Dark Eyes

I chose to blog - I'm not sure 'review' is the right word to pick to describe what I do on this blog, which is more of a aimless ramble around the thing I've heard or seen - Dark Eyes as one blog. The four stories are so intertwined it is more like The Trial Of A Time Lord than a set of stand alone stories. I'm not sure you could listen to these individual tales without listening to the others. The threads come together gradually, characters emerge from the shadows and the plot twists one way and then the other.

The first story, The Great War, introduces us to Molly O'Sullivan (Ruth Bradley), who is a former household servant now VAD on the front line in World War One. She's also Irish, which is a nice change. She doesn't respond well to the Doctor initially, referring to him quite sarcastically from the off as 'The Doctor'. Not 'Doctor'. Her arrival in the Doctor's life - via devious Time Lord shenanigans - is not dissimilar to the arrival of Lucie Miller all the way back in Blood of the Daleks. Ruth Bradley is bloody brilliant all the way through. Molly gets added to the list of Big Finish companions that I'd like to see in the actual television version.

The Great War ends with the Doctor and Molly on the run from their enemies and leads into Fugitives, which is best described as The Chase, but good. Throughout these stories innocent bystanders seem to die as the Doctor's enemies seem totally unbothered about collateral damages or the timelines.

I should stop here to praise the non-main performers throughout these stories. There's a number of actors playing multiple or small parts and none of them sounds a bum note. So credit to Beth Chalmers, John Banks, Alex Mallinson, Tim Treloar, Natalie Burt, Jonathan Forbes and Ian Cullen. Cullen actually has the biggest individual part, Nadeyan, in the final part of Dark Eyes: "X" and the Daleks and the most heroic possibly. And Welsh.

Then there's the next level of supporting performance. These are Straxus (Peter Egan) and Kotris (Toby Jones). Straxus is the Time Lord who brings the Doctor into this whole story and being a Time Lord is obviously devious above and beyond the call of duty. Toby Jones's voice drifts in and out of all the stories and we gradually find out more about who he is and what he's up to as the story progresses, although the final revelation about who he actually is comes as something of a surprise even if there are clues sown throughout. Both Egan and Jones are brilliant. Egan's voice is stentorian. If that's actually the correct word and Jones gives Kotris a fine bitter edge. Without these two solid performances this might not be so good.

Really though Dark Eyes is almost a two-hander. Paul McGann and Ruth Bradley get most of the words and most of the action. I've already commented on how brilliant Ruth Bradley is but there's no harm in saying it again. I like Molly O'Sullivan. Her matter-of-fact way of dealing with the baffling things going on around her - expressed well in a scene with Nadeyan in "X" and the Daleks - is wonderful. And she has a solid moral centre too, which in a story where duplicity is everywhere is rather refreshing.

McGann is magnificent to. This is the Eighth Doctor's finest hour and once again you find yourself raging that he never got the proper chance to show us what he could do on television. There's so much depth to the Eighth Doctor. He's suffered but survived. It makes the Ninth-Tenth-Eleventh Doctor's post-Gallifrey soul-searching look light-hearted in comparison. The reason for that is that we've seen the individual cost of recent events to The Doctor. It's felt personal. The destruction of Gallifrey feels epic. The difference illustrates Stalin's statement "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic" perfectly. Yes, the Ninth-Tenth-Eleventh Doctors have their moments but the Eighth Doctors loss feels so much more real. But perhaps that just me.

Molly and the Doctor's relationship seems 'real' as they don't hit it off from the beginning. It takes time for them to bond but in the end they work well together. The Doctor begins Dark Eyes in a - sorry - dark place. He's almost lost all hope after the events of To The Death-Lucie Miller and Straxus offers him some. Then another death almost makes him give up all hope.

You could argue that Dark Eyes is all about hope and how the Doctor gives hope to others. We ask 'who watches the watchman', we can almost ask 'who gives hope to the hope giver', but that doesn't sound as good or look as tidy. Molly gives the Doctor hope when he most needs it and the Doctor gives Molly hope to. And others.

The third story, Tangled Web, begins to explain some of what is going on and why but not everything before the final story, "X" and the Daleks pulls everything together and concludes in a way that - as is traditional in Doctor Who - leaves us in the position for a follow-up. The truth of who Molly is emerges and why everyone seems so keen to get their hands on her. Timelines are adjusted. People do heroic things. There are deaths. There are survivors. Most of all there is hope.

I should also add here that I've said - often - that I think Big Finish do Cybermen better than the BBC do (and if you doubt me compare The Silver Turk with The Nightmare in Silver) but they also do the Daleks better. I think that's partly because Nick Briggs is so heavily involved - as writer, producer, actor and Dalek - and partly because Big Finish can allow the Daleks to be the ruthless and devious little pepperpots the television series can't. Because it lets in too much darkness. There can be hints of it but I don't think the BBC could get away with anything as bleak as To The Death-Lucie.

One of the reason I think I like Big Finish so much is that tonally it fits with how I would like to make Doctor Who but sometimes I think that would be too dark for a prime time Saturday afternoon tea-time audience.

I can't praise Dark Eyes enough. It's a fantastic series. It's as good as anything Big Finish have ever done, which makes it as good as anything Doctor Who has ever produced. In any format.

It's also a great introduction to Big Finish. If you've not listened to Big Finish before - and if that's the case I'm surprised you're reading this - then this is a good place to start. It stands alone, it's fantastically done but it has references to other Big Finish stories. You can listen to this and then go out into the wider Big Finish universe.

Seriously recommended. Seriously enjoyable.

To The Death-Lucie Miller

This is a bleak pair of stories. Bleak but brilliant. The darkest of ends to this season of Eighth Doctor stories. I'm not sure if you could get away with this amount of darkness in the television series but you can in Big Finish. Just.

To The Death is what we might now call a Doctor lite tale. He hardly appears until the end. What it does do though is explain what has happened on Earth in all its horror. There's been plague and invasion. Lucie Miller survives the plague. Just. She isn't unscathed but she finds herself both in the heart of the darkness and she finds herself in the heart of the rebellion against the invaders. With Susan and Alex, the Doctor's great-grandson.

To The Death feels like The Survivors* both in subject matter - the impact of plague and survival - and tone, although it doesn't have the depth of darkness that Lucie Miller has. It also begins to pull together all the threads going back to Death in Blackpool**. The Monk is here and has been heavily involved in creating this terrible situation and working to an agenda of his own. He's helped by Tamsin Drew, who hasn't quite seen through the Monk yet. Lucie and Alex start this story in Thailand as part of their world trip/gap year trip when the plague begins. Susan is here too and heavily involved in fighting off another invasion of Earth.

It ends on a wonderful cliffhanger that allows us to start Lucie Miller where the revelations and deaths come on remorselessly. The Monk's true complicity and venality is revealed. People die. People close to the Doctor. The first death is cold because it is done so casually. A person is eliminated by the Daleks casually as they have 'no function'. And neither the Doctor nor the Monk can stop it.

That death - and the Dalek's ruthless reaction to the North American rebellion - does seem to nudge the Monk's conscious. The Monk's greedy and unpleasant but his role in this story seems much nastier. It's like he's let his dislike of the Doctor's meddling get the better of him. At the end of the story you're not sure whether the Monk is repentant or not. He tries to talk to the Doctor but the Doctor is so angry and broken by this point that he's unwilling to listen. Indeed the Eighth Doctor's angry dismissal of the Monk's attempt to talk to him is brilliantly played by Paul McGann.

Graeme Garden does a fine job with the Monk again. Both Tamsin and the Doctor describe the Monk as a child at various points in this story and Garden does a fine job of getting across the Monk's wheedling attempt to avoid the truth of what he's done or his pathetic desire to be liked (and forgiven) by Tamsin. He is like a child but a child with a Time machine and the soul of a second hand car salesman. In some respects The Monk is the only comic relief in this story. Everyone else is pretty much played straight all the way through. The Monk's allowed to be funny, which I think makes his amorality even more shocking.

You'll notice I'm skipping around who dies and how in this story as I don't want to spoil it. The next death is even closer to the Doctor but is a more traditional sacrifice of sorts. The death comes as Lucie, Susan and Alex escape the Daleks in order to complete their mission to destroy the invaders plan. A mission that is itself a suicide mission. You know when this second death happens that it isn't going to be the last.

The last death is heart-breaking because it requires The Doctor to 'approve' it. It's the Doctor's responsibility, even if it is this persons decision. It's the final death in a trio of increasingly personal deaths that impact on the Doctor. You can see why this was originally going to be titled 'Victory of the Daleks' before the BBC nabbed - and wasted - that title for their television episode. It certainly deserves that title. Yes, the Dalek Invasion of the Earth 2.0 is defeated but at a terrible cost both to the Earth itself and the Doctor personally. He's an angry man at the end of this story (and you could imagine the post Lucie Miller Eighth Doctor becoming a War Doctor without the need to regenerate into John Hurt. I wish Steven Moffat had thought of that, even if it did mean losing the wonderful John Hurt War Doctor. I might re-boot this all in my head and pretend that's what happened. Or not.)

This story is packed full of excellent performances. Even John Banks as Seb is great and that's quite a small part but key because he's one of the few 'ordinary' humans in this story. Almost every other speaking part is a key character or a Dalek or voiced by Nick Briggs.

Carole Ann Ford's Susan is both the same character as the one who left in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and the older, post-Invasion version. [SPOILER FOLLOWS] In fact my only quibble with this story is the focus on The Doctor's grief, not Susan's. She should be equally broken but we're left to respond to the Doctor's anger. Which seems unfair. Especially as the Doctor goes into the TARDIS at the end and leaves her back on Earth with hardly a word to her about how she's feeling. It's rather brutal in a way.

But really great though Niky Wardley is as Tamsin, Jake McGann is as Alex or Graeme Garden is as The Monk I praise both McGann and Sheridan Smith above all of these. McGann's wonderful. Sheridan Smith though manages to give us a version of Lucie that we haven't seen before - almost broken and pessimistic. Then bringing the old Lucie back as the story builds to its climax. Her anger at The Monk's revelation of his role in the deaths of the rebels builds to scorching point. This pair of stories is really all about Lucie Miller and what she's become travelling with the Doctor and Sheridan Smith does a stonking job of bringing her too life.

These two stories are a fine conclusion to a season of Big Finish Eighth Doctor stories that I'm almost going to say is one of the best seasons of Doctor Who in the programmes history. It's a rolling series of tests of the Doctor's morality and character.

Actually my final comment should revolve around the Daleks. These two episodes really bring home the genuine threat that the Daleks present. They are cold-blooded killers. Instead of crying exterminate and letting their potential exterminatees escape they just kill people. And instead of the Doctor winning with only minimal losses this time lots of people die and some of them are close to the Doctor. He does win but it is a Pyrrhic victory.

I can't recommend these two episodes highly enough but in the words of the Capaldi Doctor you'll be heading 'Into Darkness.'


*Listening to this it is no surprise that Big Finish finally got around to doing The Survivors as an audio series. In fact listening to this the only surprise is that it took so long.

**Actually you can argue going back to The Zygon Who Fell To Earth and links to the Sixth Doctor story Patient Zero, which I haven't heard. Just thought you'd like to know it.

Prisoner of the Sun

I like Prisoner of the Sun, which was released in January 2011 and is written by Eddie Robson. [Don't say I never give you facts in this blog. All the rest will probably be opinion.]

This story picks up after the Doctor has been imprisoned for six years by The Consensus (which I almost feel should be written in big capital letters: THE CONSENSUS). Wisely they've used the Doctor's morality against him by putting him charge of stopping a dodgy sun taking out two nearby planets and killing two billion people. The Doctor's trying to keep things together long enough to find a permanent solution.

He's been given an android companion over the six years, which we learn in a rather nicely written scene that info-dumps the entire previous six years of the Doctor's life without sounding too much like an info-dump. He's on his fourth. The third just tried to kill him. For reasons of his own he's given the androids Lucie Miller's voice, which gives Sheridan Smith fun as she gets to play Android Chloe and Android Daphne.

He's guarded by three Mercurials, a race of people made of a substance not unlike mercury that farm themselves out to worlds to do unpleasant work that other races cannot do. They're not in it for anything but the money, which makes a nice refreshing change. Their played by Richenda Carey (Gliss), Pandora Collins (Fash) and Beth Chalmers (Shill). Indeed it is a surprisingly female cast for a Doctor Who story. With the exception of the Doctor there's only one other and that's Anthony Costa's Hagan.

Hagan is one of a pair of rebels sent to release the Doctor. Or something. The other one is Jelena, played by Jeany Spark. The Doctor is a legend amongst the rebels and they want to make sure he stays that way.

Stuff then happens.

Interesting stuff. There are deaths. All of which are actually genuinely quite shocking and cold. The first in particular, which comes out of the blue, is real surprise. There's a game of who do you believe, who's betrayed who and what is the truth plus The Doctor gets to be refreshingly immodest about his ability to escape prisons should he so desire, which he may or may not get a chance to prove depending on whether he isn't killed or not.

It's another nice performance from McGann who has become an expert at getting the Doctor's self-confidence across without sounding tediously arrogant. This is man you believe can bring down a galaxy wide organisation like the Consensus. Either directly or as an external consultant. If Sherlock was the world's first consulting detective then the Doctor appears to have become the Universe's first consulting revolutionary. Or at least this version has.

This story ends of a cliffhanger leading into the next story, Lucie Miller, so I'd best get on a give that a listen. Well, not immediately. I do have what passes for a life outside Doctor Who.

Well, sort of.

Relative Dimensions

Relative Dimensions by Marc Platt was released in December 2010 so it obviously has to have a Christmas theme to it. The Doctor feels that he owes Lucie a good Christmas to make up for the rather unpleasant one that we heard back in Death in Blackpool and Lucie, being a sucker for Christmas, agrees. Even if she still isn't sure about how she feels about the Doctor.

The Doctor wants a family Christmas so decides to pick up Susan and Alex on the way. Now Lucie has no idea who Susan and Alex are so is surprised when Susan refers to The Doctor as 'Grandfather'. The Doctor's got plans though. Plans for Alex.

There's also the problem of the giant pan-dimensional electro-fish thing that's got into the TARDIS because this being Doctor Who nothing could possibly be simple. This fish, which Susan picked up on Quinnis*, turns out to be doing a lot of damage to the TARDIS and to its fledershrew inhabitants. But whilst this BIG FISH is a problem it isn't evil or anything. It's just doing its thing. It just wants to go home, which makes for a pleasant change.

The BIG FISH is really just a McGuffin though for two things. Firstly to get a chance to have a wonder around the TARDIS and get a feel for the Doctor's nostalgia and his hopes whilst secondly giving us something to play out the Doctor's relationship issues with Lucie, Susan and Alex.

The Doctor's relationship with Susan has changed, obviously. She's less concerned about him - after all he's younger than her grandfather was and less in need of mollycoddling - and more concerned about Alex. It's because of that she gets angry with the Doctor when she discovers that the TARDIS has taken off. She's also a bit peeved with the Doctor's plans to take Alex off for a spin around the Universe, even if she comes around to accepting it. The Doctor sees Alex as his heir. One day the TARDIS will be Alex's, except Alex is - according to a sneaky DNA test conducted by the Doctor - only 7% Time Lord so I'm not sure how that will pan out. I also love the way Marc Platt manages to skim over the 'is Susan a Time Lord' stuff using a few throw away lines.

Meanwhile Alex is finding the whole thing both fun and frustrating. When he finds out that the Doctor has prepared a room for him then he gets a bit miffed about people 'making plans for him' but he and the Doctor bond well enough towards the end as they work together to organise a solution to the BIG FISH problem.

Lucie meanwhile is still a little awkward around the Doctor. She hasn't slotted back in comfortably, which explains why she decides to stay behind with Susan and Alex at the end. Alex wants to go off on a 'Grand Tour' to see the architecture that's left in and around Europe and Lucie's going to go with him.

So in the end, despite all the family Christmas festivities, the Doctor ends up alone. Again. The final little moments are rather nicely done. There's a choir singing 'Silent Night' and the Doctor is going through the presents he was going to give Lucie and finally he wishes himself a Happy Christmas - and in a nod to The Feast of Stephen - to anyone out there who might be listening.

It's not the most action packed Big Finish story ever and it feels like a little calm before the storm. We know there are only three stories left of this season and you get the impression that this one is the light-hearted one before it all kicks off. I could be wrong, of course. I often am.

What makes this so enjoyable though are the four fantastic performances from Carole Ann Ford, Sheriden Smith, Jake McGann and Paul McGann. Jake seems to have inherited his Dad's chilled out acting style, which is sweet. It's Paul McGann though that I think steals the show - although as he is the star of the show I'm not sure he can steal it but hey-ho - with a lovely performance. Again. Particularly in the final scenes when he's left alone.

I'd put McGann high on my list of favourite Doctors if I had one. I'm one of those people whose favourite Doctor tends to be the one I'm watching at the time but with a nostalgic fondness for Tom Baker because he was the first Doctor I remember. But even allowing for that the frustration that McGann's television appearances as the Doctor are limited to The TV Movie - which can't even be arsed to give itself a title - and The Night of the Doctor is always rather frustrating.

In the end McGann, more than any of the other Doctors, is a Big Finish Doctor and perhaps all the better for it. Or not.


*Quinnis is mentioned in a throwaway line in a Hartnell episode by Susan. It's an unseen adventure, which by shear coincidence was turned into Big Finish Companion Chronicle 5.06 released in December 2010 and written by...Marc Platt. You can buy Quinnis and give that a listen if you feel so inclined. I've not heard it yet myself. There's a lot of Big Finish to get through you know. A lot.

Deimos - The Resurrection of Mars

Deimos - Resurrection of Mars sees a kind of ending to the Eighth Doctor and Tamsin story, the re-introduction of Lucie Miller and a further bout in the battle between The Meddling Monk and The Doctor. Indeed I get the impression that these little skirmishes, which have been fought on and off 'screen' since Situation Vacant have a little while to go yet. At the end of this story the Monk is determined to have another go, describing this as 'a test run'.

What's great about these episodes though is that it really does put the Doctor's morality to the test. One after the other each with bigger stakes. Is one life worth 600? Are 600 lives worth 300,000? Are 300,000 worth 20 billion? The Eighth Doctor is tested. He's tested by the Ice Warriors, by the Monk, by Tamsin and by Lucie.

The Monk has an alternative approach. He believes that the end justifies the means but the Eighth Doctor doesn't. Even if he is aware that he wasn't always like that. In fact there's a great line when he says - to Lucie if memory serves - that "he used to be that guy" referring to the darker, more manipulative Seventh Doctor. He talks about how he started to count and ask whether twenty deaths were justified if they're sacrifice saved a million others. It's an echo of what we'll see in the television series about The Time Lord Victorious. There are a lot of fine scenes here discussing the price you're prepared to pay. Perhaps the most moving moment, partly because it is almost a throwaway, is when the Doctor says (and I paraphrase) "I'm prepared to risk my own life because it is mine to give."

So this story, although it is ostensibly about saving the Martian colonies from Ice Warriors determined to re-capture the red planet from Deimos, is actually about the Doctor's morality. And his choices.

The humans have kindly put a whacking great sonic device on Deimos intending for it to be used to terraform Mars, although (sadly) they've run out of cash. Unfortunately sonic devices and Ice Warriors go together like cheese and pickle, although they're aren't supposed to be any Ice Warriors awake at this point. They're all tucked away sleeping. However the Monk has woken up a few early. He says - to both Tamsin and Lucie - that this is because he wants to save Halcyon. The planet the Martians will destroy to make their New Mars. The end - saving twenty billion Halcyons - justifies the means to the Monk. If three hundred thousand Martian colonists have to die then so be it. It's morality as mathematics.

Except there's the web of time to think about. And the Doctor thinks about it. The Monk doesn't care. He wonders if it is just something Time Lords talk about in order to justify their lack of involvement in the Universe. Does it really matter? The Doctor thinks it does. And - after a bit of manipulation by The Monk - Tamsin disagrees. Somewhere in this story Lucie Miller leaves The Monk and Tamsin leaves the Doctor. There's a bit of companion swapping going on here. And getting Tamsin to leave the Doctor is The Monk's victory in this story.

The Doctor wins, as usual, but there is a price to pay. People die. They die because the Doctor chooses to save Lucie. The Doctor justifies this by saying that the Martians would have killed them anyway but I don't know if he believe that or if he's just saying that to make him and Lucie feel better. The Doctor's 'victory' helps terraform Mars and brings about the history that is supposed to happen. That means somewhere along the line a terrible crime is going to be committed that the Doctor can't - indeed won't - try and stop.

Doctor Who often pits the Doctor against those who feel the end justifies the means because The Doctor doesn't - usually - operate that way. This is a fine example of that.

There's some fine performances too.

Tracy Ann-Oberman as the magnificently named Temperance Finch; David Warner as the deluded Professor Boston Schooner and Nicky Henson as Gregson Grenville. There's a rather lovely 'ordinary couple' Margaret (Susan Brown) and Harold (Nick Wilton) whose role really is to give us someone to feel really attached to for nefarious authorial purposes.

Nick Briggs does vocal duties on the Lord Sardak - if I've spelt that right - our resident Ice Lord as well as various other Ice Warriors. It is a well-known fact that Nick Briggs is contractually signed up for voices for almost all Classic Doctor Who monsters. Somehow the Sontarans escaped him.

Niky Wardley is excellent as Tamsin, especially as she argues with and about the Doctor's morality. I still wonder if Tamsin's a bit too naive as she seems to buy into the Monk's view of the Doctor a little bit too easily. But then it does seem less cold than the Doctor's 'alleged' view of the Universe. The Monk seems to offer the option of making a difference, whereas the Doctor doesn't but what I don't understand is that she's already seen The Doctor in action in Situation Vacant, Nevermore and The Book of Kells so why does she forget or ignore what he did there? And she's seen the Monk's is - if nothing else - a bit of a devious git in The Book of Kells so her buying into the Monk's story is the only odd note in the whole thing for me.

Graeme Garden makes a tip-top Monk too. He manages to balance the comic with the serious and has a nice edge in Sylvester Sneakly style villainy too, which in my opinion is perfect for the Monk.

It's nice to have Sheriden Smith back. I have developed some affection for Lucie Miller's northern belligerence, which comes across particularly well in her little clash with Tamsin towards the end of The Resurrection of Mars and it is also nice that they didn't just slip her straight back in without a little awkwardness between her and the Doctor.

Paul McGann's brilliant in this. His Doctor has a certain effortless cool that I admire. It's a laid back, chilled out masterpiece. You don't need ridiculous amounts of pyrotechnic voice work to do a great job in Doctor Who audio. The Eighth Doctor's power is understated, which I quite like. So when the big moments come they feel big. It's such a shame he never got a proper shot at the television series.

Phew. That took a while.

Skip to the end.

It's good. Give it a listen.