Bloodtide [Sixth Doctor + Evelyn Smythe]

Bloodtide is set on the Galapagos Islands. The Doctor has bought Evelyn along to meet Charles Darwin (Miles Richardson) whilst he is visiting aboard The Beagle. Of course whilst that would be nice it would probably make for a less than exciting Doctor Who story. And what do we see here? Ah, Silurians. Look out, look out there's a Lizardman about.

It's a small group, led by maverick Silurian scientist Tulok (Daniel Hogarth). Tulok, as we discover at the beginning of this story, is a 'man' with ideas that his fellow Silurians disapprove of. He's on trial when we first meet him. Sentenced to be exiled to the dying surface of the Earth along with his 'blasphemous' creations.

Of course dodgy scientists in Doctor Who - human, Kaled or Silurian - are never that easy to get rid of.

The Doctor stumbles upon all of this via Greta (Jane Goddard) whose brother has been sentenced to death by Governor Lawson (Julian Harries). Governor Lawson is an unpleasant bugger and may or may not be up to no good. He's certainly a petty and vindictive little man.

One thing leads to another. The Doctor gets captured, escapes and then has to escape a fate worse than pantomime horses as The Beagle comes under attack by the dreaded Myrka. I'll say this for the Myrka. It is the perfect monster for audio. Meanwhile Evelyn and Charles Darwin go looking for the Doctor and get captured. The Doctor goes to look for Evelyn and Charles Darwin with Captain Fitzroy (George Telfer) and gets captured. Again.

There's a lot of time in cells here. A lot of time being overheard by various people. The Silurians get to push people around using their Third Eye, which actually functions as a psychic weapon this time as opposed to a nonsensical conversational light. Obviously. Because a conversational light would be idiotic on audio. So I'm not sure why I made such a big deal out of this.

Moving on.

I like the Silurians. Always have. They're one of those Doctor Who monsters that actually feel like a proper culture, although 'New' Doctor Who has taken away some of there uniqueness by changing their appearance to something more streamlined. Even if it has given us Madam Vastra. Big Finish have stuck with the odd electronic voices too that came with the original Silurian story back in the Third Doctor's era. It works really well to make them seem more disconcerting.

And one of things that makes the Silurians great is the fact that they make humans instinctively uncomfortable as a result of a long forgotten race memory. It drives some people mad. Or not.

This story gives a couple of twists to their story here though. One about their diet. One about why they never woke up from their cryogenic sleep. I won't spoil either. Although you might be able to make a guess.

I often go on about how good the performances are in Big Finish stories. So much so that its almost a given. Everyone in this story seems pretty good, even if there's a couple of odd accents going on. Particularly fab is Miles Richardson as Darwin though. His angry thinking allowed responses to realizing what the Silurian's existence means for his world view is so well-played. It's a man moving through a crisis of faith and through to a whole new 'faith'.

I'm aware that this is one of my quibbles with Big Finish stories. That they sometimes undermine a historical figures achievements by making them look like they were fed to them by the Doctor or their adventures with the Doctor. Actually this starts with Timelash where every one of H.G. Wells's ideas seems to come c/o that story rather than from Wells's own imagination. Big Finish do it a bit with Mary Wollstonecraft in her stories with the Eighth Doctor. There's a little of that here but actually the best thing about it is that you can here Charles Darwin thinking through his ideas and taking them to their logical conclusion.

Indeed Darwin is the counter to Tulok. One is human being realizing their might not be a divine creator. The other a Silurian who wants to be God.

My other quibble is the ending. There's a lot of luck and convenience involved. It's still enjoyable, which I suppose is the best thing, but it borders on the unbelievable. But this is a problem with the ending of a lot of Doctor Who. After all if you've set up an unbeatable, terrifying foe then finding a way to defeat them that doesn't involve a McGuffin, a big red re-set button or just plain dumb stupidity on behalf of the villain. It's tough to do an ending in a Doctor story that holds up to nit-picking analysis.

Actually I think I might be a tad harsh about the ending. It's set up well enough but there's one or two too many of those inexplicable reasons for not killing everyone or delaying departures long enough for the good guys to put their plan into effect.

However taken to its logical extent that kind of argument undermines the whole premise of Doctor Who. After all any bad guy with a brain would just kill him. If not the first time. Definitely the second time.

Oh and Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are wonderful again. The Sixth Doctor flies on Big Finish in a way he hardly ever gets a chance to do on the television series. Plus Maggie Stables gives Evelyn a fine line in chilled sarcasm that makes her rather delightful.

To cut a long blog short: listen to Bloodtide. It's great. Atmospheric, fun and with a bit of depth to it.

There.

We're done.

Dust Breeding [The Seventh Doctor + Ace]

Dust Breeding is almost a story about an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force, but not quite. It's has a suitably barmy premise involving sentient weaponry, art and unstoppable killer monsters, which makes it quite endearing.

We begin and end with Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. We then find ourselves on Duchamp 331 a planetary dustbowl that's home to some fuel supply dumps and an artists colony. And that's pretty much it. A planet which allegedly once swallowed a Dalek saucer and its occupants. But is there something alive in the dust? And what has it got to do with the impending arrival of art dealer Madam Salvadori and her mysterious 'surprise' cruise and what is the artwork that Damien Pierson is creating to surprise her guests? What's it go to do with Mr. Seta and why has a crew member been murdered in a pretty baroque style?

All these questions will be answered. Some more quickly than others. Some more obviously than others. It won't end well for some people. Alas.

Listening to this also reminded me of the 'dangers' inherent in listening to a lot of stories in a quick run. There are a couple of scenes, involving the Seventh Doctor in a mental battle with an enemy, which seemed a bit similar to those in The Shadow of the Scourge but that probably wouldn't have mattered if I were doing these on release dates because in that time line there's seven months between the stories. For me there's about a week. So that has to be taken into consideration, which is easier said than done sometimes.

Oh and we get to meet Bev Tarrant (Louise Faulkner) again after The Genocide Machine, which would have been released over a year before this in 'real time' so the return might have a little less impact this time. Bev gets to be the second assistant to the Doctor in this story, filling in for Ace when she's indisposed and you do wonder on occasions whether Big Finish were considering making her a permanent addition to the TARDIS crew or not. But perhaps, having already created Evelyn Smythe, they decided to hold off for a bit. Louise Faulkner does a fine job too. Again. I'm guessing here but I'm wondering whether this will be the last time we see Bev.

There's some great performances here. I'm a particular fan of Ian Ricketts's Guthrie, who shows how to bare a grudge. An ordinary bloke who weirdly reminded me of Griffin The Chef from The Enemy of the World. Still ordinary people in Doctor Who can achieve extraordinary things, which Guthrie certainly does.

Caroline John plays Madam Salvadori with a delightfully extravagant accent whose carefully structured plans fall apart quickly and horribly in the face of a rather unpleasant villain. Her loyal assistant Klemp (Mark Donovan) struggles to cope with what he finds himself involved in. They remind me as a slightly less arch version of Kara and Vogel from Resurrection of the Daleks. 

Johnson Willis does a fine job of portraying Damien Pierson's descent into artistic madness and beyond.

Sophie Aldred gets to do a lot more shouting than usual as Ace in this story, being driven close to the edge on a couple of occasions but she still *is* Ace, which is remarkable really considering how much time has passed since Survival. The Seventh Doctor and Ace are one of my favourite companion-Doctor relationships in the series history and Big Finish does a fine job of reminding me why.

Which brings me neatly onto Sylvester's performance. He's so good on audio, especially when doing the quiet-powerful bits.

WARNING MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS

It's also nice work from Geoffrey Beevers as Mr. Seta. Aka The Master. This is the Master's first Big Finish appearance and they've gone with him as the stripped down skeletal version from The Deadly Assassin, which is definitely the more terrifying version. He was the Ainley version but the creature that may or may not be the main threat here strips him back to that version as a punishment - of sorts. Beevers's Master is perfect for Big Finish as the vocal performance is liquid malevolence.

SPOILER OVER

So another excellent Big Finish adventure concludes. Again it isn't mind-blowingly amazing but it definitely has its moments, especially in the final episodes as everything seems to spiral towards doom.

Worth a listen.

Loups-Garoux [Fifth Doctor + Turlough]

Loups-Garoux is rather good. It's atmospheric. There's some thought gone into the setting and the 'monsters' and its got the Fifth Doctor and Turlough in Brazil. All fine things separately but when combined together something rather excellent pops out of the mix.

It begins in 16th century Cologne where a man is on trial. A man who has stalked and killed in the guise of a wolf. He's a creature of the devil. He's Pieter Stubbe. He will be the Grey One.

Then we are introduced, slowly, to other characters. To Rosa Caiman, the girl with the forest in her head; to Ileana de Santos, the wealthy wife and head of her tribe; to Doctor Hayashi, the man trying to 'save' Ileana's son, Victor and to the Doctor and Turlough who are visiting Rio. This isn't contemporary Rio, this is Rio in 2080. A Rio surround not by rain forest but by desert. It's a world that's changed and that might not have space for the Loups-Garoux anymore. There's an air of a lost world about this whole story. A lost world that might just be savable.

The Loup-Garoux are werewolves. Not the werewolves of Hollywood myth but a race of creatures, of which Pieter Stubbe was the first and oldest. Their origins aren't exactly explained but the Doctor at one point says that mankind didn't exist when Pieter Stubbe stepped out of the mud. He's old is Stubbe. Old, hungry and looking for his mate, who was Illeana de Santos. They met in the snows of Russia in 1812 but she left him. Fled to South America and settled down with a human. They had a son, Victor, but Victor is turning into a wolf and Illeana has hired Doctor Hayashi to help her. But Hayashi has plans of his own. Mainly because he's the kind of idiotic scientist that fills many a-Doctor Who story. Too clever for his own good. And probably doomed to meet a horrible end.

Into this the Doctor steps. Along with Turlough. As usual Turlough is much less keen to get involved and finds himself surprisingly terrified and out of his depth, which is great because if there's something that Mark Strickson can do brilliantly it is Turlough losing it out of shear terror - see Frontios for a fab example of this.

The Doctor's very Fifth Doctor in this. Standing up to everyone. Refusing to judge the Loup-Garoux or condone their destruction, although he finds himself committed to something without realizing quite what he is committing himself to.

There's a streak of romance in this story. The Doctor and Turlough find themselves involved. Not necessarily committed but involved and the final conversation between The Doctor and Ileana is actually rather beautifully written by Marc Platt. It's also performed beautifully by Peter Davison and Eleanor Bron.

Eleanor Bron is the best thing in this. Her Ileana has real weight. Actually weight isn't the right word. Gravitas. She isn't a minor character in a Doctor Who story. This is a character who had a long life before the Doctor turned up and will have one now he's gone. She got an inner life. Or seems to. Which isn't always the case with characters in Doctor Who.

The other character that really shines is Rosa (Sarah Gale) whose the last of her tribe. It's another lovely performance. Full of life. Full of secrets.

Applause should also go to Nicky Henson as Pieter Stubbe, David Hankinson as Anton Lichfuss, Jane Burke as Inez.

The only slight disappointment is the legendary Burt Kwouk as Doctor Hayashi. Not because the performance isn't good but because he's the one character than approaches the bog standard Doctor Who character in the whole story. Everyone else seems so unique that he just appears a bit flat in comparison.

But that's really just a quibble. This is excellent stuff. Give it a listen.

A Minuet in Hell [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

Hello there. I'm back. It has been a while.

So 'Minuet in Hell', starring Paul McGann as the Doctor and India Fisher as Charley Pollard. Set in the fictional, soon-to-be US state of Malebolgia it features The Doctor's lost memory; devious politicians with diabolical machines; dirty old men; the reincarnation of the Hellfire Club; demons that turn out not to be demons (or Daemons) but Psionovores & Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewert (Retired...sort of).

The first thing that needs to be said is that it is far, far too long and takes a reasonably straightforward plot & stretches it until (almost) breaking point. It's as if the producers fell in love with the idea of the Doctor in an asylum but couldn't or wouldn't use it as a story on its own so tacked it on to a bog standard Doctor Who adventure.

And the stuff in the asylum is fun. It's atmospheric, if you like your atmosphere a wee bit creepy. The idea that the Doctor can't remember who he is & that his identity might be taken by someone else - in this case Nicholas Brigg's Gideon Crane - is nicely played. We, of course, know who is the true Doctor as we know it is Paul McGann. But inside the fiction the Doctor's uncertainty is disturbing. Especially as Gideon Crane - convinced that he is the Doctor - undertakes an taunting run through the Doctor's long term memory. Who is the most deluded? Why does Gideon Crane think he is the Doctor in the first place?

That story runs parallel to the 'bad guy trying to take over the world' storyline. In this case our main bad guy is Dashwood (Robert Jezek) , a preacher-politician trying to win the Governorship of Malebolgia. He's aided by Dr Dale Pargeter (Maureen Oakley), another in Doctor Who's long line of scientists who believe the ends justify the means. In this case experiments with a machine that transfer minds from person to machine allowing Dashwood to replace human minds with those of his demon allies. Dashwood thinks they're Lucifer's minions but...well appearances can be deceptive.

Dashwood is opposed by Senator Waldo Pickering (Morgan Deare) for political reasons. I'm afraid that there's so many Southern US accents being thrown around at this point that there's a danger of this sounding like an am-dram version of Gone With the Wind. Waldo is probably the most annoying character in this story & every time he appears (well almost) the pace of the story seems to slow down to sludge. Waldo has a grand-daughter - Becky Lee (Helen Goldwyn) - who is a kind of Big Finish version of Buffy. Sort of. Becky Lee and Charley have a lot of scenes together, which err on the side of the comedic.

That brings me on to why this story doesn't quite work. It is effectively two stories with two different tones welded together & as a result it is too long and too slow. There's one excellent horror story here & one rather bog standard Doctor Who run around. Join them together and neither of them works well.

Oh I should say that none of this has any impact on how brilliant Nicholas Courtney is as the Brigadier. He's older, wiser but still one of the best characters to emerge from Doctor Who. In the hands of a lesser actor the Brigadier could so easily have been a cardboard stereotype but there's a fine dusting of sardonic wit & sharp intelligence that makes the Brigadier so much more. This is as much a Brigadier story as it is the Doctor's.

So this has its positives but in the end it doesn't quite work for me & it felt at points like a real struggle to get through the thing. I suppose trying to do too much isn't such a bad crime. Better that than doing too little.

There's too much happening for this to be anything that a qualified success. The performances are all reasonably OK. McGann's great actually, especially during the scenes when he's not sure who he is or what's happening.

16/09/2014 note. This blog ends rather suddenly. I wonder why. Anyway it was written in April 2012 so make of that what you will.

The Stones of Venice [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

Well, that was bizarre but entertaining stuff. I'm not sure whether Gothic or Baroque is the right word to use to describe 'The Stones of Venice' but it is certainly a little odd.

Venice is dying and a Duke Orsino (Michael Sheard) who has not aged for one hundred years is expecting it to sink beneath the sea as the result of a rather nasty curse inflicting upon him by his lost beloved, Estella. Estella it seems reacted to being lost in a game of cards rather sharply. She cursed the Duke and Venice. Then died. There's a Cult in her memory, of course, led by Vincezo (Mark Gatiss). This Cult expects Estella to rise from her tomb and bring an end to the curse. Alas, things turn out to be much more complicated than that.

Add Venice's aquatic and rebellious underclass, the Gondoliers represented for the most part by Pietro (Barnaby Edwards) and some sound effects; an art collection with one or two odd paintings in it looked after by Churchwell (Nick Scovell), the Duke's curator and the sudden arrival of the Doctor and Charley and things get complicated.

The odd atmosphere is reflected in the guest performances. Michael Sheard does a great job as Duke Orsino, a man who has lived too long and lost too much. He might even be a little mad. This was Michael Sheard's last performance in Doctor Who before his death and it is an excellent final bow. Then there's the oddly intonated Elaine Ives-Cameron as Ms Lavish, an elderly woman who turns out to have something of an interesting tale to tell. [SPOILER, I suppose] Ms Lavish it turns out is Estella and she's become a rather bitter and judgemental old thing. She's also an alien. I might hazard a guess and say that Miss Haversham from 'Great Expectations' might be an influence (based partly on the names, partly on her bitterness) but then again I could be making two and two equal five.

Mark Gatiss's Vincenzo is portentous and rather arch. It veers dangerously towards the hammy but then if this were one of those odder horror films with Vincent Price in - like the Masque of the Red Death - you'd expect a little of that. He may also be channelling Hieronymous from 'The Masque of Mandragora'. His disappointment at the end is palpable and his dashing off, probably to form another catacomb head officed cult, is nicely done.

In fact the final episode, although incredibly wordy is quite wonderful. There's a lot of ideas bantered about, a lot of issues resolved and interesting points made about love, faith, class and what can be done to make a difference. The Doctor's line '...there's always something we can do' is made an item of faith for the 8th Doctor, which is ironic considering he's a bit sniffy about humanity's desire to mythologise everything.

India Fisher as Charley is good. She's got a bit more to do in this story as she gets separated from the Doctor and caught up in a rather bizarre plan of Pietro's, who might be the 23rd century Venetian cousin of Baldrick. Charley doesn't put up with being bullied - verbally or physically - and she gets to a nice scene towards the end when she tells Orsino off when he tells her off. She's fun to and nicely mocking of some of the Doctor's pretensions.

Paul McGann is excellent in this again. Doing a wonderful job of getting other people into trouble, especially Churchwell and Charley, before putting all the pieces back together at the end and enabling the Duke and Estella to save the day. In this the Doctor is more a catalyst than the main driver of the plot. Stuff happens. Occasionally the Doctor turns up to reduce the damage that results from that stuff.

History, someone once said, is just one damned thing after another, which is a nice way of summing up this story in my opinion. One damned thing after another. But in a good way.

Sword of Orion [Eighth Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

There is no point beating around the bush. This is brilliant stuff. It's a old school base under siege story done to perfection. In fact, just as 'The Caves of Androzani' is 'The Power of the Kroll' but done much, much better this is 'The Wheel in Space' but a new, improved version.

In fact I'd go as far as to say this is almost the best Cyberman story in Doctor Who's history (as I have covered it in the blog up until now) with perhaps only 'The Invasion' and 'Earthshock' to match it. It has the right atmosphere, which is hard to articulate but you know it when it is there. These are Cybermen who feel like a genuine threat.

Whoever decided to go back to a more electronic voice for the Cybermen and to step away from the David Banks school of fist thumping 'Excellent' type should take several bows. These Cybermen are old school and they have Cybermats to, which is always a pleasure. More importantly they seem genuinely terrifying and here audio really helps. There is no way the television series could have a rogue Cyberman tear somewhere to pieces but on audio you can and then you can have the actors react to that. This story makes it clear that Cybermen are a genuine threat and that Cyber Conversion is a horrible process.

Paul McGann is wonderful to. He's given a chance to show what he can do and grabs it with both hands. He's pretty subdued but partial to the occasional moment of smart arse sarcasm. The Doctor's gradual drawing out of Deeva Jansen's (Michelle Livingstone) plan is nicely done and his discussion with her as the story comes towards an end is nicely played by both actors.

India Fisher's does a fine job as companion Charley Pollard too. She's smart, sharp and pugnacious. I like the way they make her struggle to fit sf concepts into the vocabulary of the 1930s: all that talk of 'deathrays'. [If they somehow squeeze the 8th Doctor into the 50th Anniversary it would be nice if he was accompanied by Charley, even if it would probably throw some kind of continuity spanner into the works. But then The Moff does not really believe in continuity as such. It's all canon so why the hell not.]

The guest cast - limited in number - do a good job. Michelle Livingstone's Deeva Jansen is posh and obviously up to something from the off and the way the layers of her character are gradually unpeeled is nicely done. Secrets beneath secrets.

There is a nice pre-credit sequence featuring Mark Gatiss (Whatever happened to him?) as Thinnes and Barnaby Edwards (Whatever etc?) as Digly which sets up the atmosphere of the story pretty darn well. Someone seems to have made a decision to make the non-officers in the crew northern, which I quite like. My favour is Ian Marr's Ike who almost...well I will not spell it out.

Actually I'm a bit confused about what to do about spoilers with the Big Finish audios. I know a lot of these have been out for ages but they are less well known than the Classic TV ones. Should I avoid them? Or just carry on regardless. Answers on a postcard to the usual etc.

Bruce Montague's Grash is pretty good to. The dodgiest and least untrustworthy member of the crew his suspicisions about the Doctor and Charley last almost too long but then you realise that Grash is the type of man who is forced to be suspicious. He'd be in trouble if he was not.

So I'd recommend to those of you who haven't listened to a Big Finish that you give this a spin. It doesn't really require you to have listened to 'Storm Warning' - which introduces Charley - to enjoy it (although there's a couple of references, particularly to Ramsay, that might nip over your head a tad but nothing too drastic) but it is really very very good.

Storm Warning [Eight Doctor + Charlotte Pollard]

So we begin the Eighth Doctor's Big Finish run with 'Storm Warning', released in 2001.

A tale of aliens and an airship. Specifically the ill-fated R-101. In the real world the R-101 crashed into a French hillside on the 5 October 1930 killing 48 of the 54 people on board. It effectively bought an end to British airship development. In the Big Finish universe the crash still happens but everyone dies. Well, not quite everyone. One, Lord Tamworth (played with a fine stentorian air by Gareth Thomas) who is off to travel the stars. The other, Charley Pollard (India Fisher) leaves to travel with the Doctor. Except she's a paradox. She should have died on the R-101.

It's a nice gentle adventure. Not brilliant, not bad. In fact it does have the feel of a first story for a new Doctor. The story itself is less relevant that the introduction of a new incarnation. So even though the television movie introduced us to Paul McGann's Doctor this seems like his first proper adventure, even if it is audio only and lots of Doctor Who fans will never have heard it.

McGann is good again. There are similarities to David Tennant's portrayal in that he seems - at least here - to be a more human version of the Time Lord. He's certainly open about himself, spilling his secrets to Charley within minutes. It's early days yet so let's see how this pans out.

India Fisher does an excellent job with Charley Pollard as well. She's a couple of steps away from being jolly hockey sticks posh but combines brains and enthusiasm with a fine sense of adventure. She and the Eighth Doctor seem to work well together here.

The supporting cast does a good job to. I like Gareth Thomas's Lord Tamworth who is less of a pompous fool than his initial appearance leads you to suggest, although the idea of the Tamworth fighting with the Triskele's Uncreator Prime is as spectacularly odd as the fight between Patrick Moore and one of the aliens that takes place in the Independence Day UK and I'm not sure it would work in a television story but this is audio so things can be got away with.

Barnaby Edwards with South African accent makes Rathbone, the British Intelligence agent and key human bastard of the piece, pleasantly nasty but I think the script overdoes the 'in my country...' lion stories a bit. There's a hint towards the end that Rathbone is under the influence of the Uncreator Prime to explain his ruthless execution of the Triskele Lawgiver and he's given enough shades of grey to make him realistic enough. He's another in Doctor Who's long line of people who thinks the end justifies the means.

Nicholas Pegg as Frayling, the mild-mannered slightly put upon engineer and military officer doesn't have to stretch himself too much in a part that is as thin as the membrane of the airship itself.

I like the idea of the Trikele themselves. A species split into instinct and logic taking instruction from one single Lawgiver. A species that has passed beyond the 'let's invade and kill everyone stage' and is trying to be something else. A race whose nastier side is still pretty rubbish because they're a new generation who've not had much practice with this killing stuff and whose leader, the Uncreator Prime, gets beaten up by an old-ish member of the British aristocracy.

So this does a reasonable job. We meet our new Doctor and his new companion and sow seeds for future problems by the very fact that Charley is a paradox.