The Genocide Machine [The Seventh Doctor + Ace]

Warning: this review contains spoilers. Mainly because this is the fourth blog I've written this evening and frankly I've lost any kind of subtlety of expression or coherence.

This is rather good stuff. Indeed it makes an interesting partner to Saturday's Into The Dalek as they raise similar-ish questions about what happens if a Dalek opens its mind to new experiences. For The Genocide Machine involves the Doctor v the Daleks in a library. Well, sort of a library.

It's the kind of library you'd only find in Doctor Who really. It's packed full of the whole knowledge of the universe, which they've decided to hide away on an obscure planet tucked behind a time barrier. The Time Lords helped. It's a library no one really knows about, which makes it a tad pointless as Ace bluntly points out.

But its an attractive target for the Daleks as part of a bigger, longer-term plan they've been working on for a while. They want all that knowledge to help them conquer the Universe. The Daleks have taken that phrase about piss poor preparation to an extreme degree. Why just pile in their exterminating everything if you can study the universe and find the weakness of every world? This is the Daleks at their most patient and high reaching. They're not going about this in a half-arsed fashioned and that's admirable.

Thing go gang a'glay for the Daleks because obviously they've failed to prepare properly for the Doctor. Even though they're constantly boasting about how they've prepared for the Doctor. Sometimes you wonder how the Daleks managed to get out of their tunnel on Skaro so over-confident can they be. There's a particularly unfortunate Dalek in charge of the whole project whose role is reminiscent of the SpAD that always gets sacked when a politician has done something terrible but manages to avoid the blame. Unfortunately Dalek's don't get to spend more time with their families.

There's a rather amusing joke Chief Librarian Elgin (Bruce Montague) and his 'colleague' Cataloger Prink (Nick Briggs) involving the latters inability to get a word in edge-ways, which gets a rather impressive pay off late in the story.

I like Sylvester in this too, especially as he gets to do righteous indignation. I like a bit of Doctor righteous indignation. They tend to do it well. Especially the Scottish ones.*

Sophie Aldred is fab doing a very blunt and belligerent Ace. She doesn't take any crap does Ace. The Seventh Doctor and Ace are one of my favourite Doctor-Companion partnerships and this story remind me why. They genuinely sound like friends, which is probably influenced by Sophie and Sylvester's actual friendship these days. It's all rather nice.

Being a Dalek story Big Finish have decided to throw in an additional traditional touch: the 'invisible' creature already occupying the planet. With a grudge.

There's also the unfortunate Bev Tarrant (Louise Faulkner) who arrives with friends and leaves on her own. The name is very Terry Nation, which is rather lovely. Bev Tarrant could walk into Blake's 7 and no one would have blinked an eye.

And finally - and why there's a connection with Into The Dalek - there's a Dalek that gets its mind expanded and suddenly starts behaving in an unusually non-Dalek way. There's hope in this story that Daleks aren't just bad - which also reminds me of some rather lovely work in Dark Eyes - and that given access to the write experience and information they can change.

Alas it isn't meant to be.

So to conclude. I like this. It kept my attention on the bus to and from work without me ever wanting to look around for something to distract me, although I'm no idea what my eyes were looking at. I think I was happily inside my own head. Unusually.

Give it a listen.

 

The Marian Conspiracy [Sixth Doctor + Evelyn Smythe]

Here's a thing...I thought I'd love The Marian Conspiracy. It's an historical themed story, it's the Sixth Doctor and it's Big Finish.

But...but...I found it a little dull. Sorry.

It's not a terrible story. It's just not my cup of tea.

Let's take the positives first. Colin Baker's brilliant. Big Finish have really bought out the best in the Sixth Doctor showing what could have been done if the BBC hadn't all but given up on Doctor Who in the mid-eighties. He's particularly good both in the first episode when he goes head-to-head with Evelyn Smythe and in the later episodes when he's so patient and (surprisingly) kind to Mary.

That nicely segues into the next good thing: Evelyn Smythe. Evelyn is a fifty-five year old history professor - or lecturer - and the Doctor is drawn to her as the centre of a temporal problem, which turns out to be related to events back in 1554. The first episode that basically revolves around Evelyn and the Doctor meeting up. The Doctor is in one of his lightly confrontational moods and appears to be a borderline lunatic to Evelyn to begin with. After all his talk of temporal nexus points and time travel plus his arrogance isn't the best way to introduce yourself to a stranger.

Maggie Stables plays Evelyn and she's magnificent. Her unwillingness to be verbally pushed about by the Doctor, her intelligence and wit make her an endearing addition to the Big Finish repertoire. It'll be fun to see how she and the Doctor work out together. And it is nice for the Doctor to have a companion outside the usual 18-25 female demographic.

Evelyn's also rather good when she first finds herself mingling with the genuine citizens of 1554 England, even if she blunders in to political trouble (and genuine danger) almost immediately. Her compassion for and interest in some of the minor characters is lovely too. Those people who are forgotten in the warp and weft of History with a capital H. Those people that professional History tends to lose because they leave almost nothing in their wake.

You might think that one of the themes of this story is how history writes the past from the top down. Often. And how little we can know - or do know - about how ordinary people felt about the great religious questions of Tudor England. As their religion changed and changed again and changed again. These were difficult times.

Actually now I've got to this point I'm beginning to feel like I enjoyed this more than I thought I did. There's some meaty stuff in here: on religious freedom, on fear and on power. It's political and domestic. Although the domestic affairs of Queens are also the political affairs of state.

Hmmmm, it's weird this re-writing of my feelings about this story as I go.

I still felt a little distracted by the end as if my attention wasn't fully on the story, which means I was probably a bit bored at points. I'm going to blame myself and say it's too much exposure to Tudor-Stuart history at University.

The performances are all pretty good. I like Anah Roudin as The Queen and Jo Castleton as Lady Sarah in particular.

So after all that perhaps I can be more positive in general. It was never a story I thought was terrible, just not one that I got grabbed by and even with all the equivocating above it is still not a story I'd be eager to listen to again.

At least not for a bit.

Dark Eyes 2

I am reviewing Dark Eyes 2 the same way I reviewed Dark Eyes, which is as if they are one story. This makes even more sense with Dark Eyes 2 in a way as the stories almost form a perfect circle. In the beginning is our end as the poet once said. I shall say no more about this.

The first story The Traitor is a nice feint. It makes you think that the villains of Dark Eyes 2 will be the same villains as Dark but there's more going on here than meets the eye. The planet Nixyce VII is under Dalek control, which means death, Robomen and - at best - slavery. But there is also rebellion. Or collaboration. And we're introduced to Liv Chenka (Nicola Walker) who as a medic seems to be doing the latter. But her life gets much more complicated as she gets dragged into other people's plots: first the resistance and then The Doctor. The Doctor's plan is a bit different to the usual one and as things play out we realise that he is playing a complicated game for big stakes. The story builds to a pleasantly shocking ending.

The White Room is the next story and is probably the weakest of the four. It's got its moments. There's some genuinely creepy stuff and Master Zachery (Adrian Mackinder) is one of the more matter-of-fact unpleasant characters we've met in Doctor Who. A genuinely nasty man and he isn't even the main villain. The story re-introduces Molly (Ruth Bradley) who has been living in the Doctor's house on Baker Street. It's almost the place-holder in the four stories. It's not terrible but by the standards of Dark Eyes 2 it is a little weak.

Time's Horizon is great. Molly and The Doctor arrive on a spaceship that's hovering on the edge of the Universe at the wrong time. But then when does the Doctor ever arrive anywhere NOT at the wrong time. He's astonished to meet Liv Chenka again, although the circumstances are slightly unusual. This story introduces us another set of villains. Another unpleasant species bent on universal conquest. This is one of these stories where we get to see the Doctor as less than trustworthy. Possibly a raving madman. Weirdly it reminded me of Snakedance in that respect. That's not an obvious comparison I know but I quite like it.

Finally in Eyes of the Master we finish Dark Eyes 2 on a high note. It's not a spoiler to say that the Master is involved. [IF YOU'VE NOT LISTENED TO UNIT DOMINION WHAT FOLLOWS IS A WHACKING GREAT SPOILER BTW. IF YOU HAVE OR YOU DON'T CARE PLEASE READ ON] He's in a new incarnation and played by with panache by Alex McQueen. Again The Master might not be quite what you expect. Is he the bad guy? He's aided in his work by Dr Sally Armstrong - who we met briefly in Dark Eyes - who seems to be his 'willing' assistant. Giving the bad boy Time Lords Companions seems to be a thing these days. First the Meddling Monk, now the Master. It's like they all want to be the Doctor. It's a rather good little story this but when you get to the end you are kind of given the impression that this isn't quite as stand alone as it first appears. This is definitely a step along the road to Dark Eyes 3 and Dark Eyes 4. There's a big heffelumping arc going on here that makes The Moff look like a dilettante.

I liked Dark Eyes 2 more than Dark Eyes (for what my opinion is worth) with the exception of The White Room, which was a tad disappointing. I found the way the stories linked together - through The Doctor, Molly, Liv Chenka and the various villains - rather satisfying.

Once more there's a series of excellent performances from various actors of the Big Finish company who play the smaller parts. Sometimes more than one part across the four stories. I feel a bit guilty that I'm not going to list them all, especially as that's just plain laziness but if you want to take a look the cast list can be found here.

Ruth Bradley does a fine job with Molly again but my vote for the two best performances across the quadrilogy - horrible word but it serves - are from Paul McGann and Nicola Walker.

I have praised McGann a lot in this column and he definitely deserves it here. His Doctor gets to be and do pretty much everything you need him to do here. Get the Eighth Doctor back on the telly. Do it now. Although make sure the writer's are Big Finish writers please. They know the Eighth Doctor better than anyone.

Nicola Walker's brilliant as Liv Chenka. The character is strong - and first appeared in Robophobia which is release 149 in the Main Range with the Seventh Doctor at his most manipulative and is well-worth a listen in and of itself - and Walker manages to make her both bitingly sarcastic and exhausted by her responsibilities and experiences. Liv Chenka is one of Doctor Who's more emotionally beaten up characters and I found myself wanting her to join the Doctor as a proper companion. I prefered her to Molly. In fact Molly and Liv are almost precise opposites to each other. Molly is hope and Liv is experience.

So to cut a long blog short(er) I really, really quite enjoyed this. It builds on Dark Eyes and sows the seeds for Dark Eyes 3, which I definitely want to listen to. It's out in November I think. Can't wait.

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.