Doctor Who: To the Death review

After the triumph that was the previous Big Finish Eighth Doctor adventure, Lucie Miller, I was resigned to the fact that this one was never going to live up to it.

For the first third of this story, I thought I was correct in thinking this, but as the plot unfolds and things take a decidedly dark turn I realised I was wrong. Oh boy was a wrong!

As always, I will not be doing any spoilers, which in a way makes it very difficult to talk about this story- more so than usual. All I can say is that things happen and they are genuinely shocking.

Put it this way… one of the biggest weaknesses to long running sci-fi shows or action movies is that no matter how much jeopardy the lead characters are put in, you know that by the end of the episode or the movie everyone will still be okay and the status quo will be returned.

I really really enjoyed this. The previous episode promised a lot, and boy does it deliver it here. There is a colossal amount of stuff going on, as plot threads that have been woven through the last year of adventures come to fruition in ways that are most unexpected. And I don’t mind admitting that I had a tear in my eye on more than one occasion.

As I have said in reviews before- I enjoy being surprised (in a good way) and To the Death does more than surprises the listener- it genuinely shocks them.

This is, I think, absolutely essential listening.

And special note must be made of the final line. It is quite brilliant, very moving, and is one that echoes beautifully down the decades (or centuries) of Who history.

Doctor Who Lucie Miller review

Ah, now this review is going to be a challenge.

It is going to be very difficult to get through this without the review just being a gibbering series of disjoined exclamations of things like ‘Awesome!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Genius!’ and the like.

Yes, it is really that good.

The Eighth Doctor series has been consistently high standard throughout, but this story raises the bar even higher yet.

So- what makes this one so good?

And in that question lies the problem! As you should know by now, I don’t do spoilers- even little ones- in these reviews, so that will make it difficult to talk about some of the very cool things that happen in this story, but I’ll try.

Firstly, there is very little of The Doctor in it. This means that the rest of the cast get to stretch their wings a bit and get into the meat of the plot, and watching them try to cope with horrendous life and world changing events without him there makes for some very good drama, with one character in particular going in a direction that is most unexpected.

In fact, I’ll deal with the main plot here. It is as audacious as it is clever. To think you could get away with doing it is one thing… but to actually do it and succeed is astonishingly impressive.

Then something happens about halfway through the story… and it was lucky I was listening to this alone in the car, because I suspect most people would have been shocked when I shouted a very bad swear word at the player when it happened. And I am bursting to say what it was (the thing in the story that is, not the swear word) but it is just too good a dramatic twist to spoil in any way.

And to cap all this excitement it ends on the mother of all cliff-hangers.
It may be hyperbole to say this is the best Big Finish audio I have listened to- but it’s damned close.