Doctor Who: Past Forward is a Doctor Who audio set from Big Finish Productions which sees the welcome return of Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor as the arc featuring with Harry Sullivan and Naomi Cross seemingly comes to an end. The structure of these stories is a little different in that there is essentially four-part story with a separate two-part adventure wedged in between, and it does work rather nicely.
Eleanor Crooks is back as Naomi Cross while Christopher Naylor resumes his impressive efforts to emulate the late Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan. Sara Griffiths joins the fray as Ray Jenkins, who was introduced in the television serial entitled Delta and the Bannermen. The guest cast of this series is comprised of Laura Aikman, Lydia Baksh, Daon Broni, Cavin Cornwall, Josh Cowdery, Alasdair Hankinson, Katherine Jack, Holly Jackson Walters, and Gary Turner.
The directing duties falls yet again to Samuel Clemens, who as usual keeps a steady hand by probably just letting the actors get on with the job.
Doctor Who veteran writer John Dorney is the writer of With the Angels, which has the Doctor encounter the Weeping Angels, which were first popularized in the television revival during the David Tennant era. It still works to have earlier Doctors meet these strange, malevolent consumers of time energy.
This time, the Angels have been fashioned into chess pieces. The Doctor, Harry, and Naomi will be pulled into both the past and future as they are recruited once again by UNIT to save Earth from another invasion by the terrifying Angels that one cannot take their eyes off.
In the second half of the story, the Doctor has been able to say goodbye to Harry and Naomi and pick up a new companion in the shape of an old friend, Ray. It’s kind of a unique transition, but it is done quite cleverly. Ray probably would have been a fun companion in the television series if things had worked out differently back then, but audiences now get to see how that would have worked. The also intriguing choice that was made was to have Ray picked up twenty years after her first encounter with the Doctor and she has lived a life of her own. Ray was probably in her late teens or early twenties when she was introduced over three decades ago, but it seems a good choice for Dorney to have seasoned that character a bit while still making her recognizable.
Sandwiched between the middle of With the Angels, is Lizzie Hopley’s Catastrophix where a company’s experiment with Time if bringing about the Earth’s early demise. The Doctor has promises to Harry and Naomi to keep and ensure their safety after their encounter with the Angels. Also, this is where Ray gets a proper reintroduction.
The story itself is pretty good. Hopley is becoming one of the reliably interesting writers for Big Finish.
As usual, McCoy’s performance is outstanding even though he does have to do a bit of a double act when it becomes clear that he is being manipulated by a very familiar presence.
The team of Cross and Sullivan will be missed aboard the TARDIS, but the addition of Ray seems to be the start that could be equally compelling.
The exaggerated American accents by some of the guest cast was a little distracting, but I have gotten kind of used to it over the years of listening to Big Finish.
Anyway, the whole chess trope for this Doctor worked, although it’s hard to picture what was going on during the climactic match between the Time Lord and rich snob who instigated the whole catastrophe with the Angels.
This set was one of the better ones to be released this year from Big Finish, and McCoy’s enthusiastic performance is still a welcome distraction from the pressures of everyday life.
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