Doctor Who: The Guardian of the Solar System, by Simon Guerrier (Big Finish) | review

The first story in the fifth series of the Companion Chronicles sees the return for seventy-one minutes of Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh). Well, sort of. On television she helped the first Doctor defeat the Daleks’ master-plan, and paid the ultimate price. Here, what appears to be a digital copy of her mind has lived on for a thousand years as the host of a guest house with remarkable properties. As the house Sara healed the sick daughter of a man named Robert (Niall MacGregor), and in return he promised to stay there forever, not realising perhaps that forever in that house would be a long time indeed. He has one last thing to ask of her, but before she will hear his request she wants to tell him one last story, a side-quest during her time with the Doctor and space pilot Steven Tyler, when they travelled back in time to discover the dark secret at the heart of the human empire, what powers their flight to the stars. Along the way, she got the chance to meet Bret Vyon, the brother she would betray, when he was still alive. It’s a good story with tender, emotional performances, and a melancholy, downbeat feel, about people caught in the wheels of time, trying to escape the inevitable, trying to escape the past. Stephen Theaker ***

Jago and Litefoot, Series 5, by Jonathan Morris, Marc Platt, Colin Brake and Justin Richards (Big Finish) | review by Stephen Theaker

Professor Litefoot (played by Trevor Baxter) and theatre impressario Henry Gordon Jago (Christopher Benjamin) first appeared in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”, a popular Doctor Who story starring Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor, and made such an impression that a spin-off was reportedly considered. Good ideas never die, they just wait for their moment, and eventually Big Finish began this series of audio stories for these Victorian “investigators of infernal incidents”. Best of all, their stories are now available on Audible, along with many other Big Finish titles. (This one was supplied for review, but I had already spent my monthly tokens on UNIT: Dominion and the fourth Doctor Lost Stories box set.) Season five puts a new spin on the format, thanks to the Doctor’s useless navigational skills. After taking the pair from 1893 to the New World and to Venus in a pair of very entertaining specials, the sixth Doctor dropped them off at home, but in the wrong century: they are now in 1968. These stories deliberately (as the special features explain) skip over their initial acclimatisation to the swinging sixties, to show them settled in their new lives, and ready for new adventures. Litefoot is working in an antiquarian bookshop, bought for him by Ellie Higson (Lisa Bowerman), a friend from the old days who has made the most of her vampiric longevity. Jago is on the verge of becoming a television personality, presenting an old-time talent show. Each of the four episodes lasts about an hour. All are by male writers, but Lisa Bowerman directs. Jonathan Morris writes “The Age of Revolution”, about a TV star, “Timothy Vee off the TV!”, and his peculiarly hypnotic statue. “The Case of the Gluttonous Guru” by Marc Platt is about the swami Sanjaya Starr, leader of the temple of Transcendental Meditation, who is looking for a host for Mama, the Great Birth Mother… “The Bloodchild Codex” by Colin Brake sees Ellie get skittish as another vampire shows up on the scene, looking for a book in Litefoot’s collection. “The Final Act” by Justin Richards confronts the pair with old enemies. Connections to the past are present throughout the stories thanks to the grand-daughter of the Great Godiva, Guinevere Godiva, who takes an uncommon interest in the crystal they brought back from Venus, and Detective Sergeant Dave Sacker, dogged descendant of another old friend. The four stories are all equally enjoyable, providing terrific dialogue for the two leads to wrap their wonderful voices around, with a sound mix that works just as well whether one is listening on earphones, a pillow speaker or a surround sound system – though obviously the latter was best. The audiobook also includes seventy minutes of special features. Stephen Theaker ****

Doctor Who: Echoes of Grey, by John Dorney (Big Finish) | review

This sixty-seven minute play checks in with Zoe Heriot, now in her fifties after being returned to her own time by the Time Lords. They wiped her memories of her travels with the Doctor, leaving her with just the recollection of his visit to the Wheel in Space to fight the Cybermen, but she has an eidetic memory, and she can tell that there’s a discontinuity in her mind. It has made it difficult to form relationships; she feels like the ghost of herself. Then she meets Ally Monroe, whose life she apparently saved during one of the adventures she can’t remember. Ally thinks her alpha wave gadget will help, and slowly Zoe starts to remember the time she, Jamie and the second Doctor encountered the Achromatics, grey beings who declare their love for you while draining away your life. It’s a second Doctor story in the classic style, of slow-moving monsters in a confined space, with all the creepiness that brings. When they chase the Doctor around a room (he has a plan, but “no other ideas at all!”) it’s easy to imagine how it would have looked on screen. Wendy Padbury is as adept at voicing the Doctor and Jamie as when playing her younger self. The framing device is cleverly done, and by the time it ends the play’s title turns out to be clever too. It’s a good story, though its ramifications are potentially tragic: if Zoe and – as we’ve learned in other stories – Jamie have recovered some of their memories, did the Doctor make a terrible mistake in the Tomb of Rassilon? Stephen Theaker ***

Doctor Who: Solitaire (Big Finish) by John Dorney | mini-review

India Fisher plays Charley Pollard once again, for a story set during her time as companion to the eighth Doctor. He’s been turned into a puppet, and she doesn’t remember who he is anyway, or why she came into this toy shop in the first place. The owner, a toymaker, is creepy as heck, and a loud voice keeps shouting “PLAAAAY!” This is the twelfth story from series four of the Companion Chronicles, and is a play for two actors rather than the usual monologue by one (with other actors chipping in with their lines). David Bailie is marvellously ripe as the Celestial Toymaker, still smarting from previous defeats at the Doctor’s hands. Stephen Theaker ***

Doctor Who: Old Soldiers (Big Finish) by James Swallow | mini-review

The third story from series two of the Companion Chronicles is an hour-long adventure with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (played by Nicholas Courtney), who recalls an adventure that took place shortly after his decision to kill the Silurians, and perhaps explains his slightly less warlike approach in later stories. A UNIT base in Kriegeskind castle is plagued by the ghosts of ancient soldiers, who still have the power to kill. The Brigadier calls in the third Doctor, who parachutes into the place to help out. A bit reminiscent of The Ghosts of N-Space, but much better. Stephen Theaker ***

Doctor Who: Mother Russia (Big Finish) by Marc Platt | mini-review

The first story in season two of the Companion Chronicles. Peter Purves returns to the role of Steven, space pilot companion to the first Doctor. In this adventure the two of them and Dodo land in Russia, just as Napoleon prepares to invade, and a rogue alien complicates affairs. The plot requires Steven to be a bit dopey, but the Russia of 1812 is a fascinating setting and overall this really does have the feel of an authentic story from the Hartnell period. Stephen Theaker ****

Doctor Who: Helicon Prime (Big Finish) by Jake Elliott | review

Story two in the second series of Companion Chronicles. Frazer Hines plays Jamie McCrimmon, who shouldn’t remember anything of his adventures with the second Doctor, but for some reason he does, and he’s telling someone all about one of them. While Victoria is off studying graphology, the Doctor and Jamie land by accident on Helicon Prime, a luxury resort, booked up decades in advance and parked in a bit of space that keeps everyone unnaturally nice and peaceful. (It was moved there after visiting couples had shown a tendency, once they had a chance to relax and really think about things, to realise their mutual loathing and murder each other.) But someone must be immune, because there is a mysterious death, and then another, and now the Doctor’s got a real job on his hands. This story had some lovely incidental music that combined with the aliens and ambassadors to remind me quite a bit of Mass Effect. We get to hear how Jamie feels when the Doctor keeps him in the dark, and how he decides what to do in those situations. One dialogue exchange is as good as anything from the television series: “What are you thinking?” asks Jamie. “I don’t know, Jamie,” says the Doctor, “I haven’t finished thinking it yet.” Stephen Theaker ****

Doctor Who: The Catalyst (Big Finish) by Nigel Fairs | review

Louise Jameson returns to the role of Leela, the fourth Doctor’s second female companion. They visit Lord Douglas, who turns out to have travelled with a previous incarnation of the Doctor for several years and now has a secret trophy room full of mementos. His reasons for leaving the Tardis play an important role in the story. After initial frostiness, Leela warms up to Lord Douglas’s daughter, Jessica, who likes Rudyard Kipling and speaks with admiring horror of the suffragettes, and they discover that there is yet another secret within the trophy room, a secret with golden hair and wide, glistening eyes… The Doctor has taught Leela not to judge by appearances, but it’s a lesson Jessica may not get the chance to learn. This is the fourth story of the second series of the Companion Chronicles, and after listening to several of these in a row it’s hard not to feel the contrivance behind the various interviews and interrogations each companion must undergo. We’re grown-ups, could we not just agree to accept that Leela is telling us a story without a framing device? It’s also odd to hear a companion doing impressions. Sometimes it works well, but, as Louise Jameson acknowledges in an interview postscript to the story, her approximation of Tom Baker doesn’t quite work, sounding a bit like William Hague with a sore throat. Her Leela, though, is still fantastic, and the story gives her some full-blooded villains to chew on. Stephen Theaker ***

Doctor Who: The Blue Tooth (Big Finish) by Nigel Fairs | mini-review

Third in the Companion Chronicles, from back in 2007. Liz Shaw (played by Caroline John, as on television) recounts an adventure that took place during her brief spell with UNIT. A chum is late for a meeting so Liz pops round to her house: the friend is missing and her cat is dead. There is a befuddled cyberman on the loose, and it’ll take Liz and the third Doctor four short episodes to sort it out. Stephen Theaker ***

Doctor Who: The Beautiful People (Big Finish) by Jonathan Morris | mini-review

The fourth story from the first series of the Companion Chronicles is an hour-long adventure for the fourth Doctor, K9 and the second Romana, recounted in character by Lalla Ward. The three of them arrive in a beauty spa where the treatments are somewhat extreme. The story ends up offering a positive message towards those of us tipping the scales in the wrong direction, but there’s a fair bit of fat description before we get there, and it sounds a bit odd coming from Romana. Stephen Theaker **

Doctor Who: The Light at the End, by Nicholas Briggs, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who: The Light at the End, by Nicholas Briggs (Big Finish, digital audio, 2 hrs; purchased from publisher) gives us the impossible dream: a team-up of Doctors four (Tom Baker), five (Peter Davison), six (Colin Baker), seven (Sylvester McCoy) and eight (Paul McGann) in their prime, accompanied respectively by companions Leela (Louise Jameson), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Peri (Nicola Bryant), Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Charley (India Fisher). That’s not to mention cameos from Sara Kingdom, the first three Doctors (somehow!), Jamie, Zoe, Tegan, Turlough and I’m sure many others that I missed on a first listen. With all those people involved, does the story matter? You get to hear the fourth Doctor talking to the eighth Doctor! Who cares what they’re talking about?

Well, just in case you do: five of the Doctors (or their companions) notice flashing red lights on their consoles. The problem is not just the flashing, but that the lights have never been there before: they seem to have been created and set off by the Tardis passing through a specific location on November 23rd, 1963. So off the Doctors go to investigate. It’s a bit like a Justice League of America story from the sixties, as four and eight team up, and six and seven, while five has to fend for himself, before they all gather together for the big finale. Since he’s on the cover, it’s no spoiler to say that the Master is involved.

He’s played with a nice subtlety by Geoffrey Beevers, who played the decayed Master in “The Keeper of Traken” (that version having been first portrayed by Peter Pratt in “The Deadly Assassin”). I think it used to be generally assumed that the decayed Master was the Roger Delgado incarnation at the end of his life, but here he seems in slightly better condition – he’s described by an unfortunate human who encounters him as looking like he’s been “injured, burnt” – and on the cover he looks recognisably like Geoffrey Beevers, which would seem to establish him as an entirely separate incarnation from Delgado (if he hadn’t been already).

The story does show the difficulty of a story involving so many of the Doctors and their companions, in that there isn’t much time for anything else. I came away from it with a renewed appreciation of the television story “The Five Doctors”, always one of my favourites. Terrance Dicks did a brilliant job there of giving all four Doctors a moment to shine, and gave each of them memorable, quotable dialogue. In The Light at the End, Nicholas Briggs has five fully active Doctors, plus quite big cameos from three more, and so even two hours doesn’t allow time for many other speaking roles. Like Dicks with his walks to the tower, Briggs keeps things quite simple, focusing on one really sticky problem, allowing his Doctors time to talk around it.

It’s interesting that here, as in many recent television stories, the biggest danger is not that the Doctor might die, but that he might never have existed: as he approaches his regeneration limit, his past becomes more important than his future. As in previous anniversary stories, we once again see the later Doctors defer to the first – odd when the eighth Doctor is about four times older! Perhaps it’s because he’s the only one with direct memories of the Time Lord academy, while all the rest have had their youthful memories jumbled by multiple regenerations.

The absence of the tenth Doctor is a shame, given that David Tennant was working on Big Finish audios long before he took the Tardis keys, but better a contract that lets Big Finish only make stories with the classic Doctors than no contract to make new stories at all. And it’s right that Big Finish’s celebration of the programme’s fiftieth anniversary should celebrate the Doctors and companions with whom they’ve had so many terrific adventures. Caroline Johns, Mary Tamm, Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen are of course missed even more, but well done Big Finish for giving us so many new stories with them while it was still possible.

This is everything I thought I wanted from the television anniversary episode, but don’t realistically expect to get. As many Doctors as possible, on one adventure, interacting with each other: I won’t deny that happy tears were emitted! It gave me that crossover rush without ever becoming a panto. Even if it’s with a mere two or three Doctors, I’m certain Steven Moffat will give us something special in his anniversary special, and this story does a marvellous job of clearing the decks in preparation, leaving the listener ready for whatever November 23rd, 2013 has in store, fannish cravings sated. And who knows, maybe at some point there will be a flashing red light on the Doctors’ consoles in “The Day of the Doctor”. An absolute must-buy for any Doctor Who fan.

Counter-Measures, Series 1 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who spin-off Counter-Measures, Series 1 (Big Finish, digital audiobook, c.4 hrs, plus 65 mins of bonus features) follows on from one of the seventh Doctor’s best television adventures, Remembrance of the Daleks. Some of the soldiers and scientists who helped him face down two Dalek armies, in particular Group Captain Ian Gilmore (Simon Williams), Professor Rachel Jenson (Pamela Salem) and Alison Williams (Rachel Gledhill), come together again to form a special counter-measures group for responding to such “insurgencies”. As you might expect from that, it’s quite reminiscent of Torchwood, if it were set in the sixties, or English black and white science fiction films of that period.

In the first adventure, Threshold, by Paul Finch, the coalescing team has to investigate the activities of Professor Heinrich Schumann, a former Nazi scientist (played by Vernon Dobtcheff) whose experiments in teleportation have attracted the attention of something… from beyond! The long single episode format makes the story feel rather special, and the cast is excellent. As ever, Big Finish’s talent for sound design delivers the goods; whether in headphones or through a surround sound system it all (notably the throbbing teleportation machine, and a talking doll animated by an alien intelligence) sounds marvellous. A very good start to the series.

Episode 2, Artificial Intelligence, is by Matt Fitton, who puts the team up against a psychic computer, a “learning intelligence” built to run a spy network – and it speaks with Professor Jenson’s voice, thanks to a spot of industrial espionage by former colleague Professor Jeffrey Broderick (Adrian Lukis); all great fun. A neurochemist working on the project, Czech defector Dr Nadia Cervenka (enthusiastically voiced by Lizzie Roper), has a romantic past with Group Captain Gilmore that goes back to post-war Berlin; the encounter reveals how passionate Gilmore is about helping those who need it, even those who were on the other side of the war.

There are shades of Moonraker and Quatermass II (the latter perhaps acknowledged by the use of “Keir” as a pseudonym) in episode 3, written by Ian Potter, as the team investigate The Pelage Project. Pelage, a new industrial town, has sprung up out of nowhere with government approval, and fish nearby are dying in their hundreds, all at once, of “massive necrotic metastasis”. Like the first two episodes, this story features a memorable aural element: in this case an oppressive, controlling tannoy announcer (“Onward and upward!”), but the orders come from the Alan Sugar type who built this town of biddable workers to serve his construction plant: Ken Temple, played with by belief and gusto by Stephen Grief. He’s a man with both eyes on the future, and he expects the worst.

Episode 4, State of Emergency by Justin Richards, was for me the best of the series, featuring a fine turn from Duncan Wisbey as Prime Minister Harold Wilson. After Winston Churchill’s excellent team-ups with the eleventh Doctor, it’s only fair to have a Labour PM given a similar chance to shine, and Wilson’s well-known terror of a military coup provides the basis for an excellent story that feels like a proper season finale. As Sir Toby Kinsella, manipulative controller of the Counter-Measures group, Hugh Ross is superb in all four stories, each line delivered with the lizardly drawl of a Sir Humphrey Appleby, and this story seems him at his best.

A fifth CD/file takes us behind the scenes, and there’s the usual mix of straight-talking and polite professionalism, with the odd moment that hints at hurt feelings and creative disagreements along the way. One concern discussed is the need to distinguish the stories from U.N.I.T. adventures, which is why Professor Jenson, by way of a slightly awkward conversation in episode one, ends up in charge rather than Group Captain Gilmore.

Taken as a set, Counter-Measures, Series 1 is very satisfying. There’s a good team of characters, each with interesting, distinctive voices. Ongoing storylines, such as Alison’s relationship with her beau Julian, build gently without detracting from the stories’ individuality. Each of the four stories is a substantial adventure and all are deeply rooted in the period’s politics, hopes and fears, making the sixties setting much more than atmospheric window dressing. It would be easy to say that this would be good enough to appear on Radio 4, but in fact I like it rather more than most of the drama I hear on there. Despite all the Who stories and spin-offs they’ve already produced, Counter-Measures shows that Big Finish are still finding new corners of that universe to explore and new stories to tell.

Available to purchase here.

Jago & Litefoot: The Bloodless Soldier by Justin Richards – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Henry Gordon Jago is a theatrical impresario who has lost his theatre, Professor Gordon Litefoot a respectable doctor who helps the police when they have a body to examine. They met for the first time on television, in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, one of the fourth Doctor’s best-regarded stories. Jago & Litefoot: The Bloodless Soldier by Justin Richards (Big Finish, 1×CD, 50 mins) is the first in a series of audio adventures, sold in box sets of four stories. Their “investigations of infernal incidents” have been successful enough to reach a fourth series, but I’m starting at the beginning. Or almost the beginning; they were previously to be heard in The Mahogany Murders, one of the Companion Chronicles, but I missed that one. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter return as Jago and Litefoot, respectively, their full-blooded, plummy tones giving the story an instant gravitas. They play their roles with complete conviction, approaching the material with the same seriousness they might give to a Radio 4 adaptation of a classic literary novel. The relish with which they discuss the food and drink served up by Ellie at their favourite pub made this listener wish he was right there at the table with them. The word I’m looking for is gusto!

And that’s the way their characters approach this story, of an army captain brought back from India with a nasty wolfish infection. While his loyal men try to find a cure, one less loyal subordinate looks to exploit him for money—which gets Jago involved. In parallel, Jago is called to examine a clawed and bloodless body left by the captain’s feeding.

This was one of my favourite Big Finish dramas so far, despite the absence of the Doctor. The story is quite short, but works very well, and the emotional conclusion, where Jago and Litefoot are faced with the same terrible necessity but only one can go through with it, tells us much about their respective strengths, and why two such different characters should find such support in each other’s company. I wasn’t keen on Hari Sunil (an Indian Van Helsing who travels to England to stop the curse spreading) being played by a white actor affecting an accent—nor on his proving so ineffective when it mattered!—but had I not seen the cast list I doubt I’d have griped; the acting throughout is in fact very good, as is the sound: I’ve rarely heard such alarming noises emanating from my stereo’s speakers! Overall, a very good adventure, and I’m very glad of having another three stories in the series one box set to look forward to.

Doctor Who: The Invasion of E-Space – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In Doctor Who: The Invasion of E-Space (Big Finish, 60 mins plus extras) Romana tells a story that happened somewhere between Full Circle (where the Tardis acquired an Adric) and Warriors’ Gate (where the Doctor and Adric escaped E-Space, leaving Romana and a K-9 to fight for Tharil liberation). Lalla Ward is helped in her narrative duties by Suanne Brown, playing Marni Tellis, who has been investigating a series of murders on her home planet Ballustra. Those deaths were the prelude to an attack by Farrian raiders, who are invading from our universe by way of an artificial charged vaccum emboitment.

Both performances are good, although the similarity of the actresses’ voices sometimes makes for a moment or two of confusion when the narrative switches between them. Both are entertaining in the nine minutes of extras at the end, Lalla Ward obviously having not the slightest idea which stories she’s done in the past, or what she has signed up to do in the future.

The story is a decent enough invasion tale, but I can’t find a great deal to say about it. It’s not complete rubbish, but it’s nowhere near brilliant, coming and going without making much of an impression. Andrew Smith, writer of the aforementioned television adventure Full Circle, packs quite a lot into his two episodes, but there isn’t much to think about, nor much to care about. Eight billion people may live on Ballustra, but it’s hard to worry about them when you’ve only ever heard one of them speaking; the story doesn’t do enough to make them feel real.

Overall, not really recommended except to super-fans of Lalla Ward.

Doctor Who: The Wreck of the Titan, by Barnaby Edwards – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Every so often an item refuses to be reviewed, fights me at every turn, or like Lucius Shepherd’s Viator Plus is simply beyond the limits of my barely nascent critical faculties. I’ve struggled to review this sixth Doctor adventure. At first I used MP3 Merger to turn it into one long audio file and put it on the Kindle to listen to, but the way it begins with a preview of the next story, the long stretch of incidental music at the end of episode two (during which I invariably fell asleep), and a big chunk of episode three going missing during the merge process all conspired with a story of timeslips and shifting locations to leave me as confused as Jamie and the Doctor are in this story. Trying to listen to it on the iPod or iPad didn’t go any better – I kept losing my place. The PC then? No, Windows Media Player got muddled up by the metadata.

Newer, less intransigent stories came in for review, and I retreated from this one, defeated by a combination of circumstance, technology and sleepiness. Now, having built up my strength reviewing the Companion Chronicles, I decided it was time to make another assault upon the Titan. I’ve got into the habit of burning the digital Who releases to CDs, which might seem a surprisingly retrograde step for someone so keen on ebooks and other forms of digital delivery, but if a CD is one of the five in my stereo I’ll usually listen to it once a day at least while working. This one I must have listened to nine or ten times, and I still can’t be sure I’ve quite got it, so I beg your indulgence for any silly mistakes.

The sixth Doctor and the older Jamie we met in City of Spires land on a grand ship, which they expect to be the Queen Mary, for whose maiden voyage the Doctor has tickets. But things aren’t right, and Jamie is the first to spot it: they are on the Titanic. Doors leading below decks don’t open, the band seems out of sorts, and the first officer is not the man the Doctor remembers. And then it gets really strange, with the story introducing people who are either pretending to be or really think they are Captain Nemo (played perfectly by DS9’s Alexander Siddig) and Professor Aronnax. This mysterious, adventuresome story forms the second part of a trilogy, continuing themes from the City of Spires, and ending on a remarkable cliffhanger that is surely resolved in the next story, Legend of the Cybermen. I can’t guess how a cyberman story might relate to this one, so there must be further surprises to come.

Though I found this story quite hard to get to grips with, that’s a function of how I listen to these adventures (usually while working or on my way to sleep). The script is keen, Colin Baker and Frazer Hines as the Doctor and Jamie clearly enjoying the quality of their dialogue. Howard Carter’s incidental music is very good, creating quite the grand sweep in the listener’s mind. The Doctor is completely wrong once or twice in this story, which he would presumably find a novel experience. It’s good for him, and good for the story: for once he isn’t in complete control of the situation and that encourages the listener to take it more seriously. It’s a good story for Jamie, too. He may not remember the Doctor, but his good sense is unimpaired, and he shows himself ready to think his way around a problem – or a conversation – until he finds a way in.

I enjoyed City of Spires, but this one just about tops it. The only disappointment is a sneaking suspicion that the next story will bring this excellent reunion to an end. I hope not, but shall find out soon.

Doctor Who: The Wreck of the Titan, by Barnaby Edwards. Big Finish, 2xCD.  This review (leaving off the first two paragraphs) originally appeared in BFS Journal #4.

Doctor Who: The Whispering Forest - reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Following the events of Cobwebs, the fifth Doctor asks the Tardis to listen out for trouble. She takes them to Chodor, a planet on which the listener has already encountered human colonists. Besieged by Takers who snatch them from their beds and the whispering ghosts that flock in their wake, they rub their skin raw to keep themselves clean and cut their hair short. The humans have lost their leader, and the Doctor and friends, with their dangerously long hair and baby soft skin (“Er, thanks...” says Tegan), become pawns in a power struggle, between Sesha, progressive daughter of lost Anulf, and Mertil, his righteously murderous widow.

Whether Mertil was a true believer or a cynical manipulator of the belief of others I wasn’t sure; each interpretation would make her actions and tone of voice at certain points a bit out of character. Also, I had a problem I often do with stories where the status quo is so badly out of balance, and yet the situation has persisted for a very long time. As Tegan says, "Things change around the Doctor", but they tend to change without him too, and it’s hard to believe none of the humans have figured anything out for themselves. People brought up in a religion inevitably ask themselves at some point whether it’s all made up; hard to believe people forced to scrub their skin raw wouldn’t ever question its utility.

So it’s a story that brings up some big questions, and as usual the Doctor helps everyone find the answers they need. As in the previous story, there’s a big secret to be discovered, but the resolution of this one is not quite as satisfying, and the story as a whole is rather gruelling. One answer is given away a bit too early: what’s up with Tegan? Be sure to skip the trailer for the following story, inconveniently placed before the first episode of this one. Then again, I missed the trailer, and so the answer to that question hit me with full, nightmarish force. You might want to avoid that experience..! Overall, a decent but not outstanding adventure - with an unforgettable ending.

Doctor Who: The Whispering Forest, by Stephen Cole, starring Peter Davison. Big Finish, 2xCD.

Doctor Who: The Perpetual Bond, by Simon Guerrier – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Having lost many friends in the battle to foil the daleks’ master plan, the first Doctor and Steven are rather pleased to find the Tardis has taken them to 1960s London. Plans to look up Ian and Barbara are interrupted by the sight of a mushroom-headed alien walking down the street. The trail leads to the City, where humans and disguised aliens are trading in a truly shocking commodity.

Like the other Companion Chronicles CDs, The Perpetual Bond falls midway between an audiobook and a play. Peter Purves narrates most of the story, and reads the dialogue of Steven and the Doctor, while Tom Allen narrates other sections and plays Oliver Harper, a shady sort with a good heart who seems likely to appear in future stories. Both acquit themselves well, but the story suffers from Doctor Who’s peculiar problem: a programme for children whose spin-offs are often aimed at adults. In this story that manifests itself in a setting and plot that’s rather dull for children, read in a way that seems patronising to an adult.

That aside, I did enjoy it. It feels very true to that period of the show, and the first Doctor is very much in character, a twinkle in his eye, a naive sort of craftiness to his dealings with the villains. Its reflections on the relationship between a government and its people are very pertinent to the present day, while more positively it offers a time traveller’s view of how progress might be measured from one era to the next: more spectacles, more teeth, and so on. We tend to expect the future to be worse, but I think we’re all glad to not live in a time when diabetic children would simply die upon the disease’s onset.

The two-episode structure works well. It avoids the need for too much superfluous action and lets the idea take centre stage. A very pleasant way to spend an hour.

Doctor Who, The Companion Chronicles: The Perpetual Bond, by Simon Guerrier, read by Peter Purves and Tom Allen, Big Finish, 1xCD. This review originally appeared in BFS Journal #3.

Doctor Who: Cobwebs, by Jonathan Morris – reviewed

Funny how nostalgia works. As a boy, I didn’t really enjoy Tegan and Turlough bickering with the fifth Doctor in the Tardis, but now they’re back and doing it again the cockles of my heart are well and truly warmed. Throw in my favourite companion from that time, Nyssa (bumping into them fifty years after they left her skirtless on Terminus) and it’s as if someone built an extension to my childhood. Even if the story proved to be a complete dud, I would still be hugely grateful to Big Finish for bringing these actors together again. (Especially since I originally missed half their episodes, thanks to the BBC scheduling them against cubs night!)

But it’s far from a dud. Jonathan Morris’s story follows straight on from Enlightenment (1983), with Tegan still furious over Turlough’s dealings with the Black Guardian. Nyssa, accompanied by robotic personal assistant Loki, has travelled to Hellheim in search of a cure for an interstellar plague. The Doctor has been summoned there – by whom is a mystery; the first but not the worst. Investigating the station brings to light a quartet of cobwebbed skeletons, one of them wearing a school uniform that looks very much like Turlough’s, another wearing a cricket sweater like the Doctor’s, and so on. It’s a pretty bleak way to begin a new series of adventures!

Add to that a series of deadly hallucinations and a crazed computer, and quicker than you can say Hal 9000 they’re thrown back in time to face a fate the Doctor thinks they can’t avoid. Tegan and Turlough, as ever, but for once with good reason, are disinclined to take his word for it, but find few friends among the station crew, company workers and scientists whose memories have been wiped, supposedly to make more room for thinking about their work. This makes for many interesting developments and double crosses as they learn about their own true motives, goals and characters.

The tense situation gives the Tardis team some meaty stuff to row about; it feels properly dramatic, rather than the empty noise and fluster we sometimes saw on screen – it’s ironic that the mildest of Doctors had the most tumultuous Tardis! For fans of the era this really hits the spot. It feels authentically of the period, delivering the kind of ethical and moral drama that period aimed for, but hitting the mark rather better. It also benefits from the absence of that period’s less-loved features: tabloid-friendly guest stars, over-bright lighting, implausible motivations and shopping list plots.

I was especially pleased by the resolution of the story’s big mystery: the cobwebbed skeletons. Expecting a cop-out, I got something much more interesting, and even rather touching. The story of this reunited team continues in The Whispering Forest by Stephen Cole, and The Cradle of the Snake by Marc Platt.

Doctor Who: Cobwebs, by Jonathan Morris, Big Finish, 2xCD. Amazon UK. Amazon US. This review originally appeared in BFS Journal #3.

Doctor Who: The Forbidden Time, by David Lock, read by Anneke Wills and Frazer Hines – reviewed

Many of the Companion Chronicles, being told retrospectively to an audience, provide a novel perspective on these characters and their travels in time. We’re not used to them growing old—or even growing up, given how young some of them were. The Forbidden Time plays this card with a flourish, present-day Polly (she mentions iPods) sounding almost mournful at times as she remembers her old friends, and the incidental music has the elegiac feel you might expect in the final scenes of a particularly moving film.

We’re used to the companions missing the Doctor himself, but this story makes the point that companions will miss each other too. Polly and Ben returned to sixties London, but Jamie ended up back in historical Scotland, so far away in the past that Polly couldn’t possibly ever see him again: this story really brings out the sadness of that knowledge.

A press conference provides the framing device, Polly explaining to a largely incredulous audience the significance of a telepathic broadcast received the world over, warning that everyone on Earth is moving into a period of time owned by the Vist, and will be expected to pay a toll—a portion of their lifespans!

As Polly explains, the Doctor, Jamie, Polly and Ben found themselves, shortly after the Doctor’s first regeneration, trapped in a subdued, sepia shadow in time left by our world. The difference between the two Doctors plays a part in the story, with the second being “much more likely to trust the people he was travelling with”, Polly notes.

Here they met the Vist, inhabitants of the time vortex, beings with the bodies of greyhounds, legs as long as a giraffe’s, and faces like a monkey’s; Polly compares them to a painting by Dali. They move in time as we move in space, but in the end, despite their natural abilities, they are not quite the equals of a Lord of Time, and they fall prey to one of the crafty tricks so typical of the second Doctor.

If the story has any flaws, they relate to the nature of its telling. The presence of a dictaphone-style device in the original adventure to record dialogue from Jamie and Polly feels a little contrived, and the climax of episode one is possibly the least exciting cliffhanger of all time, Polly suggesting to her audience that they should have a five minute break. A one-hour press conference explaining a global catastrophe would hardly test anyone’s patience.

But there’s an awful lot to love here. The warmth of the relationships comes through with almost every word; the characters really care about each other. There are some lovely details, such as the surprising reason for Ben’s ability to pinpoint their location in time. The reading, mostly by Anneke Wills, with short sections from Frazer Hines, is quite excellent, and one really does feel that a significant new chapter has been added to these characters’ lives.

Doctor Who: The Forbidden Time, by David Lock, read by Anneke Wills and Frazer Hines. Big Finish, 1×CD, 62 mins.

Doctor Who: The Sentinels of the New Dawn – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

After leaving U.N.I.T. Liz Shaw returned to her work at Cambridge University, but the third Doctor didn’t leave her life completely. In this audio adventure we hear about the time she called him in to advise on a friend’s special project: a time dilator. Of course he’s unable to resist tinkering, and then giving it a whirl, and before you know it they’re waking up in 2014 and being greeted by Richard Beauregard, a posh young post-grad with a “hard, confident smile” who is soon revealed to be a member of the New Dawn. They’re a dodgy bunch with big plans for Britain and a big flying biomechanical beast, the Helidromus, to make sure those plans don’t meet with any opposition.

It’s a brave writer who asks an English actress with a plummy accent to perform the dialogue of an African dictator (this one plays a crucial role in the plans of the New Dawn), and a braver actress who accepts the challenge, but if that’s all this adventure is remembered for it would be a shame. Caroline John’s Pertwee isn’t perfect either, but there’s never any doubt that we are listening to Elizabeth Shaw. There are interesting reflections from Liz on why things didn’t work out for her at U.N.I.T. – the Doctor’s life is simply too intense for an ordinary human – and we realise how little she got to know him – she doesn’t really know which way he’ll jump with regard to the New Dawn.

(On a first listen I’d thought they were the people Mike Yates got mixed up with in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but the special features explain that they first appeared in Leviathan, a sixth Doctor audio.)

The two-episode structure of the Companion Chronicles once again proves a triumph, these two episodes squeezing in so much more than was usual for Liz’s period on the show, when every story was stretched out for seven episodes. The Doctor is for once allowed to be as clever as he really is – there isn’t a lot he can’t sort out in an hour-long adventure when he puts his mind to it! The ending is swift, sudden and decisive, but leaves room for future stories about both Liz and the New Dawn.

One of the most pleasant things about the story – and those like it – is that it makes the Doctor seem much nicer. On screen we see the third Doctor as something of a serial monogamist, but stories like this show his life continuing to intersect with those of former companions, still a friend even when life takes them in different directions – just as Rose, Mickey, Jack, Martha, and Donna all returned for encores in the modern programme.

Doctor Who, The Companion Chronicles: The Sentinels of the New Dawn, written by Paul Finch, read by Caroline John. Big Finish, 1xCD, 67mins. Amazon US. Amazon UK.