there were rats in Doctor Who, it didn’t work well. Thankfully with audio we get the impression of lots or rats and its effective and creepy.

The regulars put in good performances. It’s funny how the sympathy that Tegan had for Turlough has disappeared as she continues to refer to him as ‘that boy’. I also liked how they bought back the thing about what Nyssa was doing in Cobwebs. It’s kind of been forgotten over the previous stories but it was nice that they bought it back to the forefront. It means two things, one that we get more of Sarah Sutton and secondly it continues the Rhicter storyline which is something that I find interesting. Mark Strickson is perhaps the weak link in the chain and doesn’t really have much to do and its only in the latter half that he comes into his own. Janet Fielding continues to show why she is a good companion and has some decent lines that litter this story. Peter Davison gives his usual standard performance which is one that I find more enjoyable than his TV version. It’s not often that I make this statement (this is the 2nd time I believe) but this is an occasion where the crowded TARDIS theme shows up. I think that there were too many main characters to focus on and it would have been better to just have two companions. Which two I will leave to you.

At the end of the story I came to the conclusion that Rat Trap is a perfectly good story. As I said earlier it’s a nuts and bolts story but it works perfectly well and the characters are fine and the whole thing has an air of something that has been designed to be suitable for everyone and not one of Big Finish’s more complicated adventures. It’s a nice end to this series of Fifth Doctor adventures and leaves me with the feeling that there wasn’t a weak story and this story compliments that. Hopefully this wont be the last time that Tony Lee writers for Big Finish because if his stories are like this then he has a good future with the company.

Chronoclasm (2011)

The final story from this brilliant series sees the infamous Mr. Payne see out the end of the series. The story has a different feel to previous stories, as it is the final story its only right that the stakes involved are higher than what we have had before. This story is written by Andy Lane who’s previous contributions to Jago and Litefoot includes The Similarity Engine and The Ruthven Inheritance and also the Companion Chronicle that led to this spin-off ‘The Mahogany Murderers’.

The past and present melt into each other and the time leakages are getting more intense. The story sees the introduction of the Sphere who are massive creation that can wreck houses and this leads Professor Litefoot to have to stay at Ellie’s. The 2011 is a stable moment in time. It seems to be a tad bit convenient and had this story been released in 2013, they would have said the same thing. The Sphere things that appear are after Mr. Payne and we learn that they are after something from Payne. The Sphere taught Payne a trick which enables him to bring back his wife, Shania. They were orbiting an event horizon and she was pulled through it. He is trying to get her back by basically ripping the world apart. Payne promised to help them leave the black star to roam the universe to ‘eat time’. We learn that she has been killed and his mission to bring her back was futile and the sphere has been playing with him.

The whole plot isnt as complicated as the previous series finale. I’m not saying that as a bad thing because I think that making things complicated at an important stage of a series is a disappointing way to conclude the series and so this story is refreshing and at no point throughout did I get bored or confused and frustrated.

I never get bored of writing this but Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter are absolutely, positively and unashamably brilliant. They give a contanst enthusiastic performance and with every scene the decision to give Jago and Litefoot their own series proves to be the right one. Louise Jameson is also brilliant and has been throughout this series. She could have been involved in the second story more but that’s not something that can be blamed on Louise Jameson.

It was set up that Leela was going to leave once the drama had ended and she goes off and it was at this point that I felt quite sad and then before I knew what was what she turns up and we are told that she is unable to leave. Then the biggest bombshell that I can recall in quite sometime. Mr Colin Baker appears at the very end and he introduces as Professor Claudius Dark. It’s a name that escapes me at the moment but I assume that in Series 4 it will come to be important. The thing about Leela is that I think that she has injected that bit of fizz to the series and I think that the series has certainly benefited from her involvement.

Overall this series has been the best. Apart from The Man at the End of the Garden which I thought was a bit weak, the whole series has been solid and has felt far better than the previous series. It feels like Big Finish have got the hang of the format of the series and found the right balance. When Series Four (cant believe were there already!) arrives in 2012, I feel that they will be able to raise the standard even higher. Well Done to everyone involve.

The Underwater Menace (1967)

The Underwater Menace is the first adventure to feature Jamie as a proper companion and its at a point where Patrick Troughton is starting to find his feet. I had always thought of the story as a six parter for some reason but its shorter than that at four episodes. The story sees the Doctor and crew arrive on Atlantis (yes that one) which has a mixture of scientific and primitive ways of life. The main villain is Professor Zaroff who is a mad bloke. The first episode is by far the weakest as it doesn’t really feel like it belongs to the other three episodes.

The story sees Zaroff wants to blow up the world for reasons that escape me and unless I keep blacking out whilst listening to this story. It’s never made clear to me. This is changed from the original plan where he wants to raise Atlantis from the bottom of the ocean which is a noble idea but then over the course of the four episodes he starts to go mad and this leads me to one of the best things about Zaroff.
The cliffhanger for Episode 3 is one of the funniest things that I have seen in Doctor Who. Zaroff runs into the main room after three people have been killed shouts in a OTT manner “Nothing in the world can stop me now!”. Yet when we come back to him in Episode 4, clearly someone has told him to tone it down and it becomes a slightly more subdued performance. Overall, Joseph Furst does a relatively good job in being the antagonist of the piece but its just that bit that ruins it for me. Patrick Troughton is finally starting to become the Doctor that we know he will become. The story sees him continuing to perfect his balance between serious and comedy.

Frazer Hines does surprisingly well considering he’s just been taken out of 18th Century Scotland. Also when you consider that it felt like his decision to join the TARDIS crew was bolted onto The Highlanders at the very last minute, it’s like this story was six months after that story not one week. Anneke Wills and Michael Craze seem to be slipping down the chain of importance as Jamie has that fresh vibe the Ben and Polly had when they joined the show in July 1966.

The Underwater Menace is better than The Highlanders and whilst its not perfect its still a good story and it feels like the show is starting to settle down after the biggest change in the shows history at that point.

The Highlanders (1967)

The Highlanders is the first story to feature Frazer Hines as Jamie. It is also the first story since I started my Marathon where I haven’t reviewed a story. This is only Patrick Troughton’s second story as the Doctor and it’s the first proper historical since the poor The Massacre. There is a reason why pure historical stories don’t work and its because its hard to find the right balance between being truthful to historical events and being a good piece of drama. What also works against it is that it doesn’t exist on video and the story has to work harder to make it more enjoyable. This story has been written by two people including the co-creator of the Cybermen which is just hard to believe but then again. The creator of the Daleks wrote The Keys of Marinus so it just proves that because someone has created something wonderful doesn’t mean its going to be a guranteed success. The historical events are not what I got from this story, its some of the characters. I found Donald Bisset (The Laird) to be a good character whilst Hannah Gordon was the stand out supporting character as Kirsty. She gets to spend some time with Anneke Wills and the two seem to get on really well. This means that Ben and Jamie get to also share some scenes.

Its odd that the Doctor doesn’t really drive this story and its down to Polly and Ben to drive the narrative. The story does allow Troughton to fine tune his comedy skills as he gets to pretend to be a Doctor and also dress up in women’s clothing. Its hard to believe William Hartnell would do this. I do think that Troughton is better that he was in Power of the Daleks but its still not quite what it would be like in future. I think also that Frazer Hines doesn’t quite has the best introduction into Doctor Who. It seemed that the decision to keep him beyond this story was made at the very last minute but as we all know it would work out in the end.

The Highlanders is a story that doesn’t really do anyone any favours. It seems like it was designed to protect Troughton who was in only his second story and was probably still trying to get a feel for the character. This transitional time for Doctor Who still feels unstable and as a result the story will remain exactly as I have always thought of it. Not very good.

Swan Song (2011)

After being slightly disappointed with The Man at the End of the Garden, I was hoping that this story would be a return to form. Written by John Dorney, there is a sense that the writer might have been inspired by Black Swan (the Oscar nominated film). None the less, this story is a return to form for the series. The story starts off with the story of Alice who tells us of a tragic event which resulted in her paralysis, robbing her a chance of appearing in a production of Swan Lake. It’s a really sad way of starting of a story but it helps establish the Alice character.

The story takes place between two time periods. The first being in the 1890’s where Jago, Litefoot and Leela are wondering around the Theatre and the other being some time in the future where on the site of the theatre they are doing experiments. It’s due to these experiments that are creating these situations where the two time zones meet up. It’s good when we learn that the future stuff is taking place in the exact same area where the theatre once stood and what happened to the theatre. The story spends just about the right amount of time trying to figure out what was going on before they got to the main action which was trying to stop all hell breaking loose. I like it how they placed in the story in the just the one area. Ok its in two different time zones but they didn’t set it in the Tavern then the theatre then Litefoot’s residence, just in the theatre which meant that I could focus on the story as opposed to where the characters were which is always a bonus for me.

I really like the music for Swan Lake and one of the things that I really like about this story is that they play the music. I know its not the same one as they use in the opera (probably for rights reasons) but the thing about the music is that its so good that it can be played in any way and it would still sound good. Kudos to whoever put it in the story because for me it would have not been as good if they had left it out.

All the regulars are on good form with Louise Jameson getting a lot more to do than she did in the previous story. However it’s the supporting cast that really impressed me with Abigal Hollick leading the way as Alice. Her story was made all the more heartbreaking with Hollick’s performance. Hywel Morgan & Andrew Westfield (Dan and Steven respectively) also did well in supporting Hollick.

Swan Song is a very good story as it was intriguing without being baffling. There is a line about how they didn’t get to do Swan Lake until after Jago had died. It seems that Jago fell in love with the story. John Dorney has written a story with great characters and a story that doesn’t feel rushed and feels like everything was meant to be there as opposed to being thrown in to make the story last the time it needed to run. I still think that the first story is the best so far but this is a fitting second.

The Man at the End of the Garden (2011)

The next story in the Jago and Litefoot is a slightly odd story. Written by the man who came up with the Toms Tardis Award winning story ‘The Magic Mousetrap’ – Matthew Sweet. This story is a bit of a break from the norm and at times it doesn’t feel like a Jago and Litefoot story. I think that we have become use to relatively straightforward stories with straightforward monsters/villains and this is perhaps the most complex or multi-layered story that we have had since this spin-off started.

There is a sense of The Birds in this story where the cast seem to be under attack from crows. I think that it gives the story a nice dark atmosphere and the whole idea that what is happening has something to do with a book is a nice idea but sadly the story is too confusing for me to be able to connect the dots so to speak. The story allows little for Louise Jameson and it seems an odd story to go for and they should make hay while the sun shines as the old saying goes. I don’t know how long Louise Jameson will be in Jago and Litefoot but if it is only for this series then this will be the one where she should have been allowed to do more. As for Benjamin and Baxter, they put on fine performances and as usual have the enthusiasm that made this series such a must. I was also quite impressed with the little girl, Eden Monteath (who appeared in The Eleventh Hour) did a good job and was totally believeable being in a very intelligent script. The other supporting character was Joanna Bacon who played Mrs. Hitch. I found her character to be very good and well played. The interaction between Mrs Hitch and Clara was one of the best things in this story.

It’s a story that I struggled with. I think that the struggle came with trying to figure out what was working out what was going on between the mom and daughter (?) and going on with Jago and Litefoot. I liked it enough to stick with it but I feel slightly disappointed with it and it wasn’t a patch on the previous adventures. I think that there is nothing wrong with having stories that push the boundries of my intelligence and whilst I may not understand everything that’s going on. I think that its far better than stories like Flip-Flop and most recently The Hollows of Time.