Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Adventures: The Return of the Doctor is an audio drama from Big Finish Productions with a rather humdrum sort of title, but the episode is actually better than it would appear. Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill return to the mics as the Doctor and Yasmin Khan in a story written by Rory Thomas-Howells and directed by Bethany Weimers.
The guest cast is comprised of Stephan Bessant, Charlie Kelly, Will Kirk, and Belinda Stewart-Wilson.
The Doctor and Yaz have just stopped an alien invasion menacing the Zaarians, who apparently resemble armadillos or something. Anyway, a young Zaarian is injured but is expected to recover, so the Doctor does what she always does and takes off. Yaz talks her into returning to help with the recovery, however the TARDIS takes them ten years into the future, and another more insidious alien presence is feeding on their guilt and sowing deep suspicion. It all starts with a whisper.
Jodie Whittaker’s turn as the Doctor on television really isn’t my favorite era of the program. This episode, in spite of the dubious title, is actually pretty good. Gill and Whittaker do have a pretty compelling chemistry which is performed quite well. My issues with Whittaker’s time on the television series had more to do with the writing and production choices than her as an actress.
Also, a new race and new adversary is introduced, and they are well written and realized.
I have said for years that Big Finish Productions successfully rehabbed the Sixth Doctor, who suffered low popularity ratings among the fans until he was able to showcase his talent with the aid of much better writing. It’s possible that Whittaker can enjoy the same experience.
Anyway, this episode was quite nicely done, and I may finally be able to appreciate the Thirteenth Doctor a bit more.
Doctor Who: The Ninth DoctorAdventures: Star-Crossed is an audio boxset that brings River Song in close quarters with the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, in a satisfying trilogy of clever stories by three very reliable writers for Big Finish Productions. Alex Kingston returns to the microphone as the mysterious and often mischievous Professor River Song, and as much in love with the Doctor as ever. Helen Goldwyn gets to return to the director’s chair for this one.
The first story is written by John Dorney and is entitled Swipe Right. As the title would suggest, it concerns a dating app that has gone very wrong. The guest cast is comprised of David Holt, Tom Neenan, Beth Chalmers, and Francesca Mills.
The Doctor and River Song are each separately investigating disappearances on the planet Crell. They discover a being known as the Matchmaker. The Doctor and River Song are already married, but not just yet from the Time Lord’s perspective. As expected, the fireworks are about to light up the stars.
Dorney once again delivers an interesting story that sort of reflects something that could be going on in today’s society. Of course, no one is being forced into online dating in the real world, but there are likely going to be some interesting problems with AI.
When the Doctor and River finally meet up, it’s about as amusing and volatile as hoped. Eccleston and Kingston hit all the right notes in their performance. The script has also plenty of Doctor Who‘s expected humor.
This first entry is a solid kickoff to the set.
Lizzy Hopley follows up quite ably with Face of the Apocalypse. Charlie Tighe, Paul Reynolds, and Nadia Albina join the audio antics with Eccleston and Kingston as the guest cast.
The plot here concerns River Song’s face is being used to bring about total destruction of space and time through a complex computer algorithm. The Doctor has to unravel the problem with the help of a legendary pair of star-crossed lovers. He and River Song meet a couple whose union could be even more fraught with discord than their own. In order to save the universe, the Doctor and River will have to engage in a bit of couples’ therapy.
This story took me a little more patience to feel fully engaged. It does get better, and my appreciation for Hopley’s contribution grew due to the continued chemistry between the two leads. There are some pretty good one-liners, especially when River Song needles the Doctor about her face being the key to the universe’s survival.
It is once again down to the talent and enthusiasm exhibited by Eccleston and Kingston when performing this episode.
Finally, the set concludes with Tim Foley’s Archipelago. John Banks and Trevor Cooper are the guest actors.
The Doctor and River Song aid a captain who is taking a dangerous voyage to find his lost partner. His ship is going through a field of massive time distortion, and the last of the Time Lords may be the last chance for this boat to make it through.
The Doctor and River finally find the adventure in which they will get to know each other deeper than River could ever hope. The Doctor also gets spoilers as to his future and understands more of the connection between himself and River.
This story is a little hard to picture in my own mind, but I loved the performances. River Song is playing a dangerous game with being in the Doctor’s past. There are some amazing callbacks to the television series.
The solution is neatly imagined, and the continuity of the series remains intact.
River Song is usually an exciting foil for the Doctor in any of his incarnations. Her encounter with the Ninth Doctor was better than I thought it would be.
It’s a great set overall. I think the last story is my favorite out of this collection. So, the Doctor travels on….and so does River Song.
Doctor Who: The First Doctor Unbound: Knights of the Round TARDIS is an audio drama that kicks off a new range for Bog Finish Productions. David Bradley returns to his version of the First Doctor alongside Claudia Grant, Jamie Glover, and Jemma Powell returning to their versions of original TARDIS companion, Susan, Ian, and Barbara.
The script was written by LR Hay, and the director is David O’Mahoney. The guest cast is comprised of Matthew McQuinn, Robert Gill, Ewan Goddard, Adam Howden, Sophie Matthew, Joseph Millson, and Keith Wickham.
The TARDIS has taken its occupants to thirteenth century Oxford where they encounter a figure known as a precursor to English democracy, Simon de Montford. Friar Roger Bacon is also there; however, he seems to have another identity that knows the Doctor very well. The Monk is back in a new guise, but the Doctor has not encountered him before from his perspective. History is about to be radically changed unless the Doctor intervenes.
Bradley does a decent job in his presentation of the First Doctor, yet he seems to be able do it without relying on an impersonation of the late William Hartnell. Bradley, of course, played Hartnell some years ago in a special docudrama about the origin of Doctor Who.
The idea is to have a series that isn’t quite so hung up on the continuity within the television series, although I am not really sure how successful the writers and producers are in actually accomplishing that.
I am not that familiar with the historical context this series was supposed to convey, but I still enjoyed it. I may have to research some of the figures like de Montfort and Roger Bacon to understand their significance to British history to better appreciate this story.
Bradley is considered something of a legend in British drama, or at least he works pretty consistently for a guy his age, which is eighty-three. Anyway, I love his portrayal of the First Doctor.
Wickham also seems to be a solid casting choice for Bacon, who turns out to be the renegade Time Lord known as the Monk. Apparently, he was inspired to emulate the style of the original actor, the late Peter Butterworth, who appeared in the original television serial entitled The Time Meddler alongside Hartnell.
It’s fun to revisit the First Doctor era in its many iterations presented by Big Finish, and this episode is a promising new direction.
Sightseeing in Space is a volume containing two mediocre Doctor Who novellas written by David Bailey and Steve Lyons.
To be fair, I think the target audience for this release is significantly younger than me, but I couldn’t help still being a bit disappointed.
The first story is entitled Terminal of Despair written by the usually reliable Steve Lyons. He has been writing Doctor Who fiction for many years for several ranges in print.
The Doctor and his companions, Amy and Rory, arrive on a spaceport in which would-be passengers have been quarantined for several months by strange creatures which feed on hope. These creatures resemble three-legged bulldogs that have some tentacle that protrude from their mouths to latch on a victim’s neck and drains any sense of hope from them.
The alien species dubbed Desponds is new, but I had some trouble visualizing these things. Also, there was no real clear opponent in charge of this chaos. Lyons does a decent job of capturing the Eleventh Doctor’s mannerisms for the most part.
I had some trouble maintaining any real interest in the side characters. Also, no one died, which I guess is an indicator that the youth were the intended audience.
I remember looking forward to a Lyons novel and usually appreciating his imagination, so I had high hopes for his contribution here. Sadly, my hopes were unrealized. The story was not terrible, but there was not much of an impression left.
The second story, David Bailey’s The Web in Space, is a slightly better. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory become trapped in a spaceship which is being attacked by scavengers. It also becomes trapped in a giant web in space where a massive spider awaits to feed. A maniacal robot has its eyes set on access to the TARDIS. The Doctor has a lot of threats to resolve before he and his friends can be on their way.
I enjoyed this story more, but there are still better contributions to Doctor Who literature. Bailey is a competent writer, but there is nothing that really stands out about his writing style.
At least it was some Doctor Who I had not read before. The volume is another that is not a complete waste of time, but it does not leave much of a lasting impression.
Next up, I am revisiting a reliable and favorite thriller writer of mine. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis being investigating a curious double murder at a poolside in Jonathan Kellerman’s The GhostOrchid.
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 acompany’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.
Doctor Who: The War Doctor Begins: Comrades-In-Arms is another compelling collection of episodes presented by Big Finish Productions in which Jonathon Carley channels the performance of the late John Hurt as the Time Lords once known as the Doctor. Ajjaz Awad returns as the cyborg known as Case, a new piece on the board as the Time War continues to rage between Gallifrey and the Daleks.
Barnaby Kay serves as director for the three stories that are each worthy of appreciation for a variety of reasons. Most of all the War Doctor, who I sort of had a derision reaction to when he was first introduced in the fiftieth anniversary special The Day of the Doctor, has become more fascinating under the auspice of Big Finish Productions.
Of course, Nicholas Briggs fires up his voice modulator to voice the Daleks. The guest cast for this collection is comprised of Michael Amariah, Tiegan Byrne, Beth Chalmers, Esmonde Cole, Sophie Khan Levy, Georgia Mackenzie, Deeivya Meir, and Lynsey Murrell.
The first episode to discuss is entitled A Mother’s Love by Noga Flaishon. The War Doctor, played by Jonathon Carley, has arrived on a Time Lord field hospital known as Haven. It is operated by an Artificial Intelligence known Medbay Operation Mainframe or MOM. The War Doctor also has another encounter with an old ally known as Case, who was partially converted to a Dalek but was able to override the programming. A new but dangerous friendship is developing between her and the War Doctor, but they may not have time to explore that before MOM and the Daleks interfere.
This first story is pretty good. The idea of Case willing to enter into the Time War on her own terms. Carley’s impression of John Hurt’s voice has done nothing but improve. Also, the difference between this incarnation and the other Doctors is slowly coming to light. The War Doctor desperately wants to show the compassion displayed by his other selves, but he is a warrior now. Also, Case has become a fascinating conundrum herself. If there isn’t enough of a reason to be suspicious of AI, this story just adds fuel to that particular fire.
Berserker by Timothy X. Atack brings the War Doctor and Case to face the most dangerous of Daleks. One that has gone made from the centuries of isolation and not being able to kill anyone or anything. In an underground bunker, the War Doctor and his new companion have to face an insane threat that is a ruthless killer at the best of times and each other as it becomes apparent how the War Doctor can use his companion as a devastating weapon against the Daleks.
Briggs puts in a deliciously terrifying performance here. He is the expert over the years he has portrayed the Daleks, and he achieves a new level of insanity with this piece. The more mercenary tendencies of the War Doctor also become more evident, although the more familiar traits are not entirely gone. The War Doctor does genuinely care for Case and still wants her to make her own choices on how she wants to fight in the Time War. The conflict and suspicion displayed is well written, and Carley knows how to hit those right notes of sorrow and determination that John Hurt could exude so well when he first played the part.
The middle story has plenty of merit here.
Finally, this trilogy comes to a close with Phil Mulryne’s Memnos. The War Doctor and Case have arrived at a secret base where a project known as Memnos has been launched. The idea is to preserve the memory of planets and civilizations devastated by the Daleks. Case also has a chance to find her origins before she was so corrupted by the Daleks. The Dalek Time Strategist also is on their trail and has his own plans for Case.
There are some heart wrenching moments between Case and the War Doctor as she becomes more uncertain as to his loyalty and motives for trying to help her. The Time Strategist also emerges as a most dangerous and despicable foe.
This is another fascinating entry into the range. It also is a strong finish to the set. The lead actors are excellent in all three stories. It is surprising that this is becoming a favorite range for me.
Also, it is slowing becoming clearer as to why the War Doctor made the decision to end the Time War with the destruction of both sides, which haunted him when the new television series was aired in 2005.
In spite of this bold direction in the franchise, it is reassuring that many other elements of the Doctor’s nature shine through at times. There are even some familiar moments of humor even in the midst of such a dark backdrop.
As usual, the sound engineering is stellar. There is little to criticize here. Some of the action sequences are hard to imagine occasionally, but there is plenty to still enjoy and at times marvel as these episodes blare from the speakers.
If one has to be in a Time War, the War Doctor would be the one to have in their corner. Although it is sad that John Hurt is no longer with us, Jonathon Carley is more than capable of honoring him with his participation in this series.
The Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke is a Doctor Who audio boxset released by Big Finish Productions and is pretty good for the most part. It’s not quite at the level of a relative masterpiece, but the team of Colin Baker and Miranda Raison as the Doctor and Constance Clarke deliver endearing and compelling performances as usual. The set is directed by Samuel Clemens and contains three stories.
Terry Molloy, usually known as playing Davros, is cast as a different, yet familiar, historical figure. Other cast members include Lara Lemmon, Carly Day, Vivienne Rochester, Anthony Townsend. Katy Manning, who usually portrays companion Jo Grant alongside the Third Doctor, reprises her other role, Iris Wildthyme.
Now that my usual pattern of introduction is done, let’s see how the stories fare under my scrutinous attention.
First off, there is The Story Demon, written by Julian Richards. The Doctor and Constance Clarke arrive on a distant world where the colonists are having to fend off strange attacks from beasts known as the Birnamen. There is some question as to these attacks being what they seem when something known as a Story Demon is in the settlement, and that something is apparently a Dalek.
Nicholas Briggs has returned to the mic, fitting it in among all of his other duties with the company, to voice the Dalek. It’s a pretty successful effort to have a Dalek story in a bit of a different context. The story is interesting enough. Baker and Raison continue to develop their chemistry quite successfully.
Constance Clarke came from the World War II era and was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. She is quite a no-nonsense sort of lady of her time, but she does have a warmth that makes her a natural friend to the roguish Time Lord. As usual, it remains a treat when Mrs. Clarke is on board the TARDIS.
This is a promising start to this particular collection.
Paul Magrs, the creator of the possible even more roguish Iris Wildthyme, played by Kathy Manning, steps up to the plate with The Key to Many Worlds. This serves as kind of a sequel to the First Doctor era serial entitled Marco Polo.
The Doctor and Mrs. Clarke arrive in thirteenth century Baghdad where the Doctor hopes to catch up with an old friend, Marco Polo, who has apparently lived a much easier life as a merchant. Polo is of course the legendary Italian explorer whose legend and history have that questionable mix that can be quite frustrating to the casual reader.
The Doctor finds there is another old acquaintance present. Iris Wildthyme is once again up to her usual mischief which this time results in the two time travelers switching bodies. Colin Baker and Manning are both pretty skilled comedic actors so there are some typically hysterical moments in which they play each other’s roles.
Anyway, Polo has decided to return to his homeland of Italy and another expedition gets underway with the displaced Doctor and Iris bickering the entire way.
Sadly, Magrs decides to apparently fabricate some kind of apparent homosexual relationship between Polo and some former servant who became a close friend. This episode makes no mention of Polo’s wife and four children he actually had in his real life. It doesn’t quite detract from the clever moments of humor, but it is a bit distracting if one takes a moment to give a cursory read on Polo’s biography.
I will say that it was quite fun to realize that Terry Molloy was portraying Marco Polo and does a fine job. He has played other roles for Big Finish other than the maniacal Davros and remains as gifted a performer as ever.
Anthony Townsend, who apparently died not long after his participation in this production, portrays Polo’s long-time companion, Tonio, who is a likeable presence in spite of some misgivings about how this relationship is presented.
Manning kind of imitating Colin Baker’s Doctor was just funny. Iris Wildthyme is a character that should be used sparingly, but I don’t recall really disliking a story when she pops up.
I have a few objections to this particular story, but it is quite clever and engaging for the most part.
Finally, it is Ian Potter who closes out this set with his script entitled Inconstancy.
On the planet Hoi, the Doctor and Mrs. Clarke find another crazy ruler and strange protean creatures who apparently can replicate other beings or people. Mrs. Clarke finds herself among a swarm that resembles her.
Potter presents this start as being narrated by the Doctor and Constance to two different people. It’s basically a flashback episode, which is not exactly a new literary device, but still effectively employed here.
Out of the three, this one kind of confused me the most. I may need to listen again to get a better grasp on what was going on. I thought it had a nice ending though. Baker and Raison continue to excel as performers. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long for another pairing of these two characters.
The set as a whole is quite good, but not much really stands out. It sort of relies on what has become tropes of the series overall from both the television series and Big Finish creations. Still, the tropes are those I happen to appreciate. Well, I think the Cybermen still make for a much more interesting opponent for the Time Lord than the Daleks.
Nonetheless, this set is still worthy of being added to the collection and likely enjoyed more than once.
The Ruins of Kaerula is a Doctor Who audio boxset from Big Finish Productions, which has a few promising features, but it’s a bit middle of the road in many ways. Tom Baker is reunited with Louise Jameson as Leela and John Leeson as that well-known robotic dog designated K9. There are three episodes to examine a bit, however two of them are directly linked to each other.
The guest cast includes Robyn Addison, Zora Bishop, Jonathon Carley, Barnaby Kay, and Reece Pantry. Jon Culshaw also returns to portray Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, whose role initially belonged to the late Nicholas Courtney. Helen Goldyn, Nicholas Briggs, and Jamie Anderson share the directing credit.
Scriptwriter Phil Mulryne starts it off with The Remains of Kaerula. The TARDIS is forced down to the planet Kaerula where the Doctor, Leela, and K9 encounter containment camp and strange creatures lurking in the nearby caves. There is a rupture in Time, and the Doctor learns that a catastrophe from the planet’s past has invaded the future as well.
Tom Baker still does well in the lead role as the Fourth Doctor. It’s one of my favorite TARDIS teams, so it was still a worthy effort to listen to this one. As usual, the performances were fine. I was just underwhelmed by the story. Multyne captures the main characters well enough. I just didn’t fine the plot to be all that memorable or as interesting as some of the more recent episodes this past year.
The Ruins of Kaerula is also written by Phil Mulryne and serves as a prequel. The Doctor and his companions have been forced back to Kaerula in the past where they meet some different versions of those encountered in the earlier episode. An experiment is about to go very long, which could bring some serious temporal damage to the universe.
I found this to be a little better than the earlier story. It is an interesting idea to have the Doctor deal with both the cause of a catastrophe and the result. There’s a risk of that idea being overused since he is a time traveler.
The third episode, which is written by Tom Foley, is entitled Cry of the Banshee. This one was quite a bit better mostly because Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart meets Leela and K9 for the first time. The Brigadier has requested some help during a peace conference when a delegate from Ireland dies mysteriously. The Doctor learns that it is believed a Banshee is lurking around the conference, however he suspects that it is something else.
The Brigadier joins the Doctor and Leela in the TARDIS after the Doctor finds that the source of this phenomenon originates in a space station orbiting Jupiter. The Brigadier ends up adjusting to his strange, new surroundings as everyone knew he would.
The growth of respect between the Brigadier and Leela is pretty fun to hear. They get off to a tough start when they first meet, but circumstances force them to figure out how to work together.
Jon Culshaw’s impression of Nicholas Courtney’s distinctive, authoritative baritone is quite uncanny.
The story seems a little self-indulgent, but it works. The resolution is somewhat surprising in a pleasantly unexpected way.
Anyway, the set as whole is fine, but I don’t think it’s going to be remembered as one of the great ones. Still, more Tom Baker performances are always welcome. In spite of my nonchalance about this release, I am still glad to have listened to it.
Doctor Who: The War Doctor Begins: He Who Fights with Monsters continues the saga of the War Doctor, originally portrayed by John Hurt, and leads to a fascinating confrontation with a mysterious adversary known as the Barber-Surgeon. The set has three parts and was written by Robert Valentine and directed by Louise Jameson.
Since Hurt has been deceased for a little while now, Jonathon Carley has taken on the role which has been known in Doctor Who fandom as the War Doctor. This was a once unknown incarnation of the Doctor who had rejected his name since he had to fight in the Time War and use methods that his other selves would abhor. Carley does an increasingly amazing impression of John Hurt’s distinctive voice and puts forth a powerful performance.
The first part is entitled The Mission where the Time War Council enlists the War Doctor to hunt down and assassinate another Gallifreyan renegade known as the Barber-Surgeon. The Barber-Surgeon has been a thorn in the side of both the Time Lords and the Daleks. The War Doctor doesn’t like the nature of this mission, but this incarnation is the one most capable to complete it
The Abyss has the War Doctor on the Barber-Surgeon’s trail through the devastation of the Time War and his own past. The Daleks have also sent a Dalek Hunter-Killer played by Jason Merrells. The War Doctor and the Daleks have another confrontation in which the maniacal robotic conquerors may finally exterminate their most persistent enemy.
Finally, the War Doctor has to escape the Daleks and confront The Horror. Nicholas Le Prevost plays the rogue element in the Time War known as the Barber-Surgeon. He and Carley play beautifully off each other when the Doctor and the Barber-Surgeon finally meet.
Not that much known is known about the War Doctor other than he was the one who ended the Tine War by obliterating both sides. He was rejected by his subsequent incarnations following that event.
This set reveals how the War Doctor may have been influenced into that horrific, if necessary, decision.
It took me a bit to warm up to the first two episodes, but Carley’s performance kept me engaged, and the finale to this set was worth it.
This is probably one of the best sets in this range. Carley may be able to sound a lot like John Hurt, but he also demonstrates excellent instincts as an actor. He mastered how this version of the Doctor carries such determination and weariness in his voice.
The sound effects are excellently executed. There are times when the action sequences seem a little jumbled, and it was hard to picture what was happening in the imagination. Still, the performances of Carley and the guest cast more than make up for it. Louise Jameson even reprises her role of Leela, which was not unexpected but still pretty fun.
Anyway, I think I have resolved any misgivings I had about the creation of the War Doctor. This set is just great.
The Trials of a Time Lord is a recent Doctor Who audio drama released by Big Finish Productions and is another effort to celebrate forty years of the Sixth Doctor, portrayed by Colin Baker. It is a six-part saga with writing credits shared by three writers. Bonnie Langford and Nicola Bryant, who play Mel and Peri, respectively, join the Doctor against his battle against a plethora of old adversaries.
The writers, who ended up splitting up the story with two episodes each, are Katharine Armitage, Stewart Pringle, and Rochana Patel, and I have little objection to this slate. Jonathan S Powell directs this saga. The story does hold up pretty well in spite of a premise that sounds on its face, to be somewhat chaotic.
David Banks returns to voice the Cyber-Leader alongside Nicholas Briggs as the rest of the Cybermen. Terry Molloy reprises his role of Davros, the twisted creator of the Daleks. John Culshaw is also a part of the cast and does a passable impression of the late Anthony Ainley as his iteration of the renegade Time Lords known as the Master. Other cast members include Aruhan Galieva, Holly Jackson Waters, Samuel Jones, Rufus Jones, and George Naylor.
The Doctor and Mel arrive in a prison camp known as Cyberia in response to a distress signal and find themselves about to embark on a televised series of challenges which reveals all manners of menaces and allies.
Some themes are revisited such as the idea that the Doctor is being televised as he faces all sorts of threats and obstacles. This was already explored in the television story Vengeance on Varos, however I don’t mind the repetition here. There is enough of a creative effort to have this one come off as a bit more special.
Fans finally have Mel and Peri meet and interact, which was kind of cool to hear. Peri returns after living a life as a warrior king alongside King Yrcanos, who fans met in the original serial, The Trial of a Time Lord. Peri comes with some seasoning as a mother and a fighter. Normally, I would find such a character transformation somewhat implausible, but Bryant sells the performance well enough.
Jon Culshaw filling in for the late Anthony Ainley was kind of a surprise and may count as a spoiler, which I normally try to avoid. He does well enough, but he may need to practice that impression a bit more. It was still fun to imagine that version of the Master cropping up again, and Culshaw doesn’t really miss the mark entirely. It just wasn’t a bullseye impersonation. I will say this about Culshaw himself. I really enjoy his insights and comments during the cast interviews. He knows Doctor Who lore, probably better than most of the actors who portrayed the Doctor. He has such an infectious enthusiasm for the show and just seems like a joy to the rest of the Big Finish cast and crew.
Colin Baker still sounds energetic and credible in his role. The characterization of the Sixth Doctor has been improved greatly under the care of Big Finish writers over the past couple of decades. It was a sweet moment when he realizes that his friend, Peri, has really been reunited with him.
This is a story that feels a little chaotic and self-indulgent at times. I am somewhat leery of stories that just unleash all of the past enemies and story ideas, however this particular release handles this direction better than most. I also tend to sneer at three writers on one story, however the construction here kind of makes sense. The writers did work well together, but they worked on two episodes apiece separately. This division of creative labor would likely only work in a saga like this.
It’s an enjoyable and proper celebration of Colin Baker’s era, and I am glad that we are likely to get more adventures from Big Finish for some time to come.
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