Big Finish Reviews+ Revenge of the Swarm by Tony J Fyler

Tony could really go for a prawn cocktail.

There are villains and monsters that immediately cry out for a repeat engagement with the Doctor, and then there are villains and monsters that, with the best will in the world, simply don’t. But if Big Finish has proved anything, it’s that it can take the least promising creatures (the Voord, say), and completely revolutionise what we know and what we think about them. That said, the company’s track record in doing this has had its downs as well as its ups – The Exxilons fell rather flat in terms of adding great swathes to our understanding. So when you write a sequel to 1977’s The Invisible Enemy, which was rather let down by some of its visual realisation on screen, you have two choices. You can adopt the idea that what we saw on TV in 1977 was 1977’s translation of the real Swarm, the real Nucleus, and that now it actually looks so much cooler than that through the medium of audio, or you can jump in with both feet, keep referencing the points of design and make-up naffness from 1977 and well and truly get stuck in to a world where a microscopic prawn wants to take over the universe.

So which is The Revenge of the Swarm – triumph or tragedy?

Honestly, it’s not really either. But just possibly, it’s both.

First of all, let’s clear up any speculation – we’re in ‘gosh that’s naff, it looks like a giant prawn’ territory. In fact, the joke is played rather too often for a laugh that depends on the audience a) Knowing what the Nucleus of the Swarm looked like in 1977, b) finding it endearingly funny, and c) having enough of a sense of humour to chuckle at the idea of taking it seriously. Even those who err on the Graham Williams/Douglas Adams side in the ‘seriousness’ debate though will laugh with exponentially decreasing frequency as the naff prawniness of the Nucleus is used for riff after riff.

The Revenge of the Swarm is, according to writer Johnathan Morris, the ‘Godfather II’ to The Invisible Enemy’s original. What he means by that is that the first two episodes act as a prequel to The Invisible Enemy, and the second two episodes act as its sequel. The danger, with a story like that is a bittiness of tone, and of ending up with a story that’s more like two half-stories welded together than a coherent, rounded, full-bodied and involving tale. After all, Morris himself describes The Godfather II as the ‘deleted scenes from the first movie, and some stuff that never made it from the book into the first film’. While The Godfather II has had great success and is even (with a straight face, no less) regarded by many critics as better than the original, thinking of it as a bunch of deleted scenes is perhaps not the most coherent strategy to adopt when writing what could be an updated, new, challenging story for the Swarm.

Sadly, the cut-and-shunt feeling not a danger that Morris particularly avoids. The first two episodes show the Nucleus of the Swarm not in fact having been defeated at all by Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor but hiding out in the Tardis itself, just waiting for the right moment to emerge and – and this is a thing that never particularly makes much sense – witness or ensure its own creation in the first place. None of that philosophical ‘I think, therefore I am’ cobblers for the Swarm, oh no – it wants to ensure its own creation, for some reason not trusting that its current existence predicates that creation. It’s a bit of a storytelling reach, mostly to show us the listener the moment of the Swarm’s creation.

Which is all very nice as far as it goes – it would have made a great subscriber’s extra as a simple two-parter, with the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hector unable to actually defeat the Swarm’s plans, because they’re as aware as it must be of its own creation as a fact, but they appear to get this idea rather more than does the Swarm itself.

But then for episodes three and four, we’re catapulted forward in time to after The Invisible Enemy, when the Swarm has become not a biological but a computer virus, placing itself in the hub of all information flow between the colony worlds of Earth in a vast number of systems. That means the Doctor, Ace and later Hector all being digitised and fighting the wretched thing in a computer-generated environment that feels like it should be much more scary. The Nucleus is reborn in the physical world and then sets about absorbing energy to grow to the size of a planet, necessitating a two-pronged attack which eventually renders it probably not quite extinct again.

As stories go, episodes three and four could work, but because they’ve been cut and shunted onto the prequel episodes, there’s no time to really get to know or understand the characters we meet who befriend the Tardis team, so they end up feeling like little more than ciphers to a plot never given the space to develop.

In essence, Revenge of the Swarm feels like a fun, frivolous giveaway two-parter called Genesis of the Swarm (and yes, the Swarm actually uses the G-word about itself) and what should have been a full, separate four-parter, released at a later date, but instead has had two crucial episodes cut out and been welded onto the prequel. The tone doesn’t really connect and the accelerator seems to be stuck on from the word go in episode three.

A roaring success, then?

No, sadly not. It does tick a lot of fan boxes though - after all, it’s the Swarm, and John Leeson reprises his role as the Nucleus as though it was just last week he originally played it. What’s more, everyone likes an origin story, even if it’s not a particularly good or original one.  But in a second half full of ‘who-the-hell-are-you-again’ moments, there’s very little development of Ace or Hector – and what there is feels repetitive from other Hector stories; Ace trying to get him to remember being Hex, him flying off the handle and saying ‘don’t compare me to him’ in exactly the same intonation as Hex would have used. McCoy’s Doctor is also given surprisingly little to really do – the story appears to unfold at his feet, with one or two useful moments that could have been delivered by an OmniDoctor.

Ultimately, Revenge of the Swarm could have been significantly better had the two ‘halves’ of the story not been forced to act as a single entity, because in that process of turning two stories into one, the second story is left with too much to do, and too little time in which to do it well.

Big Finish Reviews+ Chase the Night by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s gotta get out of this place…

There’s a theme for the second part of Series 9 of the Fourth Doctor Adventures. While the Doctor and Romana are stuck in E-Space, looking with a degree of method for a CVE to lead them back into their own universe with the stowaway Adric, it’s by no means inconceivable that others might have heard of them too, and be similarly searching for a universe a little bit roomier than the one they’re used to. The Planet Of Witches by Alan Barnes and The Quest Of The Engineer by Andrew Smith both focus in very different ways on people who want out of E-Space; in the first case to take a message from that pocket universe to a wider audience, and in the second to search for knowledge it’s beyond the scope of E-Space to provide.

You’re probably going to want to hold on to your brain a little for The Planet Of Witches, and maybe not operate any heavy machinery while you listen, because it demands a fairly high level of attention, and if you refuse to give it what it needs, it will happily sweep you up and away and you’ll be lost. A formulized system of witches and witchfinders is in operation in this story, with bounty hunter-style finders capturing and bringing ‘witches’ – for which, read those with above-average minds – to the mysterious ‘Tiresias’ (Samuel Clemens) who wants them for complicated reasons of his own. There are many levels to the system, and our Tardis team fall foul of a finder by the name of Raxxil (Michael Simkins), who’s transporting three prime specimens of witchery (including one who goes somewhat obviously by the name of Crone, and who gives good cackle) to Tiresias and his familiars (think of the scarecrows of The Family Of Blood), to do…whatever he does to them.

There are distinct echoes of State Of Decay here – a society in regression from technological sophistication back to barbarism, witch-burning and the generalised supremacy of faith-positions over fact-positions, but whereas in State Of Decay you could follow the deterioration over time in fairly straightforward terms, here, Alan Barnes does something arguably more interesting with the idea, using technology as part of the fundamental regression. There’s also a feeling of The Face Of Evil here, with Tiresias a somewhat mysterious godlike figure for much of the run-time, surrounded by ritual, and dividing society into the technologically adept and those who eschew technological knowledge, preferring to rely on mysticism and faith.

The actual knitting together of a lot of plot elements is where you need to keep hold of your brain, because as we journey through this world of witches and witchfinders, fakes and familiars, it’s quite possible to lose track of who’s who and what’s what and what happens to whom as we go. But there are, it turns out, many ways to serve Tiresias – as an elevated consciousness, as a useful spinal column, as a… tasty, nutritious shake… and an awful lot of which fate belongs to which…erm…witch depends on how good a brain you have. Enter two Time Lords and the boy with the badge for mathematical excellence. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, and the robot dog of course – which really rather alters the answer to the question of what could possibly go wrong. All of which has to be sorted out before we discover quite exactly how many people want to get the hell out of E-Space, and why, but suffice it to say, it’s more than the number you’re used to if you’ve watched Season 18.

Just as well there are some Moirai on hand to allocate people their destiny, really (that’s ‘goddesses of fate in Greek mythology’ to you). Except of course, like Tiresias, and like almost every witch on the planet of witches, they’re not really what they seem. They’re something else that’s equally interesting, and they’re more than willing to make Adric an offer he very nearly can’t refuse, but goddesses would probably be stretching it a bit, even for Season 18.

When things get complex and multi-layered and more or less hit Season 18 levels of what-the-hell-am-I-listening-to?, persevere – Alan Barnes has you covered, and along the way, there’s glory to be had, not least from the members of the Tardis team, complete with good Time Lord banter between the clever clogs and the swot, enormous fun between K9 and Tiresias, some properly satirical gubbins between star-boy and the tin dog where it sounds like they’re agreeing about just how immensely clever they are together, and oh yes, you’re really not going to want to miss the conversation between Adric and the Moirai. We’d love to quote you some, but the thing about Alan Barnes’ script is that if you give really even one or two specifics, you spoil something, which can only be explained if you spoil something else, and before you know where you are, there are no surprises left in a script which has more than its fair share to offer.

Ultimately, while you need to concentrate through The Planet Of Witches, it’s a solid introduction to the idea that in E-Space, CVEs, although they’re never known by that name in a universe that seems wherever you look to be down at heel and in a state of regression, are things that have been rumoured, whispered, poorly if at all understood, but turned into legends enough times to make people set out on damn foolhardy plans to find them, use them, and turn their shrivelling lives around. The story feels about an episode too long in the final analysis, as it goes through one slightly laborious final twist, trying to maintain its momentum all the way but then being resolved with a relatively simple device.  But as an introduction to the idea that it’s not just the Doctor, Romana, K9 and Adric who are searching for CVEs in the pocket universe, Alan Barnes gives us fertile new ground for conflict, drama and storytelling in future potential Season 18 sets.

The Quest Of The Engineer, by Andrew Smith, is a bold bugger of a thing. It has to be – when you introduce a major new character and have the courage to call them ‘The-’ anything, you need to deliver on the promise of that portentousness, or you’ll end up falling flat on your face and looking foolish.

Andrew Smith is not a writer accustomed to falling flat on his face and looking foolish.

He doesn’t start here.

There are so many things to love about this story, it’s an utter embarrassment of riches.

Chasing down another rumour of a CVE, the Tardis team encounter a world which knows about technology, but frankly wants no truck with it on the grounds that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. While there, they find a man they’re looking for, who’s been imprisoned for wittering on about strange occurrences in the heavens. When they find him, naturally enough in the local jail, there are gracenotes of Binro the heretic or our own Galileo about Regis Tel (played by the masterly George Layton). Quite apart from the evidence of a comet winking out of existence – potential CVE activity, we’re led to wonder? - there are planets disappearing, in a direct line making for the one on which they’re currently standing.

Drama! Suspense! Let’s blow this rebel scientist’s mind by taking him on a trip in the Tardis!

Before they know what’s happened, they’ve arrived on what should be a rogue planet, but absolutely isn’t. What happens next needs the kind of visual effects budget only audio can afford.

Suffice it to say, the planet that isn’t a planet is actually what happens if a Death Star and a Rubik cube who love each other very much get certain urges…

There are shades of The Pirate Planet in at least the big science-fiction concept at work here, not to mention that whole Star Wars thing, and a touch of the Tesselecta from Let’s Kill Hitler. But to justify such a grand technical conceit, you again need to underscore its existence with an intelligence of quite staggering size who could conceive and built it.

Enter the Engineer, a character of quite breathtaking brilliance and utter callousness the like of which we’ve not seen or heard so well executed in quite a while. Take elements of Davros, elements of Kane from Dragonfire and the ever-present danger of a flip to grandiose insanity from Mr Hindle in Kinda and you’re getting somewhere close. Rarely, if ever, does this character make stupid mistakes, so no average cunning plan of the Doctor’s is going to be enough to square up against the man who custom-builds programmable, piloted planets. He has the scale of the best of the Bond villains, and for the vast majority of the story, it’s Lalla Ward’s Romana who’s given the grand tour and torture package, while the Doctor, Adric, K9 and Regis explore on what for the sake of notional accuracy must be called ground level. There are things happening on ground level of which the Doctor takes a dim view – slavery, planet-mulching, whole populations schlurped up like the last awkward drops of milkshake in the bottom of a cup. Worlds full of people with lives ahead of them, sacrificed to the Engineer’s quest.

What quest is that? Well, obviously we’re not going to blow that for you – there’s a fairly solid chance you’ll guess it before it’s actually revealed in any case, but not long before. And among the planet-squishing and population schlurping and slavery and some truly horrifying Frankenstein-meets-Peter-Pan experiments, the quest depends on finding a CVE, a way out of the small pond of E-Space, so this big fish can find the answers he needs to complete his work.

The character, like the science fiction, is a work of utter mastery by Andrew Smith, and you need a real artist to deliver so callous and single-minded and never ever obviously stupid a character as the Engineer.

Nicholas Woodeson. You’re going to want to remember the name, because in audio terms, he’s up there with Michael Gough’s Toymaker, Michael Wisher’s Davros, Peter Butterworth’s Meddling Monk, Christopher Gable’s Sharaz Jek and Edward Peel’s Kane. Really, he gives that good a performance as the Engineer, if it had ever been a televised episode, you’d know his name instinctively thirty years from now, because the villain would be nailed to your memory. By the end of the story, the grandiosity of his schemes, the vastness of his callousness and the desperation of the need which has driven it all are revealed and he becomes one of the object lessons that Doctor Who has always done so well. Love turned to obsession, burned by betrayal, fanned into hate and grown cold with three decades of determined action becomes a laser-focused plan to do whatever is necessary to turn back the clock, to undo death, to rewrite the dark and gruesome parts of his own history. By the end, the Fourth Doctor’s own words echo round your head – if someone pointed out a child to you, and told you it would grow up to be totally evil…could you then kill that child? The Engineer is evil, absolutely. Callous, brutal, fanning his own overweening ego in the blood of millions. But we understand by the end what drove him down that path, and if it doesn’t excuse him his horrifying actions, it at least puts them in the context of the brilliant man who played the game he was told to play and found himself betrayed by those who made the rules.

Again by the end, it feels like if not a full episode, then maybe an inconvenient half-episode could be shaved off the running time here, but The Quest Of The Engineer handles its tensions better and more naturally as it drives towards its cataclysmic conclusion.

Bottom line, if you only had one of the Series 9 Fourth Doctor Adventures to listen to, it should be The Quest Of The Engineer. All the stories in the series have plenty to recommend them – from the rusteroid of Purgatory 12 to the bizarre train ride and expanded definition of life of Chase The Night and the social Darwinism of The Planet Of Witches. But for a knock-down, drag-out mind-expanding bit of sci-fi with a stunning central villain and a tale of stakes and consequences along the way, you’re going to have to Andrew Smith it.

Give The Fourth Doctor Adventures, Series 9, Part 2 a handful of your lifetime today. It’ll pay you back in spades.

Reviews Torchwood - Instant Karma by Tony J Fyler

Heads explode. Tony walks by, whistling…

Great science-fiction is frequently about asking the ‘What-if?’ questions of life, extrapolating from where we are and changing one thing, making one thing possible that isn’t, and seeing what kind of world you end up in.

Instant Karma sells itself openly on that premise – what if you could make all the annoying people pay for their tireless campaign of making the world worse? What if you could repay the inconsiderate git in the supermarket or bank with the bagful of penny pieces, make them hurt for their thoughtlessness. What if you could make the driver who cuts you up at a corner feel the impact of his behaviour, feel your anger as pain.

What if the anger of a protest could hurt, could even kill, the person being protested? If instead of a satirical blimp, you could make their heart explode, or their brain melt, or you could make them tell the truth? What if you could change things on that level?

Would you do it?

Sci-fi with philosophical underpinnings? Big tick, Big Finish. Big tick, David Llewelyn, James Goss and Jonathan Morris, who, somewhat unusually, deliver instant Karma as a triple-credit.

The story itself is anchored by Tosh (Naoko Mori), seemingly shortly after the Greeks Bearing Gifts TV episode, when she’s recently become aware of how her colleagues really feel about her, having briefly gained the ability to hear unguarded thoughts.

There are two other main players that make this a solid three-hander, Johnny Dixon as Simon (bus driver by day, self-help group guru by night), and Sara McGaughey as Janet, who loves him, whether or not he returns her affection.

The triple whammy writing team of David Llewellyn, James Goss and Jonathan Morris is unusual for Torchwood at Big Finish, but here it means that as well as the strong philosophical questions at the heart of the action, there’s a lot of solid character background given for Simon and Janet, which means we understand them as very different people, united however briefly in a moment of something potentially wonderful, potentially deadly. Simon in particular has a complicated, believable history that we learn as he tries to get to know Tosh better. Ultimately though, Instant Karma blends a couple of strong messages together in its storytelling. On the one hand, you can listen to it as a parable of how anger can make you powerful, but power can turn ordinary anger into a deadly force. And on the other, you can listen to it as a parable about not letting anger change who you fundamentally are – if, for instance, hurting people is wrong in one case, the wrongness or irritation-factor of the people doesn’t change the wrongness of inflicting pain. There are moments in Instant Karma when Simon and Janet are on the same side, and moments when the differences behind them, their needs, their self-soothing methods and the ways in which they process both the anger they have and the power it brings them show them to be very different people. And that, in the end, is what brings the conclusion its power, as each pathway has a destination-point, and ultimately, while Tosh may work for the super-duper secret organisation, it’s not she who decides the outcome of events in the story. If anything, it’s she who learns the lessons laid out for her by the examples of Simon and Janet, and, we can only assume, uses them to get over her sent of violation and outrage at knowing what everyone really thinks of her, to understand that processing anger in a healthy way is a mark of individual progress, individual conquest of the hot, powerful basic instinct to repay hurt with hurt.

Instant Karma’s a very impressive three-hander, with both Dixon and McGauchey delivering the drama, the realism, and the fundamental philosophical questions in persuasive and powerful ways, and Naoko Mori working well as the actual driver of questions and learner of lessons. Pick it up, and remember, if people are being annoying, that’s on them. How you respond to them…that’s on you.

Big Finish Reviews+ Static by Tony J Fyler

We all love a good scary story – the notion of being scared just enough, and then having the scary-thing defeated or explained away is fundamental to childhood, and fundamental to Doctor Who. Without it, there’d be no Daleks, no Cybermen, no Weeping Angels, and no need for a Doctor to make it all alright again.

Static, the new Sixth Doctor audio adventure from Big Finish, is properly creepy, scary stuff, using plenty of horror movie tropes, and giving them a British twist of dripping, chilly dismalness.

Writer Jonathan Morris creates the caravan park of the damned, with a creepy caretaker, a seemingly programmable mist that stops people leaving the park, and a couple whose relationship has never recovered from a death in their past.

But at this particular caravan park, when the mist comes down, the dead come back to life.

See? Properly creepy.

Of course, it’s difficult to sustain that intense creepiness over two hours, and Static is a story of two halves, with the first two episodes intensifying the shivers – dead relatives, skeletons found in trees, mystical stone circles, phones that ring when they’re disconnected, the voices of the dead coming through the static on a portable TV and so on. The second half does the classic Doctor Who thing – adding facts, science and alien technology to explain the mysteries of the set-up, and letting the Doctor save us all from a fate worse – or at least more certain – than death.

On the way to a conclusion that has its fair share of punch, the story brings in a secret RAF project from World War II, a body-farming project, and an alien species with a particular methodology that makes sense of all the creepy-seeming elements. There’s a degree of timey-wiminess to the plot, as the Doctor and his wartime companion, Leading WREN Constance Clarke, flit from the present day back to the war to uncover what’s really going on, leaving modern teen Flip in the caravan park of unparalleled creepiness with the troubled couple, the axe-wielding caretaker and the waves of dead people walking out of the mist.

In terms of the punch, one of the companions faces the reality of her death in this story, and we’re not about to tell you if death is a permanent condition for the Sixth Doctor’s crew. Certainly, the reactions of her fellow time travellers are played real and raw, meaning there are emotionally harrowing moments in Static, as well as creepy horror and body horror threads.

If there’s a stand-out performance in this story, it undoubtedly comes from David Graham as Percy Till, the caravan caretaker. Graham’s in his nineties now, and has a strong geeky pedigree, having worked as a Dalek voice on the very first story in which they appeared, and also being the voice behind both Brains and Parker in the classic Thunderbirds. Here, he adds a kind of weary certainty to his performance as Till, which gives the caravan park a sense of ancient, bristling threat that carries the creep-factor for at least the first two episodes.

Underneath it all, Static is a workaday alien invasion story, and all the things you’d expect of such a Doctor Who story are here – alien tech disguised as something else, the Doctor being noble, twists, turns, possession, time travel, you name it, it’s here. But it’s in the initial set-up of its atmosphere that Static stands out from the crowd of similar invasion stories. Let yourself sink into the chilly mist of Static’s premise and it’ll give you more than a few shudders en route to the logical conclusion.

Big Finish Reviews+ Protect and Survive by Simon Mallinson

Written by Jonathan Morris

If an attack with nuclear weapons is expected, you will hear the air attack warning. If you are not at home, but can get there within two minutes, do so. If you are in the open, take cover in the nearest building. If you cannot reach a building, lie flat on the ground and cover your head and your hands.

Arriving in the North of England in the late 1980s, Ace and Hex seek refuge at the home of Albert and Peggy Marsden... in the last few hours before the outbreak of World War Three.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is missing. Will there be anyone left for him to rescue, when the bombs begin to fall?

Being a child of the 70s and growing up in the Cold War period, this audio strikes a big cord with me.  I remember at school being shown the public service film and it left a big emotional hole within me, mainly the characters were so damn lovely it broke my heart.

To give Jonathan Morris credit, he has done a wonderful job bringing this to the audio. I suspect he watched the programme too, as he seems to have it spot on. 

Now The 7th Doctor is at his best, being so damn dark and mysterious, Ace is doing her best to impress Hex, but is there a dark side to our Albert and Peggy and how does the Doctor fit in and in fact who are they and why has the Tardis brought them here just before an attack????

So well done Jonny, you crafty sod, and well done Ken Bentley for honing the cast to perfection.  Sophie Aldred really excels in this and Philip Oliver starts to make you want Hex for a good while, as he is so damn good at the role and very very likeable, not only on audio but in the flesh as well.  Sylvester McCoy is as dark and charming as ever <wink>, but extra special thanks to Albert (Ian Hogg) and Peggy (Elizabeth Bennett) for transporting me back to a simpler age and making me believe again.

Big Finish Reviews+ The 5th Doctor Box Set - Psychodrome by Jeffrey Zyra

Written by Jonathan Morris

After the events of Castrovalva Tegan is trying to get used to the way her life will be until The Doctor can get her back to Heathrow before her flight departs.  In the meantime Adric is showing her to her room that once belonged to Romana and informed her that she can decorate it anyway she sees fit.  In the meantime the TARDIS seems to have materialized underground and that has piqued The Doctor’s interest.  The four travelers head out to explore and soon the Doctor notices things are not what they seem.  For once the TARDIS is being carried off by what looks like savages from Earth’s past and there also seems to be four groups of inhabitants all different and each representing different times.  But that is not the worrying part as each group seems to be a part of the consciousness of The Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. 

The Fifth Doctor Box set is a special release this year by Big Finish.  Big Finish seems to be doing more box sets lately as last year the came out with The UNIT Box Set starring the 7^th Doctor and of course the Dark Eyes Box set that stars Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.  This year they have up the ante by releasing a few box sets with Bernice Summerfield and The Worlds of Doctor Who with Colin Baker and of course another Dark Eyes set.  I enjoy getting the box sets as it gives the buyer two stories from that particular era to listen to and you get a bonus release during the year that isn’t in the regular rotation.  Being a fan of the Fifth Doctor I was overjoyed that they were doing a set for Peter Davison and equally happy that they finally were bringing in Mathew Waterhouse as Adric into the fold.  The First review will be on the first story Psychodrome as I will review both stories separately.

Psychodrome  is written by Jonathan Morris who is no stranger to those who enjoy the Big Finish Doctor Who Adventures.   It takes place after the events in Castrovalava and there appears to be some angst amongst the companions.  For one Tegan doesn’t want to be there and she hasn’t had the opportunity to really mourn her Aunt Vanessa yet.  Same with Nyssa who is still coming to grips with her father’s body being used by The Master and Adric is getting used to the new Doctor as he really liked the old one.  This aspect is pretty good as we didn’t really have a chance to explore this in the television series.  Tegan never had a proper introduction and was thrown into the thick of it without really giving her a chance to get to know her traveling companions.  It gives us a chance to know how Tegan really feels about her predicament during the early stages of her time on the TARDIS.

Another good part of Psychodrome and one of the reasons I like this story is that it plays on what people think of one another. Here we have a situation where the inhabitants of the Psychodrome are aspects of the mind and what each person thinks of the other. So we have characters walking around of what Tegan thinks her companions are like in her mind and Nyssa’s interpretation and so on.  So Adric , Nyssa,Tegan and The Doctor all see what they each think of the other.  Talk about an awkward situation.  What was also good is that the four traveling companions had to work past that and work together to get out of the situation they were in.  Plus the author added in the extra wrinkle of having them face their worst fear.  That worked really well also and added some extra tension into the story. 

Big Finish did a really great job in creating the feel for this era as it felt like a story from 1981/1982.  The music even sounded like it was from that era.  It really did and it sure added to the atmosphere of the story.  The music was key as it had all the nuances that you would expect from a story from that part of Peter Davison’s era.  It was also good to have Matthew Waterhouse back as Adric.   Whether you liked him or hated him it was good to finally have him in a Big Finish story.  I believe of all the living companions he might be the only Classic Who companion who hasn’t done one yet.  Well what was disappointing is that Matthew Waterhouse does not sound much like Adric.  Oh the whining is there but since he is now much older his voice doesn’t have that youthfulness to it.  But in all it is still him and after a while you don’t even think about it much and it is Adric coming from the speakers. 

Psychodrome is an excellent story that raises some good questions about the companions and what they think about one another and especially The Doctor.  It also pits them against themselves in a way as they are fighting off what lurks in their subconscious.  It is a really good story that is worth listening to and a good start for the Fifth Doctor Box set.

Grade A