Doctor Who: A New Occupation is the latest audio collection from Big Finish Productions to star Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, accompanied by Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith. Miller has taken over the role originally portrayed by her late mother in the television series. Helen Goldwyn is the director of this set and even wrote the title episode.
Daughter of Destruction is written by Katharin Armitage and has the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith encounter the tyrannical Genghis Khan as he is about to face a rebellion from his own daughter.
The guest cast includes Susan Hingley, Paul Courtney Hyu, and Rebecca Yeo.
The episode is somewhat interesting and manages to not drag on very long. Baker and Miller in the lead roles make this work better than it probably deserves. It’s not a terrible episode, but it seems a little stale. The focus on the story was on this daughter who apparently is seen as getting short shrift in the history books.
The second episode, A New Occupation, is written by Helen Goldwyn and is a little more interesting even though the audience is back in World War II….again! Christopher Naylor joins Baker and Miller as his version of Harry Sullivan, who was initially portrayed by the late Ian Marter. Naylor is not related to Marter, but he does a decent enough job carrying the role forward.
This story’s guest cast includes Paul Herzberg, Sarah Lawrie, Francesca Pim, Wilf Scolding, and Caroline Strong.
A strange time disruption has materialized on the British isle known as Jersey. A portal to the past sends the Doctor and his companions to a time during the Second World War the island was under Nazi occupation. The Doctor has a fight on his hands to keep the Nazis in the past where they belong without creating a bigger problem that could tear reality apart.
There is some family drama peppering the catastrophe, which makes this a little more interesting. It’s hard to muster any real enthusiasm since Big Finish does a lot with the Second World War. I don’t the overlook the importance of this era, but it feels a little overdone this time.
This latest release just didn’t hold my interest as far as the stories go, but it’s still a treat to have Baker and Miller perform together yet again. The characterization of the Doctor and his companions was written quite effectively, which kept me from giving up on it entirely.
Overall, it was a pretty unremarkable addition to the range, but it still wasn’t a terrible listening experience. It could have been remarkably awful. Anyway, not everything Big Finish does can be given a gold star, but I am still a long way from giving up on them.
