Big Finish Reviews+ An Alien Werewolf in London by Matt Rabjohns

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What I always love about Alan Barnes's writing is every single character he writes is so much larger than life. You can trawl back through his many audio scripts for Big Finish and always locate really rich and funny characters, even in his darker edged stories. This story is not one of them! This story is just packed full of good fun and some amusing light relief. A chance to have a breather and a few good laughs. ​

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It sounds to me that every one of the cast is really enjoying being in this story. It’s actually quite a relief for one every now and then to get a release from the overall far darker and more mysterious Seventh Doctor stories. Some of Big Finish's more recent seventh Doctor plays have been very thickly laid with doom and universal peril that it can start to drag if done continuously without a break every now and then.

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In fact, every single story of the Mags trilogy has been a welcome break from the norm with Big Finish. It’s great to just relax and listen to a genuinely fun tale, but still with enough good action and peril so as not to make it a farce. ​

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Samuel Clemens direction is slick and the sound design and score of this story is also different, but good different. You end up with a story that is extremely easy to get into, whereas some of the deeper stories can be at times hard to take all at once. ​

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Sylvester McCoy does his usual thing of just being fantastic as the Doctor. His interacting with Ace and Mags instantly lifts the story too. It is also great whenever one gets to hear alien races or creatures that aren't necessarily evil used well within a story too. ​

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Sophie Aldred gets to have some good scenes where she deals with the fallout of falling in with a pair of Feratus. The Feratus are a wonderfully comically written pair of vampires, and particularly good is how Ace just seems to take what happens to her in her stride and doesn't become flustered. One is always happy to hear her consistent guts and ballsy attitude. It’s what has made Ace one of the most enduring companions ever in the show.

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It could easily become gratingly silly to always just have baddy aliens running amok in every story. The Sin Eater is a perfect example of this trait. The Sin Eater is a very interesting and engaging character. Shiloh Coke is really decent in the role.

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Jacob Collins Levy's performance as Rufus has to be applauded in this story. His character is definitely a bad un, but he's a really excruciatingly enjoyable bad un. His Australian accent is commendable and his villain is saturated with good humour and wit. He judges the role perfectly, so that he never once goes overboard into caricature or pantomime. And his demise is very stark and rather unpleasant to visualise at the story's climax.

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There may not be a hugely abundant level of original material within this story. One has heard or seen countless Werewolf movies that all share the same repetitive strains. What Alan Barnes does with his story though that most film writers don't do these days is at least makes his story massively listenable and plain good old fashioned cool. The story works so brilliantly as a light hearted reprieve in the midst of the darker stories as I’ve already said. ​

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In fact, yes, I would say this story's plot is very, very like a comic strip. Outlandish and knavish interactions with great characters. ​

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The other good point is in film and TV werewolf transformations always seem to look naff. So, the audio medium is a far better kind of medium to have where you can imagine the visuals and not be disappointed by weak effects. That's always going to be a favourable addition to the mix when an audio leaves you free to make your own pictures of the places where the story is set. And in this story, there are no dull characters and no over excessive re-use of all the dull as ditch water werewolf and vampire traits we get so bored with seeing in the movies and remakes of movies. Sometimes the B Movies are more fun and good to watch than the multimillion-pound mega films too. And that's exactly the category this story falls into too. The lovable B Movie type that is still ripe with so much going for it! ​

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But of all the elements on display within the story, my favourite thing of all from this is Mags. Jessica Martin really gets to shine as the Vulpanan. There are some great character moments for her along the way in this story which does nothing but make me like and root for her character more as the story progresses. I have thoroughly enjoyed this Mags trilogy that begun with The Monsters of Gokroth and The Moons of Vulpana. I must send out a hearty clap to Jessica for coming back to the role and showing us what superb extra life there is in her amazing character. And she does kind of achieve her mission at the last hurdle here. She has been seeking to overcome her monster side, and the climax comes as a satisfying outcome, if leaving just maybe the hint of chance that maybe her monster could come back if she’s not careful.

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Re-iterating: Sometimes every now and then having a story that doesn't take itself too seriously is good to flow away with. One is OK with universal impending doom but in between some of us revel in the chance for some comic relief. Yeah, the title of the story is tacky and corny but why not? Surely you can have a bit of good humour in every aspect of the story.

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 An Alien Werewolf in London is never ever going to be the most brilliant or world changing story in the whole universe, but its consistently entertaining and amusing in equal measure. And, at the end of the day, what more can one ask from a Doctor Who tale than that?!​

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Big Finish Reviews+ Gods and Monsters by Tony J Fyler

Tony needs a lie down.

Ohhh boy.

Let’s say one thing right up front: if you come to this story randomly, without having listened to much of the few years before it, you’re going to be utterly baffled by Gods And Monsters. This story’s a culmination, a drawing together of threads and a sprouting of seeds that have been embedded in a long arc of Sylvester McCoy stories at Big Finish, beginning with The Harvest, when the Doctor took on new companion Hex (the always-excellent Philip Olivier), going through a whole black Tardis/White Tardis time-space dichotomy… sequence, which brought military companions, Captain Lysandra Aristedes and Private Sally Morgan to the party alongside – and sometimes parallel to – Ace and Hex, and through a sequence involving techno-vampires and a thing called The Forge, all drawing towards a climax that can be summed up in six words: The Curse Of Fenric, Part 2.

Yep – that really shouldn’t be a spoiler to you, the cover art for this story’s crawling with Haemovores. What we’re dealing with here is the even-more-ultimate-than-last-time battle between Time’s Champion and Fenric, the Shatterer of Worlds. If the first round somehow made sense to you, you stand at least a fighting chance of making it out of this sequel alive.

Which is more than can be said for all of the Tardis crew.

On a world where physics appears to be on a lunch break, there are gods, there are monsters, and there are the two ancient players, the chess-game of the universe played for enormous stakes – if Fenric wins, its chains will shatter and it will final be able to fully manifest itself in our puny little universe of flesh. The Doctor pits his wits and the lives of his companions against the Elder God of chaos and death, but there are forces here that neither he nor Fenric have counted on – or have they?

Gods And Monsters is a full-on, high-octane, screamingly emotional ride into the scale of battle the Doctor’s been playing with Fenric since long before The Curse of Fenric popped up on screen. This is Doctor Who for people who liked the more convoluted New Adventure novel arcs, the Faction Paradox adventures, the Eighth Doctor’s audio sojourn into a parallel universe of far-out weirdness, or come to that, those who can follow the Time War box sets without coming over with a fit of the timey-wimey vapours. It’s by no means a story for the faint-hearted, the newbie, the wanderer-in. You need to put the work in to conquering the stories of a peculiar past before you’re ready to make sense of Gods and Monsters, by Mike Maddox and Alan Barnes.

If you’re ready for it though – if you’ve followed the threads and senses the impending climax – then Gods and Monsters delivers shocks, thrills, twists, blood, death and more besides, in a conclusion that, certainly more than The Curse Of Fenric, gives you the scale of the Elder Gods and the epic battle Fenric and the Doctor have been embroiled in. If anything, one of the problems with it is that it elevates the Doctor to Super-Godhood, more or less because anyone or anything less should absolutely fail. That’s the consequence of course of making your villain the ultimate ultimate ultimate evil. To beat it, you have to have a hero who’s bigger and better than anything you can currently imagine, and it rather runs the risk of pushing the doctor too far in that direction. That said, it does also punch him back down to being a David standing against his personal Goliath when people, when pawns and knights and players start to fall around him. There’s outstanding work by the companions in this story too, everything elevated, everything tense as a bowstring, with Ace, Hex, Lysandra and Sally all reaching points of destiny which define who they are and where they go from here. Certainly, after Gods and Monsters, nothing will be the same again for any of them, and arguably not for the Seventh Doctor either. It is, in a sense, the big battle that his life on audio has been building up to, the battle the Seventh Doctor’s life has been building to ever since the events of The Curse Of Fenric, and certainly the battle to which small events and large ones have been leading him in the audio stories leading up to this event.

The point of all of which rhetoric is that you really need to hear Gods And Monsters. Most Seventh Doctor fans are Curse of Fenric fans in any case, so the idea of an audio rematch with the Elder God is enough to make it irresistible to many. The fact that you need to put the work in and get through a whole slew of other audios to get the full effect of Gods And Monsters is somewhat unavoidable, and the journey is not particularly easy at many points – you’re going to need to keep a hold of your sanity as some of the stories that lead to this finale are bizarre in the extreme (The Magic Mousetrap, I’m especially looking at you…). But in a world where people watch eight seasons of Game Of Thrones just to find out what the hell eventually happens, Gods and Monsters is a story whose time has probably, finally, come.

Strap yourself in, go back to The Harvest, listen to a shedload of other stories first, and then prepare yourself for the epic screaming weirdness that is Gods and Monsters.

Big Finish Reviews+ Heroes of Sontar by Tony J Fyler

Tony feels a certain sympathy for the Sontarans.

Disclaimer: If you’re a Who-fan who thinks Strax is bringing the Sontaran race into disrepute… this is not the story for you, move right along to something like Starlight Robbery.

The point of course is that Robert Holmes pretty much intended the Sontarans to be a joke. A joke that has its own inherent danger, certainly – the idea of intergalactic Jobsworths with Napoleon Syndrome is both funny and dangerous and is rife with the potential to make the universe more miserable for anyone who runs into them. But from the moment Lynx crash-lands his sphere on medieval Earth, salutes to no-one, plants his flag and loudly claims the planet, its moons and satellites for the glory of the Sontaran Empire, the Sontarans are funny and, in their blinkered delusions of supremacy, just a little bit stupid. Being invaded by the Sontarans is like having a hundred thousand Dick Cheneys turn up on your doorstep.

In Heroes of Sontar, it must be said, the majority of the Sontarans you’ll meet are more than a little bit stupid. These are Sontarans that probably have the rest of their clone batches face-palming in every battle. But once you understand that, they’re really rather fun. In fact, they’re pretty much Dad’s Sontaran Army.

Field Major Thurr, Sergeant Mezz, Corporal Klun, and Troopers Vend, Jorr and Nold are from a range of clone batches, and as such, each of them has a unique voice – Thurr sounds most like Grand Marshall Stike from the Two Doctors, but there are Sontarans here owing vocal performance royalties to Stor from The Invasion of Time, Varl, also from The Two Doctors, and Styre from The Sontaran Experiment. There are also fun references for the more attentive geeks, with both Lynx and Styre getting a name-check, and the Doctor throwing a reference to The Invasion of Time in to boot. They’ve been sent to the world of Samur – the furthest the Sontarans ever made it into Rutan space, with highly secret, extra special, do-not-open-till-you-get-there sealed orders for a highly secret special mission.

But before it becomes apparent that this is just a bunch of Sontarans stomping about being stupid, it’s important to note that the tone of Heroes of Sontar is also funny when it comes to the humanoids – the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough come to Samur ostensibly so Tegan can have a rest cure after the events of The Cradle of the Snake – though arguably the Doctor and Nyssa need one more. At the point in time the Doctor thinks it is, Samur is a restful, lovely planet, full of courtyards literally as far as the eye can see. As it turns out, that was thirty years ago. The Sontarans first arrived on Samur twenty years ago, claimed it, and then fell back. And back. Something about Samur has meant they haven’t been able to advance any further.

So, there’s your mystery – why haven’t the Sontarans been able to go any further, and what’s the highly secret special mission that Dad’s Sontaran Army have been sent to Samur to fulfil?

For all the Sontarans on Samur are a useless bunch, their deployment on this mission to the furthest reaches of Sontaran space does deliver a glimpse into what the species is like when it’s not just being used as an invasion force or a pain in the Doctor’s Gallifreyan hide – a race of song-singers, marchers, jingoistic cheerers and blasters of things into plasma.

There are solid comic techniques used here, line-overlaps or replays from different characters undercutting each other’s assumptions, and given a choice between left or right, the characters are simply separated by following their instincts in different directions. But there are solid characterization techniques too – each of the Sontarans is given a backstory – one’s a coward, one’s a veteran, one’s had his tongue torn out but has the biggest working brain of the lot and so on. Turlough and Trooper Vend in particular actually achieve a kind of friendship, which becomes important as events on Samur unravel.

It sounds odd, but in a story where the majority of the Sontarans are fully taxed with the business of not falling over and taking breaths, the main threat is a purple moss that is much creepier than the potato-men from Sontar (and which renders its creepiness effectively – which for a moss is pretty impressive on audio!).

What becomes clear as the story goes on, and each of the Tardis crew get involved in some aspect of the planet’s challenges – Nyssa nearly dying as the evil purple moss of doom refuses to leave her alone, Turlough and Tegan teaming up with the Sontarans to try and find a way to stop her dying, the Doctor beggaring off into space in a gravity bubble to explain another key element of the plot – is that there’s a reason these particularly stupid Sontarans are on this particularly stupid mission, and why these Sontarans are particularly stupid. No, really, there is – you have to stick with Heroes of Sontar in order to find out what the hell is actually going on, but there is what at least passes for a legitimate reason for everything that happens, Alan Barnes crafting a story that leads with laughs, but ends with a degree of, if not tragedy, then at least sympathy for these heroes of Sontar: in some ways, they’re an analogue of the soldiers of World War I – a mixed bag, eager to bring glory to their cause, determined to do the very best they can, but led by officers content to have them slaughtered in pursuit of their own agenda.

The character development in Heroes of Sontar is delicious in terms of both the humanoids (or indeed humanoidlings, as the Sontarans call them), with Turlough being perhaps even more of a louse than he ever managed to be on screen. Turlough’s characterization also brings in elements of his personality and backstory that are, if you like, Easter eggs for the full-on nerds in the audience – he drops in a reference to Rehctaht, who was only ever mentioned in the novel Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma, and he eventually gives Trooper Vend, the scaredy-cat Sontaran, an order, using his own military rank to point out he’s actually the trooper’s military superior.

Nyssa spends most of the story dying, in a creepy, moss-related way, but it’s at the end of this story that she reveals to Tegan that she has not only a husband back on Terminus, but also two teenaged children.

But it’s Tegan who has the most fun with the pack of stupid Sontarans, coming into her own mostly by dint of attitude, shouting and a sarcastic bent – she labels Thurr both Shorty and Napoleon, and avoids being shot for insulting a Sontaran officer by claiming it’s not a slur but satire.

So is Heroes of Sontar a classic Big Finish story that you should rush out and buy right now?

Oddly enough, in its own way, yes. It’s a real love it or hate it story, and if you don’t like Doctor Who played for shameless laughs, then you’re going to be in the latter category and it’s not for you. But if, now and again, you enjoy a story that shows you more about a classic enemy while ruthlessly sending up their whole reason for being, Heroes of Sontar is tremendously good fun, and all for some coherent reason.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Churchill Years, Volume Two by Tony J Fyler

  

Tony gives Churchill a V-sign.

Full disclosure time. Before Volume 1 of The Churchill Years was released, I was not a fan of the idea of using him as an anchor for a whole spin-off series. Ian McNeice’s Churchill on screen had been one of only a few highlights of Victory of the Daleks but turning him into the anchor for a series of Doctor-adjacent stories felt like stretching his capabilities as a character within the world of Doctor Who beyond the point of diminishing returns.

Then the first volume came out, and I was utterly, utterly wrong. Doesn’t happen often, but there you go, let’s never speak of it again.

So with Volume 2, what we have is a much stronger sense of instinctive reliability on approach to the box set – but does it deliver?

Yes it does, but just slightly less than the first set.

This collection of tales focuses for three of its four stories on Churchill’s war years, and brings two Ninth Doctor stories, one Tenth and one Eleventh to the party. Oh and Madam Vastra. Churchill and Vastra, side by side – that’s got to be worth the price of admission, no?

Paul Morris kicks us off with Young Winston, a tale of magic jewels, historical legends, and the volatile background of Cuba. Set in 1985 and 1899, it follows Churchill on a trip to Cuba to get a taste of war, and then, as he begins to make his parliamentary way in the world, the ghosts of hot-blooded nations and people surface in his life.

It’s a story that bristles with star power and crossover potential, with Churchill and Vastra swapping narration duties in the different tones of the Churchill Diaries and the Chronicles of the Great Detective (Now that’s an audio spin-off we’d pay good money for), but it delivers far more than a star pairing and a jewelled MacGuffin – there’s an enormous well of tenderness in the story of the young Winston (Iain Batchelor) and his mysterious Cuban friend Carmen, played with sensitivity by the gloriously-named Melody Grove, and it leaves you wanting more crossover stories between the Paternoster Gang and the future Prime Minister. Churchill and Strax for box set 3, anyone?

Human Conflict by Iain McLaughlin is a story that highlights, in a way similar to but harsher than Victory of the Daleks, the dichotomy between Churchill’s drive to win total war at any cost and his friendship with the Doctor. It’s harsher because this is a story in which the Doctor with the big ears and the leather jacket is advisor, judge, jury and rescuer as Churchill explores the potential of alien weaponry in the early years of the war.

Advised not to get involved in an arms deal that could potentially win the Allies the war, Churchill, like Harriet Jones in later years, goes against the wishes of his taciturn Time Lord friend, leading to a solid story of derring-do, stand-offs, a terrible price, and perhaps most remarkably of all, a portrayal of Churchill from McNeice that shows why, even with his war-hawk intuitions, Churchill was a man inherently good enough to earn the Doctor’s friendship. It’s moderately romanticised stuff of course, but the Churchill of Doctor Who has never been the Churchill of real life. Nevertheless, Human Conflict brings good performances to the fore, especially from Bethan Walker as Bragnar, and feels like a Sunday afternoon black and white war movie, only Doctor Whoed up.

I Was Churchill’s Double, by Alan Barnes, romps home with this box set’s ‘complicate the living bejesus out of a plotline’ prize. Into what sounds like it should be a straightforward tale of deception, doubles and associated tomfoolery, Barnes brings fairy tales, parallel dimensions, self-hypnosis through a howlaround TV interference pattern (a lovely touch, that), secret plans, two Churchills, John Logie Baird, undercover Nazis and a whole lot more. Oh, and the Ninth Doctor again, popping up having lost his Tardis somewhere. It’s a storyline you don’t want to try and follow while, for instance, operating heavy machinery, because you won’t stand a chance of working out what’s going on. You won’t if you give it your full attention either, but it will unfold for you better if you dedicate your lugholes to it for the space of an hour. McNeice is on top form in this story – which is just as well, given its double dose of Churchill – and he gets to slightly vary his performance to differentiate between the two. Compelling stuff, but you might like to have a cup of tea and a biscuit ready at the end, so as to untwist your brain.

Churchill Victorious shows us the man who led the British war on the day of its effective completion – with London, with the whole country celebrating on what rations it can scrape together, Churchill feels himself alone, and under faintly ridiculous Dad’s Army cover, he goes out looking for, if not trouble, then at least an honest communion with his people. Naturally of course, he runs into power cuts, a populace less grateful than he might have expected, an alien aggressor and a prisoner with familiar puppydog enthusiasm and demented hair. Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky are rarely writers to rush to their point, but here they give us a story that’s seemingly innocuous but eventually builds to a test of Churchill’s soul – how far will he go to ensure his personal victory, his legacy, his immortality among the British people?

There’s a line of balance to be drawn with Churchill – on the one hand you don’t want to overstud his life and career with incidents with the Doctor. For those who like him in the real world, it could potentially take away from the man’s own greatness. For those who don’t, it could feel like the Doctor’s trust was misplaced. And the ending of the second box set, coinciding with the end of the war, could work as the moment to fade out on Churchill. But there’s no real reason why it has to – McNeice is clearly in great form, and Churchill’s life was long and studded with real incidents which lend themselves to a Doctor Who treatment. On the strength of this box set and its predecessor, a third set would be no hardship at all, and with the dramatic returns showing only faint signs of diminishing so far, there’s no reason why Churchill himself shouldn’t KBO for a while yet at Big Finish.

Big Finish Reviews+ Daleks Among Us

Tony cries ‘Fake News!’

Daleks Among Us is…well, it’s challenging if you just pluck it off the shelf or out of your download list and decide to give it a go. It’s challenging because it’s very much the culmination of a trilogy that, as with much that is Sylvester McCoy, comes with some fairly heavy baggage. For one thing, his ‘lead’ companion, Dr Elizabeth Klein, is a complicated space-time event he first met when she was a Nazi, and who subsequently has been de-Nazi’d not by any psychological deprogramming, but by more or less being re-born in a different environment and raised to be UNIT’s scientific advisor.

So…there’s that.

His secondary companion in this trilogy, Will Arrowsmith, is a kind of male precursor to TV’s Osgood – an assistant to Klein who’s more or less socially inept but is at least technically brilliant.

And then there’s the Persuasion Device.

The Persuasion Device is…well…it’s a device…that allows you to…erm…persuade people…of anything you like. Possibly alien, more likely the work of a Nazi named Shulke, now probably hiding behind a barrier in the mind of an innocent man named Hinterburger, and wanted really rather hard by at least a handful of alien races – in the previous story, Starlight Robbery, the Sontarans had a stab at getting hold of it. Failed. Now the Daleks fancy their chances.

The nature of the actual story in Daleks Among Us is a practically savant satire of the world in which we live. The Daleks invaded a world named Azimuth twenty years ago, and were given what-for by the Doctor and Ace (there’s a naked statue with a baseball bat and everything). But the ‘police’ on Azimuth are in charge of supressing not so much crime as memory. In particular, memory of a certain creature. Covered in balls. Screams ‘Exterminate’ a lot. Begins with D.

It's become something of a rule that when you get Alan Barnes in to write a Dalek script, things get…headachey, in terms of the complexity and the levels of reality with which you’re asked to deal – he also, for instance, wrote Brotherhood of the Daleks. Daleks Among Us is no exception to that rough rule of Barnesian complexity, and by the end of it, we’ve uncovered some entirely confusing truths behind the confusing conflicts of Elizabeth Klein’s Nazi/NotsoNazi life and history. But at its core, it’s a story of how, if you keep repeating a lie long enough, and vehemently enough, and you’re prepared to back up your lie with remedial action, your lie becomes the only truth that people dare know, dare speak, and then you control the history of the societal narrative. It’s Trumpism in fiction, or Orwellian prophecy with added Dalek-bumps. The parallel strands of the search for Shulke and the attempt to get him to build his Persuasion Device, and the impact of information-oppression on Azimuth makes for demanding listening, and you really need to be up to speed with the previous history of the device to get the most out of this story.

That said, it’s one of the odder Dalek stories even in Big Finish history – which is saying something, as the company has done things with Daleks you’d never dream of in your most cheese-fuelled nightmares, and there are other Easter eggs along the way that still manage to surprise when you reach them (No, we’re not spoiling those for you!), and at a pinch, Daleks Among Us is more accessible than the likes of Brotherhood of the Daleks, even with the Doctor more or less consulting Douglas Adams-style spiritual oracles in order to get himself into the story. That’s a weird note when you come across it, but ultimately, the Doctor’s blatant cheating comes back to haunt him, and to provide an interesting angle by which to engineer a solution to the mounting pressures of the story.

Daleks Among Us is worth a listen, absolutely – but it’s most worth a listen at its prescribed place in the Big Finish universe, after Persuasion and Starlight Robbery. Strap yourself in for the whole Persuasion trilogy, and Daleks Among Us will repay your brow-furrowed attention far more than it will if you simply pick it up and just try to catch up as you go along.

Who Reviews The Infinite Quest by Jeffrey Zyra

Written By Alan Barnes

Directed by Gary Russell

Broadcast 2 Apr – 29 Jun 2007

The Doctor and Martha are tricked into finding the four data chips that hold the secret to the ship The Infinite.  The robotic bird Caw gives The Doctor and Martha the first chip and also tells them that Baltazar has escaped from prison and is hunting for them also.   As the TARDIS dematerializes it is revealed that Baltazar was standing behind it listening to the whole thing and asks Caw if the homing signal is operational.  He said he it is and it is in the pin he gave Martha.

The quest sends The Doctor and Martha to the planet Boukon where oil barons are sucking up the last of the oil and pirates are stealing it and selling it for their own gain.  Then they head to the planet Myarr where the humans and the insect race are at war against each other and finally to the planet of Volag – Noc which is one of the coldest planets in the universe and home to one of the biggest prisons. 

Baltazar confronts them on the planet Volag – Noc and forces The Doctor to cooperate by finding out where the Infinite is by using the TARDIS. After The Doctor puts the coordinates in Baltazar knocks The Doctor out and leaves him on Volag – Noc.  The Doctor now must save Martha and prevent Baltazar from getting his heart’s desire and using the Infinite to take over the Universe.

The Infinite Quest is actually a pretty decent story but more to the point it is more geared to children than adults.  It is a fun story to watch with a simple story of The Doctor on the quest for the data chips and then stopping the villain Baltazar voiced by Anthony Head of Buffy fame.  It was originally broadcast as part of the children’s Doctor Who program Totally Doctor Who which aired in 2007.  You had to watch every week to catch the 3 minute shorts which was released on DVD as one eighty minute movie. 

The animation is pretty simple also and does not break the barriers for animation but it does not really put a damper on the story at all.  Well for the most part anyway as David Tennant seems to have the same expression and well there is just something wrong with the eye brows that just gets to be distracting at times.  But compared to the animation of Dreamland that comes a few years later it is just simpler and looks more like a cartoon.

The thing about The Infinite Quest is that it could easily fit in Series 3 but most people don’t consider it a part of series 3 but hey it has Martha in it so to me it is part of Series 3.  I liked the simplicity of the Infinite Quest and did like the way the different alien planets looked and how they were able to do more with them in cartoon form than on a set.  One of the advantages of doing a story in animation is being able to do what you want without any restrictions from studios and stuff being expensive.

The Infinite Quest is a fun romp with some pretty good moments even if the animation is wooden at times.   So if you have kids and want to watch a fun story to get them interested in the show or science fiction in general then The Infinite Quest would be a good one to watch.

Grade B +

©BBC Doctor Who 1963

News Happy Birthday Alan Barnes

Alan was editor of Judge Dredd magazine from 2001 – 2006, and writer for Doctor Who  Magazine for five years.  He’s a writer of audio dramas for Doctor Who and audio stories, and writer of books, magazines and comics. 

Happy Birthday Alan, did you know that on this day in 1973, Episode 3 of Frontier in Space was broadcast?  It was the 67^th story of Doctor Who.  It was Season 10 and starred Jon Pertwee as the Doctor with Katy Manning as his companion.  It also featured the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates.  Roger Delgado also appeared in this episode as the Master.

Writer was Malcolm Hulke and Director was Paul Bernard.

It’s the 26^th Century and Earth and the Draconians are fighting for supremacy of the galaxy.

There are no other Doctor Who or Torchwood cast or crew celebrating today that we’ve been able to locate, but others celebrating today are: Rob Lowe 50, Kurt Russell 63, Gary Sinise 59, Patrick Duffy 65

Have a fantastic day Alan!

Resources

©BBC Doctor Who 1963

Campbell (2000) Doctor Who Pocket Essential

Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Frontier-Planet-Daleks/dp/B002KSA3T8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395048597&sr=8-1&keywords=doctor+who+frontiers+in+space

Who Reviews Enemy Aliens by DJ Forrest

 Doctor Who: Enemy Aliens (Destiny of the Doctor 8)

Audiobook

By DJ Forrest

Written by Alan Barnes

Readers: Michael Maloney, India Fisher

Running Time: 1hrs

Publisher: AudioGo Ltd

Number of CD’s: 1

Release date: 01/08/2013

Its 1935, London, and the 8th Doctor and his companion Charley Pollard have an investigation to uncover.  After a message that was cut short in the Tardis by unknown circumstances, they are made aware that an enemy alien invasion is coming to Earth and are made aware also that William Tell is part of the plot.  They also have to find the Secret Key in the Hidden Lock.

When Charley begins humming the tune to Rossini’s William Tell Overture, strange and disturbing things begin to happen.  And when they visit the Trumps Music Hall and begin to ask one of the acts on stage, a man who can foresee the future the man is killed by an unknown assailant.  But as the crowd scatter in mad panic, and Charley picks up the gun that has landed at her feet a good looking man comes to her aid, posing as a policeman and they leave the music hall together.

Led out of the music hall the man whom she discovers isn’t really a police officer but is unsure who he may be wakes up in his apartment to noises downstairs.  The Doctor had been arrested the day before, his hands covered in blood from the dead man whom he’d tried to save, but to no avail.  But according to the papers of the day, had escaped from the custody of the police and was at large, along with Charley Pollard.

I’ve never read any of the 8th Doctor stories and found this a delightful audiobook narrated by India Fisher who through her narration reminded me of the black and white movies I used to watch as a kid, the St Trinian’s jolly hockey sticks and What-ho accents!  She’s very clear in her pronunciations and although she covers the voice of the Doctor, she is helped along in the story by Michael Maloney who covers the voice of Hilary Hammond.  The good looking man who saves Charley but hides a dark secret!

The story is a very jolly affair, despite the levels of trouble both Charley and the Doctor become embroiled in but what I found most enjoyable about this story was that it featured the Thames Clyde train that took the adventure into Dumfriesshire, which is very close to home.  I did smile at the mention also of the citadel on the English border that was quite amusing.

The 8th Doctor came across an awful lot like the 11th in the way he spoke and reacted, and I wonder if that’s down to the writer who has also written 11th Doctor Stories.

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The story is well put together and you have to pay a good deal of attention to the plot as it reaches a very dramatic conclusion that I found really ingenious in its description.  I’m not giving any clues on that as this is a new story and it’s something you’re going to have to find out for yourself.

India Fisher is a British actress who has provided the voiceover for MasterChef and also the voices for a series of sci fi audio dramas such as Doctor Who and Big Finish Productions and the Sci Fi Channel UK’s online audio version of Blake’s 7 playing Lora Mezin.

Michael Maloney is an English actor whose first appearance saw him as a teenager in the 1979 drama series ‘Telford’s Change’. He has since gone on to appear in many film and television programmes, radio and stage dramas, including ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ and ‘The Thick of It’.

Alan Barnes is a British writer and editor, his notable works are Judge Dredd and Doctor Who.

He worked as editor of Judge Dredd Magazine from 2001 to December 2005 and worked for five years at Doctor Who Magazine progressing from writing strips to becoming joint editor in 1998 to sole editor from 2000 to 2002.

This is a delightful audio, which also includes a few place names I’m familiar with along the route.  Well worth a listen to, and well worth hunting out a few more audio adventures with the 8^th Doctor and his companions.