Deadly Strangers is the latest Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions to feature the always welcome return of Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, and the three stories contained within are eclectic and engaging. The director is Ken Bentley. Jaye Griffiths and India Fisher accompany the Time Lord as Lady Audacity Montague and Charlotte Pollard, respectively. The guest cast in each story are predicably well-chosen. As usual, I will proceed with a few brief comments on each story.
Matthew Jacobs gets things rolling with Puccini and the Doctor. Tim McInnerny portrays the celebrated musician Giacomo Puccini, who wrote the famous opera, Madama Butterfly. The Doctor is not alone in being an extraterrestrial interested in the arts created by humanity. A mysterious and beautiful woman named Tura will change the lives and forms of those who are unable to answer her riddles. What is meant to be a mere visit to appreciate beautiful music and meet one of the minds who create it turns into another attempt by the TARDIS crew to protect the Earth from another dangerous alien presence.
McGann has lost none of his energy in his performance as the Doctor. Jaye Griffiths proves to be a welcome addition to this team. Charlotte is forced to grapple with some intense feelings for the Doctor. Both of the current companions perform wonderfully in their roles. Audacity is certainly one of the better recent creations from Big Finish.
The ploy itself is pretty interesting because Princess Tura, portrayed by Tania Rodrigues, turns out to be quite as malevolent as she first seems. Jacobs takes his audience on a pretty compelling and complicated examination of love.
It’s an interesting story that creates a nice blend of fantasy and a glimpse of history and culture. Not a bad start here.
Women’s Day Off by Lisa McMullen brings the Doctor, Charley, and Audacity to Iceland, 1975 where the women are on strike, but a young girl is terrified of her own powers that she cannot quite control.
Once again, another alien visitor is trying to get home, but he has an important component to find, and the girl known as Kyla may know something about that.
Molly Harris and George Watkins are included in the guest cast and prove to be quite effective, which is the usual result for Big Finish casting.
The title of this set is a little perplexing since the alien visitor once again turns out to be a likeable fellow. It is a bit of a departure that no one wants to actually conquer the Earth and subjugate everyone, however McMullen does make this suspenseful regardless.
The women’s strike in Iceland is an actual historical event but not a well-known one, so it was nice to receive a little nugget of knowledge I didn’t have before.
It’s a pretty good episode that is well-performed even if the stakes are relatively low for a Doctor Who tale.
Finally, a dangerous interloper appears in The Gloaming by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle which completes this set. Gloaming is a luxury sleep clinic which orbits a dead world and contains rich Sleepers in suspended animation. A dark presence the Doctor has encountered before has entered their dreams of the Sleepers and threatens to take over the Time Lord’s friends. The Mara has escaped from the dark places of the inside once again.
This was a strong finish for this set. The Mara is a delightfully mischievous and deadly opponent for the Doctor, and it was great to have it back. Hopefully, the Mara are used sparingly because the rarity of their appearances makes their delicious malevolence a treat.
The final episode is my favorite, but the whole set really works well. Audacity is a recent addition to the gallery of companions, and she has grown on me quite a bit. Audacity Montague is an aristocrat from the Regency era of England, and Griffiths seems to have the perfect voice for someone of that origin.
Paul McGann is as effusive and charming as ever as the Doctor. Charlotte Pollard is one of the early Big Finish companions, and India Fisher still easily finds that voice after two decades of playing her.
Big Finish has another jewel with this one. Three pretty solid stories with a formidable TARDIS team make Deadly Strangers one of the better ones to start off the 2025 releases.
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