Doctor Who Earthshock audiobook review

Earthshock is a notable story for a number of reasons. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it is the favourite story of some fans for one particular reason. And to you people I would say: you are very cruel.
So, this audiobook of the Target novel by Ian Marter is read by the then Doctor, Peter Davidson.
This definitely adds something to the proceedings. Some of the previous audiobooks have been read by other actors who appeared in that particular story, and these have worked fine. But there’s something about having the Doctor himself reading it that lends an extra air to the proceedings.
Davidson is, naturally, very good. He has one of those warm voices that is perfect for the audiobook market. And of course he understands the emotional impact of certain events therein and conveys them with great skill. Also worth mentioning is that the cyberman voices are provided by Nicholas Briggs.

As mentioned, the book itself is written by the late, much missed former Harry Sullivan, Ian Marter.
After leaving the series as an actor, Marter managed to carve a nice corner of Who for himself by writing some of these adaptations, and even wrote a spin-off Harry Sullivan solo novel that was not half bad at all.
As a writer, Marter is very good, although he does commit a couple of, what are to me, cardinal sins. He uses too many adjectives in describing conversation (“He said, angrily”) and also does the really annoying thing of describing in detail what people are wearing. I don’t care what they have on – I care what they are doing.
On the plus side though, he improves greatly on the original television script, which was written by Eric Saward. Marter gives some more depth to the goings on, particularly with his descriptions of smells, and even has a go at patching up and explaining one of the major plot holes in the story to some success.
He also goes as far as to tweak the ending slightly, adding even more pathos to the scene. But I know that some of you will still laugh anyway…

Earthshock is released by AudioGo

Doctor Who Kiss of Death review

One of the great things about the Big Finish audio range is that they can delve into aspects of the series that were merely glimpsed at when they were on screen. And there is no better example of this than the adventure in question: Kiss of Death.

Here we get to peer into the back-story of companion Turlough and see more of what was hinted at in Planet of Fire.

After the Black Guardian trilogy, Turlough was, in my opinion, somewhat underused as a companion, so it is good to see him given this chance to step up into the limelight, and actor Mark Strickson certainly makes the most of it. He is called on here to flex his acting muscles in a way he never was on television as we get to meet his long lost childhood sweetheart and become embroiled in some shady dealing with intergalactic criminals.

But that’s not to say that the rest of the crew don’t have a lot to do. Nyssa, the Doctor and Tegan all have plenty to be getting on with. It was nice too, to see the Doctor do something we don’t normally see him do, but somehow assume (much like James Bond) he can do- that is: pilot a spaceship.

I’ve really been enjoying this arc of stories with the ‘dream team’, as I called them in the review of Heroes of Sontar, and the only downside of it is that there is only one more to go in this particular run.

Doctor Who The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories review

Now, before I start to write about this, I think that I should declare a bit of an interest.

A few months ago, Big Finish ran a competition were new writers were able to pitch ideas for a one part adventure featuring the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa. Like a lot of other writers, I gave it a go. And like all but one of them, I failed! The winner can be heard on this release. I was nervous before listening... It’s true I didn’t know which one of the four loosely related tales was the winner before listening, but I figured that because I didn’t know which was which, then my judgement should be impartial, right?
Well, I think it was, because on the first listen, the competition winner was one of the ones that really stood out for me.

We begin with The Demons of Red Lodge. This is a pretty straight up horror thriller type tale. It is well told, well acted and paced perfectly. I like an historical Who, and this has a nice sense of time and place to it. The writer does an impressive job of telling a fairly complex story, with flashback scenes and everything, in the 25 minutes that have been allotted to him. And here, as with all four of the tales in the collection, it was nice to see the character of Nyssa being fleshed out a bit. I don’t think she whines once throughout!

The Entropy Composition is next, and this is the competition winner, written by Rick Briggs. This has some pretty big sci-fi concepts! It has that special type of science in it that you can only get in the best of Who. By that I mean something that the Doctor will explain very quickly during an action sequence that, because you don’t have time to take in, sounds plausible, and as long as you just watch it from the corner of your eye and don’t look at it directly or think too much about it, it works fine!
Part of the brief for the submission was a 25 minute adventure, with, as mentioned, the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa and another three speaking parts. Briggs raises to this challenge brilliantly. He even goes to the audacious lengths of having one of the main characters not even appear in the story! I’m looking forward to seeing further adventures from this writer. I’d like to be annoyed, bitter and resentful, but in truth, his story is a hundred times better than the one I pitched!

Third comes Doing Time, which starts with a wonderful joke and carries on this light tone throughout. Well, almost throughout. Things take a nasty turn, as we expect them to in tales such as this. What I liked most in this story though, was what the writer was saying about the nature of politics in our world. Something brought home with some dark synchronicity as I listened to this again at the weekend, as news of the Arizona shooting came in.

Finally, and possibly my favourite is Special Features. This is an idea so damned obvious I find it hard to believe that it hasn’t been done before in an audio play. What we are treated to is the recording of a dvd commentary track to a 1970s British horror film. If any of you have ever listened with despair to a group of bored people attempting to dredge their memories for anything interesting to say about a minor job they did thirty or forty years before, then you’ll find yourself sporting a smile as you listen to this! A brilliant idea, perfectly executed. 
There is also a brilliant subscriber only extra for this particular tale- you can download the 'movie' which the characters are commenting on, and it is hilarious. It's a wonderful pastiche of the classic horror movie The Wicker Man and is full of wonderful hammy performances.

Doctor Who The Four Doctors review

As you all know, I’m sure, The Doctor has met himself in the past (or future?) a number of times, and I think it’s fair to say that the results have been mixed.

The Two Doctors was a bit of a mess. The Five Doctors (which at least does have the Raston Robot!)  I have a considerable soft spot for, despite the many failings. Best of the lot (I’m not including the New Adventures novels or previous Big Finish here) is of course The Three Doctors, which succeeded in not only having a decent story, but also added a hefty amount to the mythos.

Which brings us to The Four Doctors.

The title is a wee bit misleading- not in a Five Doctors way (were thanks to either a huff or scheduling, depending on which story you believe, there were only four Doctors)- as the Doctors here don’t actually meet, apart from one short by utterly gloriously written scene.

Here we have a tale that is told along the Doctor’s time stream, with him encountering various characters and, it has to be mentioned, Daleks at various times in his past.

As an aside- for a guy who travels in time, the Doctor has had very few adventures that use time travel as part of the plot. One of the nice things about the new Moffat junta is the use of time travel, as seen brilliantly in the season finale adventure The Big Bang and the Christmas special.

And the nice thing about this story is that it is non-linear, so we have earlier Doctors meeting characters who have already been with him as a later incarnation. This should be a mess of confusing and hole-ridden plotting. Indeed, I thought I’d figured out a few mistakes in there, but on another listen, I was annoyed to discover that all of my questions had been answered in there. An awful lot of thought and planning has went into this story, and it’s a testament to the writer and editors that it not only holds together so well, but makes perfect sense and is easy to follow, some astounding techno-babble from the Fifth Doctor notwithstanding! I’d love to see the flowchart for this story, I suspect it would look like the average season of Lost, but have the added bonus of actually making sense

That sentence seemed like a weird way to end this review, so I’ll add another paragraph.

I keep talking about atmosphere in these reviews, and this one has it again, but the thing that struck me the most about is was, yet again, just how well and how effortlessly the four lead actors inhabit the role of The Doctor.

Yet another brilliant production from Big Finish.

By the way- I was amazed to discover, upon listening to the extras, that this adventure is not released for general sale, but is a subscriber only extra! I have to say that as 'free gifts' go, this is pretty brilliant.

Little Drummer Boy

This is another of the sort stories (Short Trips, as they are known) that Big Finish stick on to subscriptions.

This one features the First Doctor, Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom and  and seems to be set just after The Daleks Master Plan.

It’s a fun tale, at least to begin with. It’s another Christmas set adventure which sees the characters skipping through various years, including a nice section at the Western Front in 1914.

I say to begin with, because the ending is an altogether darker affair. For me, the First Doctor has always been among the darkest of his incarnations and the conclusion of this tale, while logical and in a way inevitable, does nothing to convince me otherwise.