Project: Torchwood: Issue 92

On a morning full of hayfever and a left arm recovering from the final COVID jab, it’s the last read through before the launch of Issue 92, and I can’t help feeling a sense of excitement. The Ninth Doctor, the actual Ninth Doctor, has returned and sets the wheels in motion for a splendid if not brilliant first outing with Big Finish. I for one, cannot wait till next payday for a chance of listening to some awesome audios.

Not only that, but this month, Tony has surpassed himself with not one but three more Doctor volumes to enthral you with. New volumes to salivate at and fill shelves where once paperback novels sat, but now make way for audio containers, unless, you’re more of a download freak!!!

Andrew has set aside his own Doctor Who novel to bring us more Sarah Jane reviews, don’t miss that, and Matt returns after a long break to bring us a Fourth Doctor Big Finish review alongside some Classic Doctor Who TV episodes to recall from years ago. Some, even I remember from the off.

Lady C returns for another adventure, this time written by two more fans of the series, Samantha Stanley and Harriet Chamberlain. Do check out this story. I can absolutely recommend it.

Our profile this month is our illustrious leader of Torchwood Three – Captain Jack Harkness. It may seem that we’ve skirted around a few sides of his character, but believe me, if we didn’t, we’d still be writing till the sun exploded.

Tiziana has once again created a brilliant front cover for us, with the Ninth decorating the scene once again.

So, pack a flask and some serious filling for your sandwiches. Saddle up and let the reading commence. We’ll be back next month with more exciting reviews, and hopefully a little extra.

Stay safe and stay well.

Djak

Welcome to Issue 92

Big Finish Reviews+ The Ravagers by Tony J Fyler

There are days in Doctor Who fandom that live and breathe in your memory forever. The first episode you saw that made you aware you were really and truly a fan. The day a new Doctor arrives, and you see them and instantly know that they’re “Your” Doctor.

And for fans of Doctor Who on audio, there’s the buzz when something new comes to Big Finish. The day Tom Baker came on board. The day David Tennant returned both to Big Finish and to Doctor.

With the best will in the world towards the Tenth Doctor and the actor who plays him, the release of the first box set of Christopher Eccleston Ninth Doctor stories is bigger than the Tennant return.

It’s bigger because Tennant had history with Big Finish, and he was a boyhood fan of Doctor Who, so it always seemed like something he might want to come back to. Christopher Eccleston was never a fan of the show before Russell T Davies, and in things like turning down the Fiftieth Anniversary story, he had signalled it was unlikely he would ever return to the role.

A combination of a softening towards conventions, an understanding and an appreciation of the love the fandom has for both the show and for his Doctor, and a year of lockdown may have helped to change his mind on a return, but just as was the case in his initial approach to Russell T Davies about the role, Christopher Eccleston has always been an actor drawn to good writing.

That he signed on for these box sets at Big Finish then is a good sign in itself that you’re in for a treat.

This first box set, Ravagers, is written by Nicholas Briggs, who has stood in vocally for Eccleston in the handful of Big Finish stories in which the Ninth Doctor has appeared so far, and as with Davies, Eccleston says that Briggs’ writing is a major part of what got him to re-join the universe of Doctor Who.

So, what’s it all about?

As you might expect given the name, the ‘Big Bad’ here is a race of creatures who eat absolutely everything they come into contact with – people, buildings, planets, suns, the universe is their menu. Seemingly implacable, unstoppable and hungry, the Ravagers are a threat that’s held in suspense for much of the box set, following the Shakespearean principle of being magnified by report in their absence (or telling, rather than showing).

Meanwhile, in the first episode, Sphere of Freedom, the Ninth Doctor picks up a chef who’s working under indenture (slavery without the word) at an enormous immersive video game empire, and sets about the task of pulling that empire to the ground.

Not a fan of immersive gaming, then, this Doctor? Quite the contrary – did you miss the part about the slavery? He goes out of his way to explain that he has nothing against gamers and gaming, but he has reason to believe this particular gaming empire is responsible for some real temporal eddies that are displacing people from all over time and space, scooping them up and dumping them somewhere else. Roman legionaries in Trafalgar Square during the war, that sort of thing – complete with the ensuing bloodbath.

The Doctor knows these time eddies are more of a threat than just a bunch of displaced people, though – they’re a potential threat to the whole of the vortex, the whole of reality. And so, with the audio adventure equivalent of an outstretched hand and a “D’you wanna come with me?”, the Ninth Doctor is back, Chef Nova (Camille Beeput) at his side, trying to stop misguided gaming CEO Audrey (Jayne McKenna) from ripping the fabric of space-time to shreds, seemingly just for short-term profit. Very Ninth Doctor, very “Run for your life,” and altogether a thing of pure joy.

It’s been sixteen years since the Ninth Doctor was on screen, and two things are evident immediately about his return. The first is that if the memory doesn’t exactly cheat, we do get used to our general perceptions of a Doctor, and set them in stone in a kind of shorthand. Patrick Troughton’s ‘cosmic hobo,’ Jon Pertwee’s ‘establishment dandy,’ and so on.

For the Ninth Doctor, we seem to have memories of him being more taciturn, more mournful and filled with survivor-guilt than for the most part he really was. Eccleston on screen was far more animated, far more willing to be silly and funny, and to give his Doctor a bounce of energy, than our memories allow him.

And the second thing is that were he to have been as grim as our memories sometimes paint him, it wouldn’t work long term on audio. He’d have to be shifted towards more speech, more full-on conversations, because of the nature of the medium. You can do a lot with a look on TV. It means more or less nothing on audio.

But as we say, the Ninth Doctor was always a glorious mixture of silliness and fun and a steel-spined understanding of the universe. He was always both things, and a million more besides, and in this first box set, Christopher Eccleston gets a chance to show a lot more of that Doctor to us – the Doctor who will take a stand and then do whatever is necessary to achieve his goal, so long as it doesn’t cross his personal moral threshold.

Why are we mentioning this?

Simply because the Ninth Doctor here is more garrulous, more talkative than people remember him being. But he hasn’t been carbon copied from the naturally chattier Tenth Doctor at all. Partly, any potential disconnect is due to a shading out of these elements of his personality when we think back to him, and partly, he needs to talk more in audio to carry the day anyway.

And frankly, it’s gorgeous. This more universally bouncy Ninth Doctor, in the days when he believed the Daleks were finally gone from the universe, is mischievous, persuasive and always looking to have his breath taken by the people and things he encounters, quite as much as he is a moral guardian of the universe and a sticker-up for the little people against the bullies of the universe.

In Sphere Of Freedom, there’s a good deal of set-up, as we learn of Audrey’s empire, the temporally displaced people and what they have to do with Audrey’s empire (there is a fairly explicit link), the nature of the Sphere as a basic indenture world – think zero hour contracts, minimum wages and company ‘perks’ that do nothing to keep body and soul together – and why all this should require the creation of temporal eddies that imperil the cosmos.

Eccleston, coming back to the Ninth Doctor, is a tour de force – but you knew that already. We also need to pay huge respect to Camilla Beeput, who as Chef Nova gets the companion energy note perfect immediately, while also subtly hinting that there’s more to her than meets the ear. Jayne McKenna as Audrey spends much of the episode in shadow, but gives us just enough towards the end to pull us headlong into Episode 2, Cataclysm.

This is where the story of Ravagers goes properly Nick Briggs tonto. Nova gets separated from the Doctor and meets an army of drones who want to turn her into fuel, while we begin to suspect that things might not be all we thought they were.

Is the Doctor in an immersive video game himself, his dreams of being the universe-saving hero playing out around him like memories of a life long gone? Or are he and Nova really experiencing this timeline in slightly the wrong order? It seems they might be as they turn up to stop Audrey too late, only to be told they’ve just left, and they failed in any case.

This is a much more reflective episode in some ways, but the pace remains relentless – and actually, somewhat breathless. You may need a pin board and a load of Post-It notes to keep track of the careering path of this story, especially as in Cataclysm we see the Doctor seeming to ‘haunt’ Audrey at various points in her earlier life, an idea that, pleasingly, has been used before at Big Finish, with the Seventh Doctor ‘haunting’ the life of complex character Elizabeth Klein. The idea gets a neat re-use here, and it feels true to his character that the Doctor will still essentially ‘stalk’ people if he feels they need watching to stay on his version of a positive pathway.

There’s a solid MacGuffin responsible for a lot of what happens in this first box set – a Time Lord MacGuffin, nevertheless. And there’s some degree of story involved in tracking it through Audrey’s life as she discovers the Ravagers and the impossible threat they pose, and then begins to build her defences against them, creating time eddies and displacing people in direct response to what she sees as an imminent threat.

Cataclysm, while rarely pausing for breath, feels like both a more active story than Sphere Of Freedom and a more reflective one as the ‘Ghost Doctor’ haunts Audrey’s younger life through her disappointments, her rise, her last ditch creation of a solution to the Ravagers problem – even though it may eventually destroy the universe.

Episode 3, Food Fight, is all revelation and resolution, but that’s not to say it’s at any point easy. The true scale of the storytelling arc is revealed in this episode, and it’s much bigger and grander and more impressive than you may have cottoned onto before you get there, because you’re more or less constantly running to escape from things throughout the first two episodes.

There’s a lot more calmness and talking in episode 3, because the big threat that is the Ravagers is not only revealed, but eventually understood. There are changes that need making if the universe is to be saved from both the Ravagers and from Audrey’s suicidal plan to keep them at bay.

When the Ravagers are finally released, it works with the same sort of dramatic impact as, for instance, a swarm of 21^st century Daleks flying out of the sun to come and kill us all – you’ll bite at least a nail or two when it happens – and the solution the Doctor improvises to their phenomenal hunger depends on a last-minute paradigm-shift in what we’re dealing with.

And when it happens, you’ll punch the air, because it’s so very Ninth Doctor you could squeal – compassionate, caring, revolutionary and universe-saving all in one. It’s a moment of glory that the return of Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor deserves, and you’ll go around with a stupid, blissed-out grin on your face for the rest of the day once you hear it.

The return of Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor is sublime. Breathless sometimes, head-scratchingly (ahem) timey-wimey at others, but with everything from immersive games, omnivores screaming across space to devour the universe, Dan Starkey giving us Latin lessons as a Roman soldier, a full-on Ocean’s 11 style heist-cum-revolution, a bunch of reprogrammable drones and the adventures of an immensely enjoyable indentured chef, it has more than you could possibly have dreamed of asking for.

But mostly of course, it has Christopher Eccleston, getting the chance we’d always hoped for, to add new words to his pre-Rose Tyler Doctor, to have new adventures and be the Doctor again, with all the energy and verve and interstellar brilliance that made Doctor Who a world-beater again in 2005.

That’s not just brilliant. That’s ffffffflippin’ marvellous.

Big Finish Reviews+ Avalon, Volume 1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s resistant.

Expanded universes are all the rage in cult TV and movies.

They’re what Marvel’s been up to for a while now, conquering the world with new adventures for characters inhabiting the same fictional universe as its major movie players. The Star Wars expanded universe is, let’s face it, significantly more gripping than the last few episodes of the main movie franchise were.

Big Finish is already a past master at expanded universe content. Everything from Jago and Litefoot to the Paternoster Gang, the Adventures of Jenny, and River Song, and Lady Christina, Gallifrey, the War Master, Missy, and even UNIT, it all expands the main parent-universe of Doctor Who.

We mention this because some people have raised their eyebrow at the launch of Avalon, Volume 1, and questioned whether it was either wanted or needed. Big Finish is expanding the universe of Blake’s 7 now?

Well…erm…yes. Yes, that’s precisely what it’s doing. And there are sound in-universe and ex-universe reasons for doing it.

In the real world, it’s sad but true that to keep running Blake’s 7 full-cast adventures when the actors who gave us Blake, Avon and Servalan are no longer with us becomes ever-increasingly difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.

Meanwhile, in the world of Blake’s 7, the viability of this expanded universe was set up by the show itself – Blake was relatively frequently tripping over ‘other rebel leaders’ and ‘other resistance cells.’ And the thing very few people ever talk about is quite how exceptional the Liberator crew were – they had the fastest ship in the sector, they had the ability to instantly teleport down to a remote location (and back up again), and they had Orac, the ultimate computer hacker’s toolkit. For all they got into scrapes and scraps along the way, the Liberator crew had it relatively easy when it came to resistance fighting. The fictional universe has plenty of space for those other resistance groups that didn’t have anywhere near as comfortable a time fighting the power of the Federation.

So – Avalon. Avalon was a resistance leader in the TV version of Blake’s 7, and has subsequently appeared in a Big Finish continuation of her story. More to the point, she is a relatively strong starting point for the expanded universe of Blake’s 7.

In this first box set of three stories, there are all the hallmarks of that expansion – we don’t get an Avalon origin story as such, but the first story, Terra Firma, by Steve Lyons, bristles with Blakeness, as it’s set during the time of the first episode of Blake’s 7. We hear mention of his trial on child sex offences, we deal at length with the issue of the resistance group meeting he attended where, betrayed by undercover Federation agent Dev Tarrant, the group was massacred, and in fact Tarrant features prominently in this set, with Malcolm James slipping back into the slimy shoes of TV Tarrant, Jeremy Wilkin.

Olivia Poulet returns to the world of Blake’s 7 as Avalon too, so in terms of continuity with prior Big Finish toe-dips into this resistance fighter’s life, as well as tying the series in with original Blake’s 7 chronology, this set has done its homework and is here to deliver. To tie everything together, Terra Firma gives us the story of the first encounter between Avalon and Jenna Stannis, later of the Liberator, as mentioned on-screen.

It’s perhaps not a legendary tale, Terra Firma, but it never stops making sense – in the wake of the resistance massacre and the trial of Blake, Avalon, who’s been working her revolutionary magic on other planets within the Federation, is driven to come home to Earth, if for no other reason than to prove to both the Federation and the people that the resistance is still alive there. She teams up with an old friend who’s not quite old enough to be old yet, Fay (played young by Becky Wright), and the two tangle with a smuggler who – much to Avalon’s dismay - is getting a name for herself. Jenna (Sally Knyvette) is very much at a pre-Blake stage here, increasingly aware she wants to follow someone into battle against the Federation, but that she has some pretty high standards for what they need to be able to achieve. By the end of the episode, Jenna’s decided that Avalon’s not it – at least, not yet – and headed off to her destiny. Fay gets an interesting introduction and we’re never entirely sure what the relationship between her and Avalon is, whether they’re related or simply sisters in the resistance. Certainly though, Fay looks up to Avalon in this first story, and is breathlessly eager to please and impress her leader.

Much of the plot of Steve Lyons’ story is workaday Federation grimness, but in a way, that’s the point – away from the Liberator, there’s a lot of workaday Federation grimness - including here a feud between ex-con Krask (Nicholas Asbury playing a role that back in the Eighties would have pretty much belonged to Stephen Yardley or Michael Attwell by right), and Federation goon-with-attitude Gryson (played with toe-curling officiousness by William Ellis). It all serves the bigger point of Avalon’s return, her re-uniting with Fay, and her testing out of Jenna Stannis as a potential resistance fighter. It’s a useful place to start this reimagining of the Avalon backstory, and having a member of the Blake crew there to bolster the connection between Blake’s universe and Avalon’s is a clever idea that helps us get to grips with the parameters of this new series quickly.

What’s a little odd about the second story in the set, Throwback, by Gary Russell, is that Avalon’s barely in it.

Sure, she’s a prime mover of the story, but really, this is an origin story for a new member of Avalon’s crew, super-civilized dome-dweller, Argo Madison.

Madison, played by Cliff Chapman, has quite a backstory – his parents should, according to all the social pressures in the Federation, have aborted him, but they refused. Madison grew up fussy, clever, always in need of the status quo – and with a prodigious memory. His work as a data clerk was both inevitable and also strangely necessary to him, setting his world in order.

When Avalon and her crew come to blow up his corner of the records archive, it ruins a lot of his life.

Being interrogated by a man named Travis doesn’t exactly brighten up his life either. But what that gives you is a tight mostly three-handed episode of torture and memories, as Travis (Stephen Greif) and Madison (Chapman) trade words, memories, and probing questions, with occasional input from Travis’ helper, Dag (Dawn Murphy). It’s soon apparent that Madison has an ulterior motive and a mission of his own, but which will be able to out-think the other – Travis or Madison?

If you want a mood, think Clarice Starling meets Hannibal Lecter for the first time – if Starling were strapped to a pain-inducing lie detector, and Lecter were in control of the dials. It takes a fair amount of gumption to play a scene like that with an actor of Greif’s calibre and vocal quality, but to give him his due, Chapman more than holds his own, making the story a subtle battle of wills and words and making us invest in Madison’s future, despite the fact that as a character, he’s difficult to warm to – a fact not lost on his fellow resistance members as time goes on.

Not to set episodes against each other, but it’s quite possible Throwback takes the laurels of this set, simply for the intensity of the truth-or-torture setting, and pitting Greif and Chapman against each other produces something powerful, the kind of audio you can eat a hell of a lot of popcorn to. And probably a few fingernails too.

Black Water, by Trevor Baxendale, rounds off the set with a story that sees Avalon and her team plan to disrupt the hydroponics centre that supplies a lot of Alpha grades. There’s some Star One energy here – what happens to the little people when you’re busy fighting the big empire? They suffer, they might even die, as collateral damage in your war against the State. And there’s a pleasing amount of command blindness on show in Avalon’s personality in this episode, bringing the ‘greater good’ argument to bear, while preparing to hurt a lot of the ‘little people’ – however Alpha grade they are. While it’s not the first time in the set that Olivia Poulet gets the chance to stamp her voice on the role, it’s probably the episode in which she gets to do the most interesting things – including a little double-crossing, and the exposure of a traitor in her midst.

In something of a spoiler, we can tell you that that Madison is a strong presence in this story too, and a gloriously whingy one, having been whisked out of his safe life in the dome and forced to deal with sleepless nights, unfiltered water and protein derived directly from animals. Or meat, as we 20^th century barbarians would call it.

More though, this story shows the first strike of Avalon’s new group against the mechanics of the Federation, and brings the connection between Avalon’s group and Blake’s friends on Earth to a conclusion, as Dev Tarrant is, not to put too fine a point on it, rumbled. But is he rumbled in time to save both the group and the plan, or will Tarrant bring another resistance group to its knees?

It’s a close-run thing and there are casualties along the way, leading Avalon, at the end of this set, to head back out into space, having made a point there on Earth, to keep the resistance fighting in the heart of the Federation.

Just as the first story-bloc of Blake’s 7 dealt with the corrupt Federation on Earth, and was extra-specially bleak as a result, so Avalon’s first box set focuses on keeping the resistance alive at home. There’s a cogency to the set as it moves from her return home to her bolstering a new team, and then, having attempted a major strike, having to run back to the stars. The first set leaves you with a sense of something completed, and looking forward to whatever’s coming next. Olivia Poulet gets to show some of the steel and some of the compassion in Avalon’s character, as well as how – at least at the beginning – she deals with the pressure of being a known ‘legend’ in the resistance.

The universe of Blake’s 7 is expanding. Avalon is taking up the fight. And with the likes of Stephen Greif providing a bridge between this world and the world of Blake, and the likes of Cliff Chapman and Becky Wright supporting Olivia Poulet’s confident central figure, Avalon, Volume 1 is a great way to start opening up of the Federation’s universe. The resistance is back – and it sounds brilliant.

Big Finish Reviews+ The First Doctor Adventures Vol. 5 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s feeling ruff.

The First Doctor Adventures sets with the David Bradley cast have often followed a tried and trusted formula – one space or futuristic story, one Earth historical, more or less by way of capturing the spirit of those early black and white years before the historicals were largely phased out.

It’s a combination that works well on audio, because it shows how the medium can deliver the drama, meeting both challenges with the same central cast.

Volume 5 sticks with this winning combination, giving us For The Glory Of Urth, by Guy Adams – and no, that’s not a typo – and The Hollow Crown, by Sarah Grochala. One space, one history. Everybody clear? Good, let’s go adventuring.

Doctor Who has almost always been a great platform for satire and allegory. By spinning events on our recognisable Earth off into a science-fiction setting, it’s been able to entertain and inform at the same time. It’s also been able to let writers a little off the leash and give their take on things. This sort of freedom is what brought us Terry Nation’s views on the idiocy of Nazi ideology, wrapped up in a personal tank and called a Dalek. It’s what gave us Kit Pedler’s fear of a lost humanity through organ replacement surgery, wrapped in bandages and called the Cybermen. It’s what gave us Robert Holmes’ scathing indictment on commercialism culture, the shop window dummies who fought back, known as the Autons. Holmes, again in a scathing mood, created the Sontarans as a satire on big-minded militarism. And let’s not forget what happens if you send Robert Holmes and excessively high tax demand – you end up being mercilessly parodied in the Sunmakers, that’s what.

If there’s a writer in the audio world of Big Finish who most precisely channels Holmes’ ‘better writing through satire’ abilities…it’s probably Guy Adams. There are other great comic writers in the Big Finish ‘stable,’ but no-one quite sticks the knife into modern life and makes it bleed pure science-fiction satire like Adams.

Strap yourself in when you listen to For The Glory Of Urth – it’s almost too close to the bone of real life in the 21^st century bone, while simultaneously being a highly effective futuristic science fiction story.

The Doctor and his friends materialise on Urth, where all that remains of the human race suffer a godawful life under the grinding rule of an arrogant upper class who make regular proclamations of love for the proles, while demanding they go without more food, work harder, or take the option of being destroyed, to – in almost as many words – decrease the surplus population, for the good of Urth. This is a society in which the upper crust is so singularly, pointlessly pleased with itself, it strives to maintain nothing less than species purity – there are regular scans for people with any alien DNA, and if it is found, they are immediately part of the underclass, or possibly just tortured and killed for their outsider nature.

There is also a generic, uncomplicated, shamefully recognisable ‘fear of the alien,’ on the grounds that Urth is the last outpost of the ‘inherently superior’ human race, and that aliens want to come and destroy that precious, proud heritage, either directly by war, or through underhanded co-mingling.

In a sense, Urth is an outpost of fascism for cretins, and pleasingly, both the Gallifreyans and the 1960s humans are revolted by what they find there. The story develops in ways that are simply sublime in the second half of the running time, but to tell you much about those developments would be very much a spoiler. Suffice it to say that the assumptions on which the first half of the story is based are perhaps not as sound as they’re made out to be, and when Guy Adams’ story blossoms and we get to meet some actual potential alien invaders, the parallels between the current world of Brexit Britain and the world of Urth and its tin-pot little ‘Feel sorry for me with my burden of command’ rulers become positively “chef’s kiss” perfect.

Clive Wood as Daddy Dominus, the self-important, self-pitying is perfect in terms of being jussst far enough from observable reality to be a legitimate science fiction performance, and the double act of horrorshows that are Mummy Martial (Amanda Hurwitz), the chief strategist of Urth, and Sissy Cruciatu (Susie Emmett), its chief scientist and torturer (Err…yes, it’s that sort of a world) are the kind of venom-spitting odd couple that made some of Eric Saward’s sharpest stories zing.

Be aware, the world of Urth is no fun. Spending too much time there would be nauseating in the extreme, like living in a UKIPtopia. But the writing and the performances that make Urth come alive are so sublime, you’ll go back for many a re-listen to this story. You won’t be able to stop yourself, it’s just that cathartic, like squeezing a really ripe spot.

And speaking of “Out, damn spot!,” after what seems like a solution to all the early First Doctor’s navigational troubles, in The Hollow Crown, the Doctor manages to get Ian and Barbara back to Shoreditch.

Just…under the rule of the wrong Elizabeth.

Yes, we’re back in Elizabethan London here, in the company of William Shakespeare. There are delicate Doctor Who timelines not to disturb on both counts this far into New Who territory, especially as the First Doctor won’t be aware of any of them.

Sarah Grochala’s story navigates these elements with a seeming ease, without at any point ducking them. Also, unlike celebrity historicals in the Tennant era, when those elements were set up, there’s no wink to ‘camera’ about these things here – they’re just presented as the standard perils of time travel, while the story itself digs deep and hooks you in. There are rogue plays, rabble rousers, cross-dressing red herrings, a friend of the queen and an ill-fated rebellion here, all of which the Tardis crew have to navigate.

Add to that some really sparky crew dynamics, with Susan doing her best ‘sulky Earth teenager’ act in the company of a son history says Shakespeare doesn’t have. Barbara, meanwhile – relatively fresh from her experience with the Aztecs, and similar experiences in recent audio adventures too – is determined to stick her neck out and tell the rebels that they’re doomed. And for once, it’s Ian who’s equally determined to see exactly what might be changed about the history we think we know. It all makes for a heady, involving drama that zips by much faster than its run time will have you believe.

Oh, also, it stars Wendy Craig as Elizabeth I, than which nothing better exists in this vale of rampant what-the-hellery.

Bradley’s Tardis team has long settled into their roles, and with the always slightly unnerving fact that Claudia Grant sounds more like Susan when she’s just being Claudia Grant than when she’s acting as Susan understood, they’re a highly enjoyable team. It’s worth giving additional props to Jemma Powell as Barbara this time out too, especially in The Hollow Crown, where Barbara’s role is superbly well-written and realised.

All in all, For The Glory Of Urth and The Hollow Crown are extremely different stories, with similarities in their underpinnings. They each make us look at some things we think we understand from a brand new angle, and they both do so while very firmly determined to tell a great story first and foremost.

They succeed all along the way, which means the First Doctor Adventures, Volume 5 can stand proudly alongside its predecessor sets – which, given the quality of this range, is both never necessarily a given, and is really saying something. You have to work almost ridiculously hard to turn out stories this engaging while being true to both the spirit of early sixties Who, and to the spirit of enhances adventure that 21^st century audio allows. Everyone involved in the First Doctor Adventures, Volume 5 works that hard, and the result is a set that delivers on every level.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Dalek Protocol by Matt Rabjohns

I have a confession to make. A guilty pleasure story for me has always been Death to the Daleks. I think that the story never gets its due. It was Jon Pertwee’s most brilliant Dalek story to me. And one can readily tell from the scripting of The Dalek Protocol that Nicholas Briggs obviously loves Death to the Daleks too. And I don’t blame him. Everything about The Dalek Protocol oozes memories of Death to the Daleks, and in a good and nostalgic way.

I also have another confession to make. I am a huge fan of Jane Slavin. Particularly as her character Anya Kingdom. To me she is just the perfect character. Well, perfect in the entertainment sense anyway. She travelled with the Doctor for a while and she became a firm favourite newcomer companion for me in the Big Finish range. And yet it was saddening that she turned out to not be completely trustworthy. But I am glad in this new story it is plain to tell she is seeking for redemption. And that for me is awesome because I’d love to see her character come full circle and be accepted and trusted by the Doctor again.

I like how Nick has played with time in the telling of the story, in that its set after Anya has left the TARDIS for her, but for the Doctor he has not met her yet. So she has to resort to hiding her face from him and masking her voice so he never finds out who she is. It is also great that Jane has some very quiet and touching scenes with Louise Jameson, where they both find out more about their futures and pasts in a really impacting way. It ends the story off on such a melancholy yet sober note.

One also has to mention the excellent performance of Joe Sims as Mark Seven. It is great to see a character once lost in the annals of time being first used in The Daleks the Destroyers, which was written by Dalek creator Terry Nation when he hoped to interest the Americans in a programme with the Daleks. This sadly fell through, but Big Finish had the very wise and awesome brain to know that the Destroyers deserved to be heard. And the play was made with Joe and Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom. Joe’s performance as the disturbed and controlled android is excellent. He makes you feel extremely sorry for his mental state that has been brought about through his brainwashing by the Daleks.

The realisation of the Exxilons too is fantastic and pitch perfect. Jez Fielder’s Gislen is a brilliant and conflicted portrayal. A weary and hardened Exxilon who has learnt that no human is to be trusted. He shares some great verbal slanging matches with Tom and Louise. And it is extra special to hear Nick Briggs do brilliantly at resurrecting the character of Bellal, oh so brilliantly originally portrayed by the wonderful Arnold Yarrow in Death to the Daleks. And thankfully Bellal is still as level headed and kind hearted as ever, and it felt like a warm familiar hug to hear talking again in this story.

The sound design too lovingly and brilliantly pays tribute to Death to the Daleks again. The pulsing sound of the beacon of the Exxilon city is great to hear again. It always was part of the awesome sound designs that made Death to the Daleks the hit for me that it still is.

And again, Nick Briggs displays his considerable talents by not only voicing the dreaded Daleks once more, but also the Earth Mission leader Barnard too. He is irascible and snappy, and Nick is flawless in his delivery as this great character.

Anna Mitchum’s character Ellasi too is also greatly memorable. And she makes for a great companion to Anya. My only problem with her character at all is she is not in the story enough. This story already is lighting up to become one of my favourite stories with the metal pepper pots from Skaro. That is what I love about Big Finish, every single time they bring out a new Dalek story it never fails to hit the spot with me. I’ve yet to find a single disappointing Dalek story with Big Finish. I wish I could only say the same thing for the modern era of the show’s Dalek efforts, they pale in comparison to stories such as this from Big Finish.

At the core of the story too, as ever, is the immensely enjoyable rapport between Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. I love particularly the opening scenes of the story where Leela playfully teases the Doctor along with K9 in tow! I love these sorts of scenes, where for at least a little while the TARDIS crew are at ease in the ship and just having a really good time. These scenes just make the stories even more special for me. The camaraderie oozes from the earphones and for this fan is such an immense joy to listen and grin and often laugh to. The resolution of this story too also had me grinning with amusement too.

The Dalek Protocol then, in total summation: OK, if I am 100% clearly honest may not actually bring anything majorly new to the Dalek scene of things. But what it is, is a brilliantly entertaining and fast flowing romp that for me ticks every single box easily and superbly. Just makes me keen as mustard for the next riveting Big Finish Dalek saga….

Big Finish Reviews+ The Third Doctor Adventures, Volume 7 by Tony J Fyler

“I’ve put all my eggs in the one basket.”

“Well that’s fine… supposing no-one steals the basket.”

The Brigadier and the Third Doctor there from The Time Warrior.

Ironically, the Brig is in much the same situation in the first story in this seventh Third Doctor box set, The Unzal Incursion.

Written by Mark Wright and set during the Doctor’s first, rather more spiky year as UNIT’s scientific advisor, The Unzal Incursion has a lot of the flavour of that year, with a little evolution from the 1970s. Liz Shaw (played by Daisy Ashford, daughter of Caroline John) with a frankly uncanny rightness of tone, has been leading a project to give the Earth a long-range warning system to pick up any alien wrong ’uns heading our way. As soon as it goes live, the Invasion Of The Week that was later to become a staple of the show becomes much more difficult to achieve.

Which is as good a reason as any for a bunch of alien wrong ’uns to want to knock it out or control it. The Hotspur Network, as it’s rather catchily called, becomes the focus on the Unzal Incursion, but like a lot of the best stories from the Liz Shaw season, the threat is already here. With a hint of Inferno around the edges, almost overnight, UNIT is compromised from within. Previously perfectly loyal officers go over to the enemy. And the Doctor, Professor Shaw and the Brigadier are forced onto the run, with all the forces of a hostile UNIT on their tails.

Chases in Bessie, chases in helicopters (with Lethbridge-Stewart in the pilot’s seat), sonic weapons, mass brainwashing, all the good stuff from early Pertwee-era Who is here, with a cast who frankly sound like they’re having the time of their lives. There’s an incredible zing between all the main players, Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor anchoring the piece with ever-increasing confidence and a vocal Pertwee stride, Jon Culshaw as the Brigadier sounding like he’s got the job he was born to play, and Daisy Ashford fitting in perfectly as Professor Shaw.

There’s an interesting question posed in the sub-text of The Unzal Incursion – at what point do your actions stop being your responsibility? There’s a good deal of brainwashing involved in getting UNIT to turn on its leader, and the question is raised of whether simply being brainwashed is defence enough for those who do unconscionable deeds, or whether at some point a line is drawn and responsibility allocated for not fighting a difficult personal fight to escape the brainwashing.

Along the way, there’s some excellent Liz Shawing, of the king you’d love to have seen on screen. There’s a classic Third Doctor gambit, stepping forward to be the Unzal’s ambassador to the powers that be, and there’s an utterly barnstorming performance from Misha Malcolm as Sergeant ‘Nicki’ Attah, described as a relief for Benton. We’d very much like more of Sergeant Attah, please and thank you, and ultimately, we’d like her to be Brigadier of UNIT North or somesuch, second only to Lethbridge-Stewart himself. We’d like that because Malcolm’s performance is fresh, and vibrant, and a joy to listen to, and because she feels like a paving of the way for the likes of a young Winifred Bambera to come up through the ranks. More. Please. Thank you.

In all fairness though, we could ask for more of almost everything in this story. More of the effortless chemistry between Culshaw and Treloar (adjusted slightly in this story so that it reflects that first Pertwee season with its sizing up of each other). More Daisy Ashford, any time she’s free and the stories can be written for her. And more hardcore UNIT action stories like this one, to sweep us along and make us eat popcorn as the episodes power by us one after another with a pulse-raising punch and purpose.

And then there’s The Gulf.

Two more dissimilar stories it would be hard to even devise, but you won’t be chewing popcorn listening to Tim Foley’s tale of serious psychological horror.

You’ll be too busy biting your nails.

There’s a whole different atmosphere here, as Foley takes the Third Doctor and Sarah-Jane (again played by the daughter of the original actress, in this case Sadie Miller) to an artistic retreat with several serious differences. A platform on a giant lethal ocean, occupied solely by women artists, presided over by Marta Malvani, a seemingly past-her-prime artist, who now mostly guides the works of others. In a mark of staggeringly ironic casting, Marta Malvani is played by Wendy Craig, an actress of legendary status and power, whose prime is not only here and now, but has been enduring in one form and another for decades. You could more or less stop reading once you know Wendy Craig is in The Gulf and be assured of its quality.

But there’s so much more to say. This thing is creeeeepy. Rivulets down the wall, water-monsters talking you to death, old secrets rising to the surface, complex relationship drama creeeeeepy.

Tim Foley always has a dab hand with his scripts of getting you to buy into the character-chemistry, but this is a story so immersive, so multi-faceted, you may need a good brisk walk in the sunshine once you’re done with it, just to restore your equilibrium. That’s only right for a story where the villain seems to ooze into you from the walls, from the air, from the drinking water, and from every conversation you have.

Imagine a situation where the air you breathe became both insidious and aggressive, wanting to trip you into one reaction. One obvious reaction, and then you die. Don’t blink. Don’t move. Don’t breathe…

This is a story very much in a 21^st century vein, but starring the Third Doctor and Sarah. It’s very distinctly an evolution of the kind of story that could have – and would have – been told on TV during their era, but the character chemistry between the two of them remains true to that Seventies model.

It would be utter folly to try and explain all the backstory of The Gulf to you – and besides, it would ruin the experience for you. But in the foreground suffice it to say that one of the young artists on the platform falls into the deadly sea, and is missing, presumed about as dead as you can imagine.

And then she comes back.

The creepy suspicions that begin to drip into every conversation are what powers The Gulf along, and when the truth is finally revealed, it’s so very worth the wait. As with Daisy Ashford’s Liz Shaw in The Unzal Incursion, there’s at least one scene in The Gulf which is pure Sarah-Jane, of the kind you’d have paid good handfuls of salary to have seen on screen. Slightly weirdly, they’re both scenes of companion-torture. But where Liz is tortured physically, and you hear her magnificent resistance, Sarah-Jane gets the psychological treatment, and it reveals something about the relationship between our favourite journalist and her ever-absent Aunt Lavinia that will help put them both in a brand new light.

The Unzal Incursion is full-on early UNIT action adventure that will get your pulse pounding. The Gulf, by way of utter contrast, is a clammy, claustrophobic terrorfest, probably way too dark for TV at the time, but absolutely up there with the likes of The Chimes of Midnight in the sustained atmosphere and chilly finger up the spine stakes.

Both of the stories in this box set could well be thought of as masterpieces in their own right. The cast is spot on, anchored by Tim ‘Flawless’ Treloar, and you’ll come out the other side of this box set believing you’ve just been through a Third Doctor kaleidoscope of moods – and loved every minute of it.

Beyond The TARDIS The Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy of the Bane by Andrew Allen

‘And you have a computer in the wall,’ says Mrs Wormwood, not entirely sans sneer. ‘I had no idea you could be so entertaining!’

And so, The Sarah Jane Adventures reaches the season finale. And if having a third season and its own Comic Relief special (complete with a guest appearance from British comedy icon Ronnie Corbett) on the way wasn’t enough of a statement of confidence, then in this story Sarah Jane Smith is now elevated to that rare status afforded very few characters who started out as support acts: getting their own arch-enemy. The Doctor has The Master, and now Sarah has Mrs Wormwood, who turns up making trouble for everybody. The plot contrives that they are seen as more ‘fun’ than murderous (in much the same way that Delgado’s Master was, despite his horrific body count), and Someone Who Is Not To Be Trusted despite the fact that they turn up asking for Sarah’s help.

Although this is the last episode of the series (and therefore reasonably unlikely to be the place where any new fans drop in for the first time), there’s quite a bit of backstory to be revisited via Luke’s bad dreams, in which Mrs Wormwood herself is reminding the lost boy of exactly where he came from - at one point, she’ll tell him ‘Luke, I am your mother,’ in a sly aside to a certain space opera saga - not long after riffing on one of Samantha Bond’s other iconic roles when she introduces herself as ‘Wormwood .. Mrs Wormwood.’ As the episode opens, Rani’s mum gets kidnapped. Mrs Wormwood throws down the gauntlet (and a few dozen roses), baiting Team SJ to seek Gita out in an empty warehouse, while Sarah gives us all a quick update on the history of the invading monsters, the Bane.

There are a few tricks learned from the then current series of Doctor Who itself, not least that

Sarah and her companion at one point hold each other’s hand for comfort, and Mrs Wormwood is swift to inform and unsettle Rani by telling her that she is merely the latest in a long line of assistants, mentioning that this one is ‘taller’. But it’s not long before Mrs Wormwood claims that the only reason she got Sarah’s attention in the first place was because she needed the latter’s help. Suddenly things kick up a gear when the Old Dark Warehouse they’re in gets invaded by some Bane, forcing Mrs Wormwood to scarper. Sarah gets attacked, but is saved by her former enemy. ‘I’m not past my sell-by date yet,’ she pithily snaps.

Mrs Wormwood explains that she bears the blame for the fall-out of the failed takeover of Earth (as detailed in The Invasion Of The Bane) - during which Sarah killed the Bane mother – but even that isn’t the reason why the Bane Kindred are on the hunt for her. No, she claims to Sarah’s surprise. Mrs Wormwood is trying to save the galaxy from an ancient being known as the Horath. The only way to find out how is via an almost as ancient scroll, now in the

possession of UNIT. Sarah’s youngster friends are somewhat excited at the chance of hanging out with a bunch of alien-fighting soldiers.

Sarah manages to sum up much of early seventies Doctor Who, and the tension between

having a lead character who famously hated guns, but also plots that largely blew everything up in the finale: ‘In my experience, guns never solved a problem they didn’t first make worse.’

All of which leads to the last onscreen appearance of Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier.

There’s a certain poetry to this, as the role was originally intended to be played by Freema Agyeman’s Martha, who had to pull out because of scheduling conflicts, leading to an unintentionally neat echo of Mawdryn Undead, in which William Russell pulled out of an anniversary guest appearance, to be replaced by ... Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier.

Here, Sarah needs the Brig’s credentials in order to access The Black Archive (first seen here, then a pivotal part of the plot in the Doctor Who fiftieth anniversary episode, The Day Of The Doctor). Lethbridge-Stewart is old enough and irascible enough to go pretty much anywhere he wants (mostly by using the passcode ‘in my day..’), although Major Kilburn is keeping a beady eye on him, channelling all manner of pantomime villains (even admiring his own reflection at one point).

However, Sarah and Rani being trapped in the Black Archive is not the big cliffhanger in this penultimate episode. Nor is it Luke and Clyde being attacked by the ‘one eyed squiddy things’.

It’s revealed that Kaagh, the Sontaran that we were introduced to at the start of season two, is working with Mrs Wormwood, and it’s worth remembering that Sontarans were the very first alien monster Sarah Jane Smith met, 35 years prior to this episode, and still making trouble.

Perhaps the roving reporter has earned herself two arch enemies ..

Fans Fiction The New Adventures of Lady C: The Stolen Wellington, part 1 by Samantha Stanley & Harriet Chamberlain

The new adventures of Lady C. – A contribution to the stories created by S. Florence

The Stolen Wellington. Part 1

Written by Samantha Stanley & Harriet Chamberlain

Lady Christina de Souza, 98th in line to the throne of England (Thankyou Megan Markle ), not the Queen's favourite relative, owner of the de Souza manor, a fleeting companion of the time travelling alien known as "The Doctor" and notorious jewel thief "The Lucky Cat" had just about recovered from losing her entire family at the battle of canary wharf in 2007, and had just about recovered from not only meeting an alien on a bus, travelling to another planet with him on the bus, but saving the lives of those on the bus with her and the entire planet of Earth whilst losing her prized stolen possession to date, king Athlestan's golden chalice and had just about recovered her father's lost fortune ( thanks to his gambling habit) by stealing whatever she could get her hands on, selling it on the black market and restoring the manor, ( well one room, her bedroom. The rest of the manor was falling apart as all her money and her loot went into the secret vault hidden in the depths of the manors wine cellar and the very expensive and slightly alien tech security measures) it's butler John Cook, his strange cousin and stable hand Hugo Halliwell and his knackered pony Clip-Clop, back to all its former glory thus throwing herself, the aristocratic side of her at least, back into the limelight, back into the public eye and back into the Queen's bad books. No one knew her alter ego and what she had done and sacrificed to bring her family home back from the dead and no one ever would, except John Cook, his cousin Hugo and quite possibly the Queen who eyed her suspiciously whenever she saw her and made constant references to the Maneki Neko, Lady C's calling card, to see if she flinched and revealed her true identity.

Recovering from all that whilst maintaining a Lady like stature took a lot of effort, a few glasses of gin and the odd wild fling with an unsuspecting married member of her social circle, just so she could experience the thrill of excitement that stealing gave her, without having to steal anything as other people's husbands didn't count as she technically wasn't stealing, she was borrowing and she always gave them back!

It was fair to say that life had settled down considerably since that awful day during the battle when she had lost her parents and younger sister Lady Monica. She had tried to look for them of course but where do you start when there is only an end to a war, and no beginning? It had been 13 years now and she was older, none the wiser but a lot richer and still not in favour by the Queen. She did have a happy life though, or that's what she at least told herself every morning, so imagine her surprise when she had come home one evening after stealing a painting supposedly painted by Van Gogh yet looked alarmingly like an exploding TARDIS, for a client who went by the name of Professor Song, ( Quite obviously made up but as long as she paid up, Lady C didn't care what her clients called themselves, yet she was intrigued to meet the Professor as she was sure the painting must be something to do with the Doctor.) and found her dead sister, Lady Monica Georgia de Souza (named after her father's grandmother) sitting in her dining room, eating her pizza and drinking her beer that had been laid out for her by her butler like he did after every heist, sitting on her chaise lounge as though she hadn't of been dead all this time. In fact, she was very much alive!

There had been shouting, tears and tantrums, mainly from Hugo who had insisted that Monica was a ghost back from the dead to reclaim her shoe collection he had hoarded the day she had "died" and when he had been sedated by John Cook and taken back to the stable, he shared with Clip Clop (his choice) Monica and Christina had started shouting at each other. "Where have you been? I thought you were dead! Why didn't you come looking for me? Stop drinking all my beer!" This went on until the early hours of the next morning until both women had fallen asleep on the chaise lounge out of pure exhaustion. Cook had woken them at 5am and sent them to bed. It was now 10am, Lady C had been awake for hours, had her breakfast in bed and was reading the newspaper as the headline was screaming at her about an art heist from the London museum. She would stay exactly where she was until Monica came in and apologised for being alive and in the meantime, she googled her, trying as she had so often done before to find some traces of her family but the searches had turned up nothing. This time though she had a different name. Bella Roseau, a secret identity Monica had been using these past 12 years to keep herself hidden. It would seem she had learned something from Christina after all.

It took Monica a long, long time to get back to sleep once Cook had woken them in the early hours. Obviously being back so late last night, and being dead for so long that 90% of her stuff was in storage and her old room is full of dust, her furniture covered in a cloth hiding Monica expensive style underneath. Being back home was just what she needed at this time, all the stuff that she had been through since changing her name and living off whatever she could get was difficult to her. She had tried her best to be independent for the first time in her life, and since what happened in Canary Wharf, she couldn’t have gone home for a long time even if she wanted to.

Staying in one of the guest room for the night, Monica lay on her back staring up at the ceiling above her; she had a lot of work to do to make it up to her sister. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, and if it was the other way around, she didn’t think that she would ever forgive Christina. But lucky for Monica, Christina was probably a tiny bit more forgiving…. And I really mean a tiny bit. Monica checked her phone and saw it wasn’t a ridiculous time to get up and go see Christina. Throwing on a silk dressing gown from the suitcase she brought back with her she slipped out the room and walked towards her sister’s room. It’s strange how everything is exactly the same as how they left it but just run down. All the fancy art the family used to collect still filled the walls of the hallway, the massive chandelier above her head still bright, just full of cobwebs. There was only a certain amount of cleaning that Cook could have done and it wasn’t fair to leave him behind to look after it all, but Monica didn’t think that her sister would ever walk away from this place, especially after her family had died, but she did.

Knocking lightly and pushing open Christina’s bedroom door, she walked in ready to grovel. Monica was so close to walking in jumping onto the bed next to her sister and getting under the duvet like she used to but she stopped herself knowing it wouldn’t be welcome. Not just yet anyway.

“So…. What would make this a bit better?” Mon went to awkwardly sit on the edge of the bed but instead chose to walk away and sit on the chair on the other side of the room. “I mean, you know I can’t cook. And that hasn’t got any better since I’ve been away. But I could try? Would that help?” Mon took quick notice of Christina scrolling on her phone. “Anything interesting about me?” Mon questioned, that used to be what she would ask her sister back in the day before everything went wrong, and that was because Mon was used to going out getting completely drunk, making a fool of herself and probably ending up on the front page of some tabloid doing something she probably shouldn’t. Since she had died Mon did spend some time looking online about herself wishing she would relive the life she used to have, but how could she come back from the dead? Christina would probably be able to know, she knew everything. “Anyway, so I was thinking, how much of my stuff you still have? I mean you must have kept some right?” Mon shrugged; Christina did not look impressed. “Are you ok?”

Trying to ignore her sister wouldn't be an easy task. Monica was far too "In your face" to be placed on a back burner somewhere or ghosted just to prove a point, but it had to be said that although Christina was over the moon that her sister wasn't dead after all, she was furious with her for lying to her and leaving her with the mess of planning her entire family’s funerals.... not something anyone should have to do. Cook helped of course, Hugo didn't but that was Hugo and that was another thing, how she was going to convince him to give Monica back her shoe collection, she did not know, especially as he had grown rather worryingly attached to a bright red pair of Jimmy Choo's in her absence.

As she sat cautiously on her bed, Christina carried on searching the news feed on her phone in the pretence she was far too busy to be listening to her sister's pitiful attempts at an apology for not being dead, but something caught her eye and very quickly, a devious if not hilarious plan began to form in her mind that would indeed allow Monica to make it up to her on a grand scale.

Placing her phone on her bed, she sighed heavily, acting wounded and heartbroken as she mentally put the finishing touches to her master plan. Reaching over the night stand, she grabbed a small bell and rang it a few times in an attempt to get Cook to bring her a morning cup of tea. She waited a few seconds, rang it again, huffed impatiently and then bellowed..."COOK......TEA!" at the top of her lungs just as the butler came hurrying through the door carrying a tea tray with a startled looking Hugo behind him carry a breakfast tray and a piece of her toast in his mouth.

"Sorry mi' Lady, 'ad to stop Hugo nicking yer sausages, yer know what he's like round pork. Morning Miss Monica, brought yer usual, bloody Mary with a twist and a Ryvita"

Placing the trays down and cuffing Hugo round the head so the toast shot from his mouth, Cook left the room dragging his slightly backward cousin with him.

Christina finally spoke to Monica, trying to sound authoritative yet sounding more like an excited child at Christmas.

"All your belongings are in storage, by storage I mean in the stable with Clip-Clop. I did try and save some things but Hugo insists you left them to him in your will which we never found and I was too upset to contest it or argue with him, besides, he's been wearing most of your dresses on a daily basis so I doubt you'll want any of it back"

Taking a sip of tea, she let her plan unravel like a soft coiled ribbon that had gently fallen to the floor.

"I am going on a job later this evening" She passed her phone to her sister and pointed to the illuminated screen. "As you can see, Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington has resurfaced and its due to go on display for 1 week from tomorrow morning at the London art gallery, meaning it will be taken to the gallery overnight in preparation. I have quite a few contacts interested in this particular piece who are willing to pay a very large sum of money and you my dear undead sister, are going to help me get it.... tonight! I will go over the plans properly with you after breakfast and when we pull this off, you'll be able to restock your wardrobe and more, because you are going to be the one, who steals it for me!"

There was a distinct smirk on Lady C's face as she unveiled her plans, mostly because of what she had planned for her sister and mostly because the thrill of a pending heist always made her extremely happy. Taking another sip of tea and plucking a sausage off her plate, she relaxed back into her pillows and waited for her sister to come to terms with the fate that awaited her.

To be continued…

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Sunday, 13 June 2021

Articles Welcome to Issue 92 - The Ninth is Back!