Doctor Who Audio Review: An Ood Assassin Has The Doctor In His Crosshairs

Time Lord Victorious: He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not is a Doctor Who audio play from Big Finish Productions and is part of a much larger saga that crosses all sorts of mediums on the franchise. Paul McGann stars as the Doctor in this particular piece written by Carrie Thompson and directed by Scott Handcock. Silas Carson has returned to voice the Ood assassin known as Brian. Misha Malcolm, Melanie Stevens, Pauline Eyre, Martin McDougall, and Jack Devos make up the guest cast with Nicholas Briggs appearing very briefly voicing the Daleks.

The Doctor, in what is known as his eighth incarnation, arrives on a planet called Atharna in search of one of the Seven Hundred Wonders of the Universe. He instead finds an injured woman with an Ood named Brian accompanying her. The planet is a wasteland, but an inhabited one. The setting is supposed to conjure up images of some sparsely populated Old West town. What the Doctor discovers is that Brian is an assassin hired by some wayward daughter’s wealthy and oppressive father to kill the wife of his offspring and bring her back to his nest. There is a sheriff who holds the town doctor responsible for the death of a deputy and friend. There’s a bar owner who just wants to stay out of trouble and make a buck. It’s a very strange, which could shrug and say that was par for the course for the whole series.

Although, the performances are to be commended, as well as the post production work, especially since this was done mostly while the United Kingdom was experiencing the nationwide quarantine brought on by our ever present COVID 19 situation, the story itself just didn’t grab me. I was distracted by the phony American sounding accents even though this did not take place on Earth. An Ood working as a contract killer was a novel enough approach where I should have liked the episode better than I did. Unfortunately, not everything worked much for me in regard to the story, however I could not tell this was done outside of the usual method of recording done by Big Finish. The sound effects all sounded good. The actors did indeed sound like they could have been in the studio together instead of each at home holed up in some closet or cupboard. Even if I had some reservations about the episode itself, I do tip my hat to the ingenuity of the Big Finish staff to present post production work that belied the challenges brought on by this pandemic.